Five injured in Queens three-alarm blaze Siblings of U.S. citizens face backlog in visa applications
My brother, a U.S. citizen, petitioned for me in June 2011. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved the petition and sent it to the National Visa Center. When can I expect to hear about the case? Name withheld NVC should contact you when a U.S. consul abroad is close to calling you for your green card interview. Because of a backlog in the quota for the siblings of U.S. citizens, that will be many years from now. In most countries, applicants whose U.S. siblings petitioned for them before March 22, 2007, will qualify for immigrant visas in July 2022. For some countries, the wait is many years longer.
The annual quota for all family preferences category is 226,000. If more people qualify for visas in a category than allowed, a backlog develops.
The U.S. Department of State issues a bulletin that lists the cutoff dates for quota visa applicants. Check the visa bulletin online at bit.ly/2EfaUuN.
Note that some relatives of a U.S. citizen do not have to worry about the quota system because they immigrate outside the quota system. This includes the spouse of a U.S. citizen, the unmarried child under 21 of a U.S. citizen and the parents of a U.S. citizen child at least age 21. For these green card applicants, the only wait is the time it takes for the immigration agencies to process the papers.
I am a naturalized U.S. citizen. Can immigration deport me because of a crime I committed that resulted in my having spent five years in prison?
Louie U., Norwalk, Conn. Assuming your criminal act occurred after you naturalized, immigration can’t deport you for your crime. Sometimes investigation of a criminal act leads to evidence of prenaturalization criminal behavior and denaturalization results. For instance, where a naturalized citizen is arrested for drug dealing and the government learns that the person was dealing drugs before being naturalized. However, it is the prenaturalization act, not the postnaturalization act, that gives immigration denaturalization powers.
Naturalized U.S. citizens can lose their citizenship only if they formally renounce it, or because they committed fraud on the path to becoming a citizen. Denaturalization of a citizen is extremely difficult for the U.S. government. It is a rare occurrence.
Allan Wernick is an attorney and director of the City University of New York’s Citizenship Now! project. Email questions and comments to questions@allanwernick.com. Follow him on Twitter: @awernick.