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Dear Mrs. Walker-Huntington,
Can you please indicate if my daughter’s father, who is a green card holder, can apply for her to reside in the United States of America or should she wait until he obtains his citizenship. He will be 63 this year and I have been told that he will automatically obtain citizenship when he is 65. My daughter is not married and will be 27 in September.
Any information you provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
SP
Dear SP,
As the holder of the green card, the father can now drop off his unmarried and adult daughter. She would be in the preference category F2B and visas are available for those filed in August 2015 and before. He could have applied for her at the time he became a lawful permanent resident of the United States. Keep in mind that visa availability varies depending on how quickly the US State Department processes visa applications.
Green card holders can deposit for their spouse, minor children and unmarried adult sons or daughters. Family members who need a U.S. citizen as a sponsor are parents, married sons or daughters, and siblings. US citizens can also file for their spouses and minor children. There is no waiting period / preference category for recipients of these two classifications and the parent of a US citizen; their files are processed as quickly as possible. However, when a U.S. citizen files an application for their adult sons / daughters (single or married) and siblings, those petitions are placed in a preference category to wait for a visa to become available.
There is no automatic citizenship for your daughter’s father when he turns 65. If he has had his green card for five years or more, has spent more than five years in the United States than outside, has never been absent from the United States for six years. months or more in the past five years and is a person of good character (taxes and arrests), he must seek legal advice to apply to become a US citizen. This is the rare case where someone can automatically become a U.S. citizen, for example, must have been born overseas to a U.S. citizen parent – and even then there are restrictions.
At 65, the father will become eligible for benefits such as Medicare and Social Security. He may even be eligible to start collecting social security before the age of 65. He must make an appointment with his local social security office to be informed of his benefits and his schedule to start collecting them. We should not take advice from non-professionals, as this is often misleading and can lead to life changing mistakes.
Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington, Esq. is a Jamaican-American lawyer practicing immigration law in the United States; and family, criminal and international law in Florida. She is a mediator and former special magistrate and hearing officer in Broward County, Florida. [email protected]
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