Recently, we talked about how you can bring a family member or loved one to the United States from abroad to live as a permanent resident. What if, however, your relative or loved one is already in the United States but on a temporary visa, or what’s officially called a Non-Immigrant Visa? Depending upon their relationship to you, there may be a solution called as Adjustment of Status which allows some aliens in this situation to change — or adjust — their status from non-immigrant to immigrant and get a Permanent Resident Card, more colloquially known as a “green card”.

It should be duly noted that Adjustment of Status is only available to select family members of either United States citizens or United States permanent residents (people who already have their “green cards”). In order to adjust status, you must be an immediate relative of the citizen or permanent resident. Immediate relative is a term that is limited to spouses, parents and children under the age of twenty-one. Other types of relatives such as children over the age of twenty-one and siblings cannot adjust status because immigrant visas are not immediately available to them and, rather, they are subject to an often-lengthy wait for an immigrant visa to become available.

Furthermore, there is a slight difference in eligibility between immediate relatives of United States citizens and permanent residents. Immediate relatives of United States citizens—again, that is spouses, children under the age of twenty-one and parents—can file for adjustment of status so long as they entered the United States in a lawful manner by having a passport and visa (unless from a country that was reviewed by border protection officer and admitted into the country. This is so even if the non-immigrant visa which allowed them stay in the country expired or if they stayed beyond the “depart by” date written in their passport. However, those same immediate relatives of permanent residents can only adjust status if they are still lawfully in the country or if they are still in the country within the time period that they are permitted to stay in the country. Regardless of whether you are a citizen or a permanent resident, if your family member did not enter the country legally—or somehow managed to sneak into the country—they cannot adjust status. Family members with illegal entries will need to pursue consular processing along with a waiver for the unlawful entry into and presence in the United States.

Here is the process of how Adjustment of Status works. The citizen or permanent resident, along with their alien family member together files an Adjustment of Status package consisting of multiple immigration forms and, just as important, supporting documentation which documents the relationship and the alien’s eligibility for Adjustment of Status with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Federal Department of Homeland Security The degree of supporting documentation is particularly extensive as the couple is expected establish that they have a genuine bona fide marriage and items which document their lives together are very important in establishing that their marriage is, in fact, bona fide. Included among the forms is an Application for Work Authorization which, if approved, grants the alien permission to seek lawful employment while their case is pending and to get a Social Security Number.

After several months, it is likely, especially in spousal cases, that the citizen or resident and the alien immediate relative will need to together report to their local USCIS for an interview in which an officer of that agency reviews their filings and questions them to determine the validity of their relationship and their eligibility for permanent resident. It also needs to be duly noted that in spousal cases, if the couple has only been married for less than two years at the time of approval, the status will only be conditional and good for two years and will require removal of those conditions toward the end of those two years. Otherwise, for all other relationships including spouses married more than two years, if the Service approves the case, the alien will become a United States permanent resident and soon receive their own Permanent Residency Card (which does not need to be renewed for ten years) and on the road to United States citizenship!