PRACTICE AREA

Family immigration & marriage green cards

We petition for the relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, then carry the case through to the green card — by adjustment of status inside the country, or consular processing abroad.

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A family immigration case looks simple on the government’s website and rarely is. The forms are only the surface. What decides the case is the evidence you attach, the consistency of what you have told the government before, and whether anything in your history makes you inadmissible in the first place. Our work is making sure all three are in order before anything is filed.

Who you can petition for

U.S. citizens may petition for a spouse, a fiancé(e), children of any age, parents, and brothers and sisters. Permanent residents may petition for a spouse and unmarried children. Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens — spouses, parents, and unmarried children under twenty-one — have no annual quota, so the wait is processing time rather than a visa queue. Every other category sits in a preference line that moves at the pace set by the monthly Visa Bulletin, and part of our first conversation is telling you honestly which line you are in and how it has been moving.

Two paths: adjustment of status, or consular processing

If your relative is already in the United States

We handle adjustment of status from beginning to end — typically filing the I-130 petition and the I-485 green card application together, along with employment authorization and advance parole, so you are not left waiting without the ability to work or, in most cases, to travel. Filing everything as one package is usually faster and avoids the gap periods that separate filings create.

If your relative is abroad

We take the case through consular processing: the petition, then the National Visa Center stage with its own document requirements, then the interview at the embassy or consulate. The interview is the decisive moment and a different exercise from a domestic one — documents must be presented in the format that particular post expects, and the applicant needs preparation for questions about the relationship and about their own admissibility. We prepare both the file and the person.

Officers are not testing whether you love each other. They are testing whether two people who claim to share a life have left the paper trail that a shared life leaves.

The evidence — and how we help you gather it

The evidence that carries weight is the ordinary evidence of a joint life: a lease or deed with both names, joint accounts and their statements over time, insurance policies, tax returns filed jointly, photographs across years rather than one afternoon, and correspondence addressed to both of you at the same address. Documents in another language need certified translations prepared to the standard the agency requires.

We guide you through gathering all of it — telling you exactly which documents to obtain and in what form — and then we assemble and index the file ourselves rather than handing you a checklist and hoping. A well-organized file is read differently by an officer than a shoebox of papers, and that difference is part of what you are hiring us.

Conditional residence — the deadline people miss

If your marriage is less than two years old when residence is granted, the green card is conditional and lasts two years. A joint petition to remove those conditions must be filed in the ninety-day window before it expires. We calendar that date at the moment of approval, because a missed filing can put residence itself at risk — this is the single most commonly missed deadline in family immigration, and in our practice it is never left to memory.

Fiancé(e) visas

Where the marriage has not happened yet and your fiancé(e) is abroad, the K-1 route brings them to the United States to marry within ninety days, after which they adjust status. Whether the K-1 or marrying abroad and filing an immigrant visa petition is faster depends on the consulate involved and on your own circumstances — the answer changes over time and by country. We compare both routes with current processing figures before you choose, rather than defaulting to one.

When something in the past blocks the case

Unlawful presence, a prior misrepresentation, and certain criminal dispositions can bar an otherwise approvable case. Several of these grounds can be waived on a showing of hardship to a qualifying relative — but a waiver is a persuasive document built on evidence, not a form. We identify these problems before filing, never after a denial, and where a waiver is needed we prepare it as its own careful case. You can read more on our waivers page.

QUESTIONS

Frequently asked

Processing times are set by the government and vary by office and by category — they change month to month. We check the current published times for your specific filing location before we quote you a timeline. What we control is that your case is not delayed by an avoidable request for evidence.
If you filed an adjustment application, you may apply for an employment authorization document at the same time — we file them together as standard practice. It does not arrive immediately, so plan for a gap. Working without authorization before it is granted can create problems for the case itself.
Not without advance parole, in most cases. Departing while an adjustment application is pending can be treated as abandoning the application entirely. If you may need to travel, tell us at the first meeting so travel permission is filed with everything else.
This is common — recently married couples, couples where one spouse cannot yet be added to accounts, and families where finances are traditionally held separately. It is not fatal. It does mean the case must be built more deliberately, with sworn statements from people who know you both and a clear explanation of why the ordinary documents do not exist. This is precisely the kind of case where preparation matters most.
Not always, and we will tell you when you do not. Where there is a prior denial, any period out of status, an arrest, a previous marriage that is hard to document, or any question of inadmissibility, the cost of getting it wrong is far higher than the cost of representation.