Immigration Site

Hello everybody

I have been reading through the forum for a while now trying to make things easier to understand and all i have managed to do is confuse myself further since there are so many different reasons for so many different visa etc!

my question

I am a 5 year legal "permanent resident" originally from the UK and am married to a US citizen, I would like to bring my 18 year old son here to the USA to live with us (he has visited many times) on a permanent basis, I was not married to his mum although we were a couple for ten years, my question is I know i have to file an I-130 and i have been told i need to file an I-485 and it would be best to do this at the same time, is this true and is there anything else i need to be aware of?

also my son is currently in the UK but would like to come here soon, should i bring him here then apply (he will be on a 3 month visa waiver) or am i better off doing everything from here with him there and waiting? I think if we bring him here his visa waiver will expire before we have anything from immigration saying he can stay legally and I dont want to do things the wrong way so if he comes will i have to send him back before he is legal?

thanks in advance for any help you can offer, Im just getting more confused the more i look, one minute i see the I-485 is almost a thousand bucs then i read due to his age and relationship its free of charge then i find another forum i can use (or maybe cant) and i start going round and round again!

Did you marry before your son turned 18? If yes, your US citizen spouse can sponsor him as a stepchild. If you try to sponsor him yourself without being a citizen, the waiting time would be about 4 years and he might age out of the under-21 category which would add even more years. Whereas with your USC spouse as the petitioner, the entire process would take just 6-12 months.

Or you could apply for citizenship yourself, since youve been a permanent resident for 5 years.

also my son is currently in the UK but would like to come here soon, should i bring him here then apply (he will be on a 3 month visa waiver) or am i better off doing everything from here with him there and waiting? Dont bring him here with the visa waiver to try to have him stay via I-485. With one court ruling after another, they are clamping down on people who are using the visa waiver as a conduit to immigrate. Have him stay in the UK to interview for the green card there.

But he could come here with the visa waiver, then your spouse files the I-130 for him (with a US consulate in the UK selected for question 22), then he leaves the US before the 90 days are up to wait for the interview and related consular formalities. They dont have a problem with people who visit the US and then go back to pursue the green card thru a consulate; their problem is with people who enter with the waiver and then stay and try to immigrate.

The I-485 isnt free for any family-based relationship. But he wont be filing I-485 anyway, if hes completing the process through a consulate.

Thats great info Jack, couple of questions (sorry) the K-3/K-4 visa? is this something i should be looking into? it seems to say i can fill out one those and he can come here sooner and work while we wait for his I-130 or did i read it incorrectly?

he was 13 when we first married

The K3 visa is for the spouse of a citizen, and K4 is for the child of a K3 holder. So those are not applicable to his situation.