As a New Jersey Immigration Attorney, I get questions all the time from clients regarding how to be involved in their mother's sponsorship. I had a very interesting scenario the other week. A woman in her mid-twenties came to us in a panic because of her age. She had appeared on her mother's immigration petition when she was a teenager because that's when they filed it. Now, since she's over 21, somebody told her she could no longer be included in her mother's case, and that's what she wanted to know from us, if there was any truth to that statement.
There is a program and a law called CSPA that was passed by Congress in 2002. CSPA stands for Child Status Protection Act. Essentially, that act was created to alleviate this exact problem. Since there are such long delays in the processing times for many of the immigration petitions, especially the brother/sister category and the F4 category in the family petitions. Many people felt it was unfair that if a mom or a dad had kids that were teenagers or younger when the papers were filed and they would have been included in the ultimate green card appointment interview that is because of the immigration delays, the visa bulletin, the priority dates, and more. So they thought they would be kicked out of the case because they turned 21, and they aged out, which is the term for becoming 21 and being pushed off of a case.
Congress created this program called Child Status Protection Act for child immigration purposes. For example, when we're talking about a family, we use a formula in order to determine the immigration age of this individual. If a case was filed at a certain date, that's called the filing date or the priority date, and then it was approved six years later, eight years later, sometimes it will take that long, especially in the F4 brother/sister category.
You've got those two dates; you subtract the amount of time that it took between filing and approval. This woman who's 23 now, if it took six years for their case to be approved, we're able to subtract six years from 23, and that makes her 17 for immigration purposes. This legality in the law, applies to certain situations and helps people like this woman be eligible for a benefit, a major benefit, being included in a Green Card case with her mother when the time comes for the interview.
If you are a parent in a situation like this and you have children that were under 21 when you filed and are over 21 now, or if you are the derivative beneficiary, the person who was a youngster or a teenager when the papers were filed. So now you find yourself in your mid- or late twenties, you definitely want to talk to a good immigration lawyer who has experience with the CSPA program. As an experienced New Jersey Immigration Attorney, I have helped many clients with this program and brought smiles to many people's faces who thought that it was all over in terms of family unity and families getting the Green Card together.
Do you have any questions about being involved in your mother's sponsorship? Contact our professional New Jersey Immigration Attorney for advice.