Blog

The medical exam is a required step before a US immigrant visa, and you can only take it with a doctor the embassy has approved. If you are already in the US and applying to change status, a civil surgeon examines you and records the result on Form I-693. This article covers where to take […]

Form I-864 (Affidavit of Support) is the sponsor's financial guarantee in US family-based immigration. The relative who files it promises to support the immigrant if they cannot support themselves, and proves their income is enough to back that up. Without it, a family-based green card does not get issued. Below is who has to file […]

The DS-260 is the online form for a US immigrant visa. Every applicant who gets a green card through a US consulate - family-based, employment-based, or through the Green Card Lottery - has to file one. The form is long, only in English, and everything in it gets checked against your documents and your answers […]

The National Visa Center (NVC) is the State Department unit that handles a family-based immigrant visa case between I-130 approval and the interview at the consulate. If USCIS approved your petition and your relative lives outside the U.S., the next stage of the case runs through the National Visa Center. Step by step, this covers […]

Only a US citizen can bring a mother, father, or child to the US on an immediate relative visa, and these visas have no quota backlog. Parents come on an IR-5 visa. Children under 21 come on an IR-2 visa. Both arrive already holding a green card. This article covers who counts as a parent […]

Form I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative) is the first document in almost every family-based immigration case to the US. A citizen or green card holder uses it to establish that a foreign national is their spouse, child, parent, sibling. Below is who files it on whom, what documents to gather beforehand, how to fill out […]

If you are already married to a US citizen, your route to America is the CR1 or IR1 spouse visa. The spouse enters as a permanent resident right away, can work from day one, and does not have to wait inside the country for a green card. The trade-off is time. The case goes through […]

The K1 visa is the only US visa made specifically for the fiance or fiancee of a US citizen, so the couple can get married in America. From the outside it looks simple - petition, interview, move, wedding. In practice it takes a year or more, and most denials come not from a "bad application" […]

DS-160 is the online application for a US nonimmigrant visa. Every applicant files a separate form, including infants, whether they are applying for a tourist visa, a student visa, a work visa or a K-1 fiance visa. The State Department estimates the form takes 90 minutes to complete, and that assumes you already have all […]