How long does a Marriage Permanent Resident Take?
The Average Amount Of Time Required To Obtain A Permanent Resident Through Marriage Varies Between 11 And 14.5 Months, Depending On The Following Three Factors: contact green card immigration lawyer.
- The petitioner's status is whether a U.S. Citizen or a Permanent Resident.
- Whether the beneficiary is in the U.S. or outside the U.S.
- The service center that the application is sent to.
The constitutional protections, as well as the Bail Reform Act (a federal statute), give a defendant the right to request lower bail when the amount initially set by the court is too high to pay.
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Marriage Based Green Card Processing Time
Which Are The Main Factors That Impact The Marriage Green Card Timeline?
The petitioner is the U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident (PR) who files a petition on behalf of a foreign national. If the petitioner is a U.S. Citizen, the process will be faster than if the petitioner is only a Permanent Resident.
The second factor that impacts the processing times is whether the beneficiary is in the U.S. or abroad. The beneficiary is the foreign national for whom the application is being filed.
If you are in the U.S., it’s good news as the filing can take place while you are here, and it will be faster. One of the reasons it will be faster is that you can file the I-130 petition for relative alien form and the I-485 Adjustment of Status form together in your application.
The average processing times for this case are:
If the petitioner is a U.S. Citizen: 9 to 12 months on average
If the petitioner is a Permanent Resident : 12 to 16 months on average.
What to do if you are outside the United States? You will have to do “Consular Processing,” which means that part of the processing will take place at your home country’s consulate.
The process is slightly different in this case since you can no longer file the I-130 and I-485 together. So first, your spouse must file the I-130 petition for an alien relative on your behalf. Once USCIS reviews it, if no RFE (Request for Evidence) is issued and the petition is approved, the case will be sent to the NVC (National Visa Center), which will assign you a case number. Currently, for USC petitioners (the priority date is always current) and Permanent Resident petitioners, the priority date is current and can go immediately to the next step. At the NVC stage, you will have to pay the filing fees, update information, and send civil documents so that the NVC can send your case to the respective consulate in the beneficiary’s home country, where they will be scheduled for an interview.
The final main factor determining the processing time for your marriage-based green card application is where you and your spouse reside. Once USCIS completes the background check, your case is sent to the local field office.
Assuming you are filing the I-130 and I-485 petitions concurrently, the following are the estimated processing times for each local field office as for now:
- Los Angeles, CA: 10 to 33.5 months
- Los Angeles County, CA: 9.5 to 29.5 months
- San Fernando Valley, CA: 9.5 to 29.5 months
- Las Vegas, NV: 9.5 to 29.5 months
- San Diego, CA: 10 to 32 months
- San Francisco, CA: 9.5 to 29.5 months
- San Bernardino, CA: 9.5 to 29.5 months
- New York, NY: 9.5 to 30.5 months
- Detroit, MI: 8.5 to 35.5 months
- Chicago, IL: 9 to 26.5 months
If you entered the U.S. without inspection, you would have to leave the country to be eligible to receive the Green Card. Depending on how long you were unlawfully present in the U.S., you may face the 3 or 10 years bars that would not allow you to come back if you leave. This is when a waiver comes to play, specifically the I-601A waiver. This waiver, if approved, of course, grants you a pardon for your unlawful presence. This way, your application won’t get denied at the consulate based on unlawful presence inadmissibility.
How does this affect the timeline? Well, until a few years ago (2013), people in this situation had to leave the country so a waiver could be filed, and it would be months, maybe years before they could come back, and families would be split for all this time. Since the proclamation was made in 2013, the I-601A waiver can be filed while you are still in the country, and only once it has been approved, and you have been scheduled for an interview, you leave the country. This reduces the time families have to spend apart and gives immigrants more confidence.
The I-601A waiver can take about 12 to 18 months to be processed and another 3 additional months for the interview to be scheduled. The I-601A Waiver can only be filed after an I-130 is approved; the total time is about 2 to 2 ½ years.
How does this affect the timeline? Well, until a few years ago (2013), people in this situation used to have to leave the country so a waiver could be filed and it would be months, maybe years before they could come back and families would be split for all this time. Since the proclamation made in 2013, the I-601A waiver can be filed while you are still in the country, and only once it has been approved and you have been scheduled for an interview, you leave the country. This reduces the amount of time that families have to spend apart and it also gives immigrants more confidence.
The I-601A waiver can take about 12 to 18 months to be processed and then another 3 additional months for the interview to be scheduled. The I-601A Waiver can only be filed after an I-130 is approved therefore, the total time is about 2 to 2 ½ years.
If you were lawfully admitted to the country but then overstayed your visa, you can still apply for an adjustment status as long as you marry a U.S. Citizen.
Here, you must be careful with the period you have overstayed and are leaving/coming back to the country. If you overstayed your visa for more than 180 days (but less than one year), you are subject to a 3-year bar if you depart the United States. If you overstayed your visa for more than one year, you are subject to a 10-year bar if you depart the U.S.
So how does this affect the timeline? Well, given the bars you may face if you depart the country, the consular processing option is off the table. If you overstayed your visa, your only option is to adjust your status from within the country so that the correspondent processing times would apply
Here, you have to be careful with the period you have overstayed and you leaving/coming back to the country. If you overstayed your visa for more than 180 days (but less than 1 year), you are subject to a 3-year bar if you depart the United States. If you overstayed your visa for more than 1 year, then you are subject to a 10-year bar if you depart the U.S.
So how does this affect the timeline? Well, given the bars you may face if you depart the country, the consular processing option is of course off the table. If you overstayed your visa, your only option is to adjust status from within the country, so the correspondent processing times would apply.
We mention this case because from now, and then we get calls asking about how the green card process works for cases in which the petitioner split paths with their former spouse years ago but never actually finalized the divorce procedures! If the petitioner is still going through a divorce, you need to wait until he has the final divorce decree to get married again.
We usually take about two weeks to file our client cases when we receive the requested documents and the completed questionnaire. The attorneys at Garcia & Phan will take care of your case as if it was their own, so you can have peace of mind that everything is being done with a level of care, proficiency, and detail orientation that only experience can give you.
If you, or your spouse, are looking to apply for a spousal Green Card, contact us today. With more than 80 years of combined experience, 35,000 cases approved, a 99.9% Approval Rate, and a 5 Star rating on Google, we are the best option to secure your future in the U.S.
Give green card immigration lawyer call at (714) 868-8250.
RFE stands for Request For Evidence, and it means that your application lacks some evidence for the immigration officers to decide on it. It doesn’t mean that your application is denied. It just means that it is incomplete, and you are being offered the chance to fix it. RFEs are usually issued around three months after the application is submitted, and you have 30 to 90 days to respond. If this happens, please add 30 to 90 days to your timeline, as it is time you will take to respond to the RFE.
