Think Immigration: I Wish People Understood Their Sibling Is Not an “Immediate Relative”
We asked the members of the 2023-24 AILA Media Advocacy Committee to share the one thing they wished people understood about immigration. We present their insights in this blog post series.
Many people are surprised to find that even U.S. citizens have to wait a long time to bring their extended family members to the United States. A fellow AILA member recounted the story of how she discovered this. She was pregnant with her first child, and she and her husband thought his sister would be a great help when the baby came. He filed a petition for her, and it was approved. By the time she got her visa, the baby was in college!
Immigration law defines “immediate relative” differently than most people do in everyday life. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) defines an immediate relative as the spouse, parent, or child (under 21) of a United States Citizen. So, while I consider my sister to be my “immediate relative,” under the Immigration and Nationality Act, she is in the fourth preference category for visas! Immigration law limits the number of family-based visas that can be issued each year in these preference categories, which causes a backlog. The current backlog for a brother or sister of a U.S. citizen to get a visa is 17 years, unless the sibling is from India, Mexico, or the Philippines. For citizens of Mexico, it’s 24 years!
These long wait times cause extended families to be separated for decades. Because of the backlogs, many milestones, such as births, graduations, marriages, and even deaths, are missed.
Congress has not updated our immigration laws in a comprehensive systematic way for literally generations. Members of the general public have an inaccurate sense of how the system works (or doesn’t) for people related to U.S. citizens.
We need to urge our congressional delegations to put the hard and necessary work into building an immigration law system that meets the needs of today’s America, not the one from decades ago. I’d argue that one key change needs to be to the familial definitions so that families can reunite and aunts can be a part of their niblings’ young lives AND see them go off to college!
