Family immigration & marriage green cards

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.