Family Is a Queue With Four Preferences and a Door That Has None
American family immigration splits in two. Immediate relatives of citizens - spouses, minor children and parents - are not subject to the worldwide numerical limits at all. Everyone else joins a preference queue with annual caps written into the statute: 23,400 visas for unmarried adult children of citizens, 114,200 for spouses and unmarried children of permanent residents, and further classes below them. Those queues are then cut again by the seven per cent per-country ceiling, which is why the same relationship produces a wait of months from one country and decades from another.
At a glance
- Spouses of citizens
- Outside the numerical limits
Immediate relatives are excepted by section 1151(b)(2)(A)(i), which this record does not quote.
- Unmarried adult children of citizens
- 23,400 a year
Section 1153(a)(1), quoted below, which prints the figure as "23,400".
- Spouses and unmarried children of permanent residents
- 114,200 a year
Section 1153(a)(2), quoted below, which prints the figure as "114,200".
- What makes the wait differ by country
- The seven per cent ceiling, on its own record
- Married children and siblings
- Lower preferences in the same section, with their own caps
Requirements
- A qualifying family relationship of the kind the section lists
- A petition by the citizen or permanent resident relative
- A visa number, where the class is subject to the limits
Country-level policy
One provision shapes almost every permanent route into the United States for this corpus, and it is two paragraphs long. Paragraph (a)(1) forbids discrimination in issuing an immigrant visa because of race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence. Paragraph (a)(2) then provides that no single foreign state may receive more than 7 per cent of the family-sponsored and employment-based immigrant visas available in a fiscal year. The second is written as an express exception to the first. The ceiling is per state of birth rather than per citizenship, and because demand from a few states is far above 7 per cent of the total, the practical effect is that people born in those states wait years or decades longer than people born elsewhere with identical qualifications and identical sponsors.
Exceptions by origin
No exceptions recorded
Nothing we have read treats any nationality differently for this topic. The rule above applies to everyone.
What the law says
«(a) Preference allocation for family-sponsored immigrants Aliens subject to the worldwide level specified in section 1151(c) of this title for family-sponsored immigrants shall be allotted visas as follows: (1) Unmarried sons and daughters of citizens Qualified immigrants who are the unmarried sons or daughters of citizens of the United States shall be allocated visas in a number not to exceed 23,400, plus any visas not required for the class specified in paragraph (4). (2) Spouses and unmarried sons and unmarried daughters of permanent resident aliens Qualified immigrants— (A) who are the spouses or children of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or (B) who are the unmarried sons or unmarried daughters (but are not the children) of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence, shall be allocated visas in a number not to exceed 114,200, plus the number (if any»The first two preferences and their annual numbers. The quotation ends where the stored line ends.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
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Cannot be cited for: An edition is a snapshot: the 2024 edition states the law as of a date in 2024 and says nothing about amendments made since. The Code is itself a compilation of acts, and for titles not enacted into positive law the Statutes at Large govern where the two differ. Nothing here carries the regulations, which are in the Code of Federal Regulations, or the annual notices that fill in the numbers these sections leave open.
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Practical notes
A spouse of a citizen is in a different position from a spouse of a permanent resident, and the difference is not procedural: one is outside the numbers and one is inside them.
The per-country ceiling applies to the preference classes and not to immediate relatives, which is why the policy record matters most to people whose sponsor is a permanent resident rather than a citizen.
- consolidates8 U.S.C. § 1153(a), family-sponsored preferences
GovInfo, U.S. Government Publishing Office · consolidated to 2024
About this source
The Government Publishing Office's authenticated repository. The United States Code is published here edition by edition, one HTML file per section, at an address that names the edition year - and a link service resolves a title and section number to the current edition's file.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: An edition is a snapshot: the 2024 edition states the law as of a date in 2024 and says nothing about amendments made since. The Code is itself a compilation of acts, and for titles not enacted into positive law the Statutes at Large govern where the two differ. Nothing here carries the regulations, which are in the Code of Federal Regulations, or the annual notices that fill in the numbers these sections leave open.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source