Applying for green cards and becoming an American citizen can be challenging. Our firm provides full-service professional legal advice and representation to help you find an immigration solution to your visa needs.<\/p>\n
All family-based immigrants fall into one of two major categories, immediate relative or family preference. Spouses, parents, and the unmarried children (under age 21) of U.S. citizens are classified as immediate relatives. There are an unlimited number of immigrant visas available each year for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n
All other qualified relationships are considered family preference categories. The number of family preference immigrant visas is limited. That’s because immigration law puts a numerical cap on the number of green cards that can be issued to family preference categories each year. As a result, there’s a backlog and long wait for many of the family preference categories.<\/p>\n
The family-based immigration process generally begins with the petitioner (U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident) making a request to the U.S. government to allow a family member to immigrate. The petitioner files Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, with USCIS. The I-130 petition establishes the existence of a qualifying family relationship (within the immediate relative or family preference categories). For more details on what happens after filing the I-130 petition, view the Form I-130 processing time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Family Immigration Applying for green cards and becoming an American citizen can be challenging. Our firm provides full-service professional legal advice and representation to help you find an immigration solution to your visa needs. All family-based immigrants fall into one of two major categories, immediate relative or family preference. Spouses, parents, and the unmarried children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"parent":30,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/services-page.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-632","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liquidstudiodev.com\/zepeda-law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liquidstudiodev.com\/zepeda-law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liquidstudiodev.com\/zepeda-law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liquidstudiodev.com\/zepeda-law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liquidstudiodev.com\/zepeda-law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/liquidstudiodev.com\/zepeda-law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/632\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liquidstudiodev.com\/zepeda-law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liquidstudiodev.com\/zepeda-law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}