The Biden administration recently announced a policy manual update for the determination of a non age citizen age under the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA), which is seen as a modest but significant step in resolving the issues of the aged-out children, many of whom are Indians and came to the US legally with their parents.
A child must typically be under the age of 21 in order to qualify for lawful permanent resident status in the US based on their parent’s accepted petition for a family-sponsored or employment-based visa. The child is typically no longer qualified to immigrate with the parent based on the parent’s petition if the child turns 21 and “ages out” during the immigration procedure.
“The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has officially made one of our long-requested policy changes. The USCIS will use the dates for the filing chart to determine CSPA age and any previously denied petition can be reopened,” said Dip Patel, from the improvethedream.org.
These non-citizens will now have more assurance that they are qualified to change their status according to the new guideline, which directs the USCIS to use the Dates for Filing chart to determine their ages for CSPA purposes.
The CSPA was enacted by Congress to prevent certain noncitizen children from losing their eligibility to apply for lawful permanent resident status based on a petition that was approved for a visa. It does this by constructing a formula to determine the child’s age that takes into account the moment that an immigrant visa number “becomes available.”
When a visa number becomes available, it is announced in the Department of State’s Visa Bulletin. The Dates for Filing chart and the Final Action Date chart are two charts that may be seen in the Visa Bulletin.
Even though a noncitizen might file for adjustment of status using the earlier date in the “Dates for Filing” table, USCIS previously considered a visa available for the CSPA age calculation based only on the Final Action Date chart.
This change in USCIS policy is effective right away and is relevant to open applications. As a result of this change, some noncitizens with pending applications may now have CSPA ages that are lower than 21.
For instance, per the Dates for Filing table in the Visa Bulletin, certain noncitizens were allowed to submit their petitions for adjustment of status between October and December 2020.
The Final Action Date chart, though, was never far enough along for their applications to be accepted. Without knowing whether the CSPA would help them, these non-citizens filed their applications for adjustment of status together with the required money.
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