I over-aged!

hey dreamers,

one quick question.

im 23 years old and i was under a third preference petition with my family (mom and dad, siblings). our priority date was august 94.. but due to major back logs instead of ten years of waiting, it reached over 17 years. Now, our petition arrived only this year.. but since im over 21.. i am no longer part of that petition.. now my question..

is there such a way for me to fight for that case, to be under that petition??

-i mean i came here when i was 12, and we decided to stay here since we have no life to go back to our original country..

Nope. You are pretty much out of luck. One option is when ur either ur mom or dad gets his/her Greenland card is to have them petition u. But u need to stay unmarried and its a 10 year wait. But ofcourse If u find a USC and love/marry that person u will be eliguble for an aos here

thanks for your opinion, but after writing this thread, i searched around and there's this thing called Child Status Protection Act.

i think this is what my lawyer was taking about.

so i'm going to look into this more and learn more about this Law..

but if any of you guys that are familiar with this law (Child Status Protection Act) please share your opinions. thanks guys

there's a formula you can use to see what your age is for immigration purposes. You take the age you are now and subtract amount of time that the visa petition was pending (not the amount of time it took for your priority date to become current). If your age is under 21 you are good to go.

My petition became current this year (10 year wait) and both my brother and I aged out (our petition only pended for a few months). There is another part of the CSPA having to do with if you age out after the formula that you should be able to retain your priority date. So technically once your parents have their greencards, they could then petition you (you'd be an unmarried adult child of a green card holder) and theoretically your priority date most likely would be current so you wouldn't have to wait so long. Right now there is a class-action lawsuit regarding that clause. Check out shusterman.com good resource for all that.

it took 17 years for our petition to be current, due to back logs. i did the formula, but it said the only time that you should only subtract your age from, is to the time when the petition was filed then approved. Now, in my knowledge the approval of such a petition doesn't really take that long, it's not even a year long, only MONTHS! im 23, so minus the MONTHS it will only leave me to 22 and some change. So with that being said, i still aged-out.

and you mentioned something about

"so what do you exactly mean by having my priority date current?

and how much time am i looking at? how long do i have to wait?

don't worry bro, we'll be joining you soon enough

Thanks bro, but uhmm i dnt quite get what you mean?

^Yea its ridiculous that they don't count the amount of time you waited for priority date to become current, but then most immigration laws in this country don't make sense.

This is the entire CSPA rule:

http://shusterman.com/childstatusprotectionact.html#5A

I am talking about the part I bolded. Until they make a decision on the Class Action Lawsuit, I believe from reading up on it; that you would be denied the retention of priority date - meaning another long wait for your green card. We have to wait and see what the decision is, which I am hoping is soon. The last bit of current information I could find said they expected a decision by 'end of the year', which meant end of 2010 and that hasn't happened. It would help so many people if they decided we could retain our priority date in another category (ie: unmarried adult child of a permanent resident) because in most cases (unless retrogression occurs) our priority date would be current and we would not have to wait any longer.

Thank you for clearing that up, and i also subscribed to shusterman.com. They offer monthly update on immigration. Kudos for that!

If you have any new information regarding this please please pleaae do inform me.. And ill do the same. Thank you so much, God bless.

Hope this helps someone, this is my experience of the CSPA rule. It started as a question from dream-hope, which I hope everything worked out for him.

Originally Posted by dream_hope
Hi! As you know, I'm adjusting through CSPA. May I ask how old you are (or were at the time the visa bulletin became current)? How long was your i-130/i-140 pending? What category of visa was it? Was it F4 like the rest of us on that thread?

How was your interview? Did they calculate your age there or what? Sorry I have so many q's, lol... I'm just nervous about this whole thing

Congrats on the g-card When did you have your interview?




My case was a bit different and it combined many factors. Its kinda long but maybe it helps you.

First my mother's brother filed a F4 visa for her in 1998. Two or three years later my older sister got married with a U.S citizen and 3 years later became U.S citizen herself. Then she petitioned my parents for a green card. They received their green card in oct. 2003.

After they got their green card they petitioned my younger brothers with a immigration receipts date of Jan. 2004.

Like a year ago my dad became U.S citizen and petitioned my younger brothers which are 19; they became U.S residents shortly after.

Now this is where it might get confusing and this includes my case background. Like you know might know I cannot get petitioned with my dad being U.S. Citizen which really doesn't help me. Since I am from Mexico I would have to wait forever for a visa to become current even if he filed a petition back in 2004. In my case, CSPA applies for U.S citizens who their children are 20-11 months for example and this would freeze their age. Now, I wont apply for this because I was already 24 when he became citizen. The other option is deduct the years the I-130 was pending, which was 3 years and 9 mo for a U.S Resident. This set my age at 20 and 9 months or something close to that. I only had a few months to apply for a green card because if I waited a bit more I would have been denied.

This is the process. I came to the United States through a tourist visa and overstayed. However, this did not help me, I needed a 245I to adjust my status in the U.S. Remember that F4 mentioned earlier, well this was my ticket to adjust in the country. Another problem was that my dad became U.S. Citizen, so the lawyer had to explain that it was a innocent mistake. Because for them it was better for my father to be a U.S. Resident and for USCIS purposes consider me as F2A still.

USCIS received my money on July. 2010.
Biometrics appointment in Aug. 23 2010
The interview appointment in Oct. 27 2010.
I was really nervous of the interview. Questions she ask me was trivial questions like where were you born? father name? mothers name? did you enter legally? did you pay the fee? what are you doing working or are you going to school? In all I was nervous she would say that my father was a U.S citizen and the part of the CSPA that I used applied to U.S residents. But she never even mentioned CSPA.

Well thats my experience. I am pretty sure everything will be ok with you as well. I had doubts that the CSPA would work since we went to two other lawyers and did not want to get my case. I guess their just lazy and want easy cases. I am going to save this on word so I would laugh of my experience if god permits in 5 years from now. Other questions pm me.