Family & Spouse Visas in United States
Sponsoring a partner, children, or parents
Family relationships account for the largest share of permanent immigration to the United States. The decisive distinction is between immediate relatives of US citizens, for whom visa numbers are unlimited, and the preference categories, which are capped annually and per country and can therefore involve waits of many years.
| Petition form | Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative source |
| Immediate relatives | Spouse, unmarried child under 21, and parent of an adult US citizen — no annual cap source |
| Preference categories | F1 to F4, capped annually and per country source |
| Financial support | Form I-864 affidavit of support, benchmarked to the federal poverty guidelines source |
| Fiancé(e) route | K-1 non-immigrant visa, marriage required within roughly 90 days source |
The immediate relative exemption
Spouses of US citizens, their unmarried children under twenty-one, and the parents of US citizens aged twenty-one or over are classified as immediate relatives. This category is not subject to the annual numerical limits, so once the petition is approved and processing completes, a visa number is available without waiting in a queue.
Every other family relationship falls into a preference category and competes for a limited annual allocation, further limited by a per-country ceiling. Waits in the more distant categories, particularly siblings of US citizens and applicants from Mexico and the Philippines, are commonly measured in many years and in some cases in decades.
The preference categories in outline
- F1 — unmarried adult sons and daughters of US citizens.
- F2A — spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents. This is the category permanent residents use for a spouse, and unlike a citizen's spouse it is capped.
- F2B — unmarried adult sons and daughters of lawful permanent residents.
- F3 — married sons and daughters of US citizens.
- F4 — brothers and sisters of adult US citizens, generally the longest queue of all.
- Note that a lawful permanent resident cannot petition for a parent or a sibling at all; only citizens can.
The affidavit of support
Nearly every family-based immigrant requires a sponsor to sign an affidavit of support, a contract with the US government undertaking to maintain the immigrant at an income level benchmarked to a published multiple of the federal poverty guidelines, commonly cited as 125 per cent. A joint sponsor may be used where the petitioner's income falls short.
The undertaking is enduring: it generally continues until the immigrant naturalises, is credited with a substantial period of qualifying work, departs permanently, or dies. Divorce does not terminate it.
Conditional residence for recent marriages
Where permanent residence is granted on the basis of a marriage less than two years old at the time of approval, the green card is issued on a conditional basis for about two years. The couple must then jointly file to remove the conditions within a defined window before expiry, evidencing that the marriage was entered into in good faith.
Waivers of the joint filing requirement exist on published grounds, including divorce after a good-faith marriage and cases involving abuse. Missing the filing window can result in the loss of status, so the deadline matters more than most applicants expect.
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Official sources
Checked against these pages in September 2026. Fees and processing times change without notice — confirm before you act.