What is Family-Sponsored Immigration?
The purpose of the U.S. immigration law is to reunite lawful permanent residents and U.S. citizens with family members from abroad. If you wish to reunite with family members from abroad, a green card for a family sponsors lawyer would be your best option.
However, this does not mean that U.S. immigration law will allow every relative of a permanent resident or U.S. citizen will be eligible for a green card in the United States. Instead, the bill establishes tight standards for determining which family members are eligible — and, in some cases, exactly how many people are permitted into the country each year.
In general, obtaining U.S. green cards for family members such as nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and other extended family members is impossible unless a chain of ties can be established so that a more immediate family member can file for them.
Every year, the influx of overseas nationals applying for LPR status through family-sponsored preference outnumbers the set number of legitimate immigrant slots available. The backlog has resulted in a long line of foreign people who meet the INA's criteria for immigration but will have to spend more time waiting for a visa to enter the U.S. The Department of State (DOS) publishes the Visa Bulletin monthly. This bulletin includes "cut-off dates" for each of the family-based admissions categories.
Instead of asking for a grandparent, a U.S. citizen could petition for their parents, and the parents can petition for their parents.
However, due to the time necessary for obtaining a green card, depending on various criteria, this option almost always necessitates long-term preparation.
One key factor is that in visa categories with annual limits (known as "preferred" categories), the number of applicants always outnumber the number of visa numbers available (green cards).
As a result, all applicants that have not yet been granted must wait for a long time for a visa number to eventually become available. Depending on the visa category and the nation from where the person is applying, the typical wait time ranges from five to twenty-five years (due to per-country limits).
Immediate relatives are eligible for green cards without regard to visa availability or numerical limits. (However, there will be a long wait as USCIS and the State Department process the petitions.)
Preference relatives are usually required to wait a certain number of years before getting a visa or green card.
A fixed number of the green cards in the preferred categories are allocated to a single country each year. This means that if many people file petitions for family members from a single country—as is frequently the case with countries like China, the Philippines, and India —their relatives will have to wait even longer.
No person can say how long the wait will be for each preference-category candidate because of annual limits. We should also factor in the unpredictability n of how many folks will be submitting petitions annually. We only know how long the folks in line ahead of us have been waiting.