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Applying for just the right immigration status for you involves an analysis of your life, employment and family situation.
There may be more than one option available to you. Typically, a person comes to the United States first to visit. Most often this is the sole goal of entering this country.
Thereafter, circumstances evolve so as to create opportunities or desires to stay here for other reasons, and for various periods of time. Therefore, it is possible that one or more statuses can end up as part of your immigration path.
The Temporary Visas and Permanent Residence options contained in this section explain the various categories that exist under U.S. immigration laws. You can click on any of the visa options listed to get a detailed explanation of the specific options.
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MINOR CHILDREN OF US CITIZENS
Minor children of U.S. citizens are immediate relatives and not subject to the quotas of preference aliens. The time it takes to get permanent residence is only that time it takes to process the petition and either adjustment of status (in the U.S.) or immigrant visa. See below for details of adjustment of status and immigrant visa processing.
If the alien has a foreign born parent and a U.S. citizen parent, the petition should be filed by the U.S. citizen parent in order to maintain the immediate relative category. Under these circumstances, the marriage marriage must take place before the child's 18th birthday.
Adjustment of status and immigrant visa processing are two ways of acheiving the goal of permanent residence ("green card") status. Adjustment of status occurs by a process in the U.S. and immigrant visa processing takes place outside the U.S. Depending on the process time of the jurisdiction where the applicant lives, it might be faster to apply for immigrant visa processing rather than adjustment of status, but in order to visa process successfully, it is necessary to determine whether there are any issues of unlawful presence. If a person is in unlawful presence, and is over the age of 17, then they are not admissible to the U.S. unless they first have a waiver of the unlawful presence approved. Because these waivers are discretionary, and only about half of waiver applications are approved, it is much safer to adjust status in the U.S. rather than to risk departure for visa processing. In addition to being safer, it is also cheaper to adjust status because the expense of international travel is avoided. Also, the person's life is not disrupted by having to leave the U.S. for usually one to two weeks in order to take care of the case. So it might take more time to adjust status, but there are substantial benefits to doing it this way, and certainly most people prefer to adjust status when they're eligible to.
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