Citizens of the United States have been given the privilege to sponsor their spouses, children, parents, and their siblings for Green Cards. To promote family unity, the Immigration and Nationality Act, permits the US citizens to get their family members, US Green Cards and bring them to the United States. While the spouses, parents and children of US citizens belong to the immediate relatives category, siblings of US citizens belong to the family preference category.
Immediate relatives will not be put on a waiting list and immigrant visa numbers would immediately be made available to them. On the other hand, siblings who belong to the family preference category need to wait for a certain number of years to get their immigrant visas. Immigrant visas will not be made available to them immediately but they will be put on a waiting list. Once the immigrant petition, Form I-130, filed by the US citizen on behalf of his/her sibling is approved, an immigrant visa will be made available according to the preference system. An immigrant visa number will not be made available soon after the petition is approved.
The wait times depend on the home countries of the beneficiaries. Siblings of US citizens will have to wait for more than 12 years to get immigrant visas. Siblings of US citizens who belong to China and few other countries are likely to get immigrant visas within 12 years. But people who belong to other countries will have to wait for more than 12 years to immigrate to the United States and to get Green Cards. Beneficiaries who belong to Mexico and India need to wait for 17 and 20 years respectively. Siblings from Philippines will have to wait longer to immigrate to the United States through family based immigration. They need to wait for more than 24 years to get permanent visas to immigrate to America.
People who belong to countries with lower demand for immigrant visas, are likely to get their immigrant visas within 12 years. USCIS allocates 65,000 immigrant visas every year to the siblings of US citizens. There are different preference categories and the waiting periods for those different categories are different. Likewise, waiting periods also depend on the country to which the beneficiaries belong. If the beneficiaries belong to a country with a high demand for immigrant visas, they will have to wait longer to get immigrant visas.
More than 2,470,000 siblings of US citizens are waiting to get their immigrant visas and the minimum wait time for an immigrant visa number to become available for the sibling of a US citizen is ten years.
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