How do I get legal permanent residency status/Green Card?

Among the many questions that cross the minds of new comers in the United States the most predominant one is, how to obtain legal status without being subjected to removal. Unfortunately, removal is a risk factor that is inevitable in certain cases, as is risk of complication in certain medical procedures. Nevertheless, our greatest advice to people is to always seek help to gain better understanding of what opportunities are accessible.

The United States Code of Federal Regulations is extensive in providing useful information on how to obtain legal status, however, the verbiage on these regulations may come as a disadvantage to many. Our goal is to help people understand the defining difference of two of the most popular reliefs these regulations have to offer.

Adjustment of Status also known as an AOS process is commonly seen among immediate relatives, consistent of, spouses, parents, and children. This is one of the most common ways to offer relief on someone’s immigratory case when they have perhaps over stayed a visa or have documents such as a Temporary Protection Status (TPS) or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) with an issued Advanced Parole Document.

Basic requirements to qualify for this process are: 

You must currently live in the United States having been inspected, in other words processed by custom border protection, upon entry. 

Immediate relative relationships such as, spouse of a U.S. citizen, Unmarried child (under 21 years of age) of a U.S. citizen, parent of a U.S. citizen (who is at least 21 years old). 

Eligible for AOS because of 245(i) Protection; 

-“The new 245(i) Amendment allows some aliens who are out of status, entered the U.S. without inspection, or violated the terms of their non-immigrant visa to apply for adjustment of status after their immigration petitions are approved.”

In many cases these qualifications do not apply to people and they find themselves stagnant in reaching a form of relief, but there is an alternate approach called Consular Processing. Consular processing is often used with individuals who have spouses living in a foreign country and would like to petition their spouse for an immigrant based visa. This is a very intricate and intensive process that is advised to be done with the guidance of an immigration representative. Although this is a route usually taken by people outside the country, immigrants who reside in the United States may also seek relief by doing this process, by first applying for an unlawful presence waiver if the individual came in and resided in the country unlawfully.

It is important to maintain informed of every approach available to relieve a case. These are two of the many methods used by immigration attorneys across the board, it behooves not only the attorneys to keep informing the immigrant community of all possible solutions but also those in difficult immigratory circumstances to seek information on how to reach a solution.