Immigration Corner | What should I do to get my filing finished?

Dear Mrs Walker-Huntington,

My brother in the United States filed for my brother and me in about 2007. In February 2023 he sent me an email with our receipt numbers. He said that I should go to the USIS website and type in the receipt numbers. I did that and it showed that our resident visa applications were approved from February 8, 2017, and stated that if we had not received a written confirmation by February 17, 2017, we should fill out a form on the website.

When I went to the website, the questions were relating to my brother in the US and hence, I could not complete the form. I informed my brother in the US and he said it’s okay, I should not do anything.

I would like your advice on what I should do to expedite the process, because the approval is well over six years now.

Clueless, BM

Dear Clueless, BM,

A United States citizen’s petition for his siblings would be the fourth preference category (F4) of family petitions. This is the category that takes the longest to be processed, because there are hundreds of thousands of people who are petitioned for as a sibling.

In July 2023, petitions that were filed for before April 22, 2007, have visas available. This means that if your brother filed in 2007, a visa is already available for you and your other sibling, or one should be available shortly. It also means that the consular processing phase of your visa application should already have been completed, and it is therefore imperative to move on this now.

The receipt number is used with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and once your file is approved, USCIS sends it to the National Visa Center (NVC). Your file should now be at the NVC, and they should have contacted your brother in America and yourself for the consular processing phase of the process. When the file gets to the NVC it is given a case number that begins with ‘KNG’; that is different from the receipt number that you use on the USCIS website.

At this point, contact should be made with the NVC to locate your files and begin consular processing. If a year passes and NVC does not receive any communication on a file, it will be closed, unless the parties can explain why no contact was made. You and your brother in Jamaica both have been waiting approximately 16 years for this process to reach its conclusion, and you should both be ready for this final phase.

Please keep in mind that your US citizen brother must participate in the process because he is the petitioner. The file cannot move forward unless he does the Affidavit of Support (AOS) to demonstrate to the American government that he has enough income or available cash assets to support you and your other sibling and your qualifying family members. If your US citizen brother does not have sufficient income, he is still required to provide an AOS for each sibling. If his income/assets do not meet the financial guidelines for sponsorship, you would then need a joint sponsor to affirm that they would be willing to shoulder the financial responsibilities of taking care of you and your families, in the event that you could not financially care for yourselves in the United States.

Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington, Esq, is a Jamaican-American attorney who practises immigration law in the United States; and family, criminal and international law in Florida. She is a diversity and inclusion Consultant, Mediator, and former special magistrate and hearing officer in Broward County, Florida. info@walkerhuntington.com