USCIS is revising the Policy Manual to make it clear that a visa becomes available for use in calculating an applicant’s age under the Child Status Protection Act based on the Department of State Visa Bulletin’s Final Action Dates chart. Requests submitted on or after August 15, 2025, are subject to the revised guidelines. Since these foreigners would have relied on the CSPA age calculation policy on February 14, 2023 (PDF, 345 KB), we will apply it to adjustment of status applications that are still pending with USCIS by August 15, 2025.
This policy change guarantees that, for the purposes of calculating CSPA age, USCIS and the Department of State will both utilize the Final Action Dates chart in the Visa Bulletin to ascertain when a visa becomes available. For foreign nationals applying for immigrant visas and adjustment of status, this creates a uniform CSPA age computation. Due to the Feb. 14, 2023, regulation, foreign nationals who applied for adjustment of status in the US were treated differently than foreign nationals who applied for an immigrant visa with the US Department of State.
In general, an unmarried foreign child who has their parent’s approved petition for a family-sponsored, employment-based, or diversity visa must be younger than 21 in order to be granted lawful permanent residence status in the United States. They are typically no longer eligible to immigrate based on their parent’s petition if they turn 21 and age out during the immigration procedure. The CSPA was passed by Congress to prevent some foreign children from losing their eligibility for lawful permanent residence status after their visa petition was granted. The CSPA offers an approach to determining the alien’s age that takes into account the moment an immigrant visa number “becomes available.”
In order to take advantage of the CSPA age calculation, an alien seeking adjustment of status under a family-sponsored, employment-based preference, or diversity visa must attempt to obtain lawful permanent residence within a year after the visa’s availability. This change also makes it clear that if an alien exhibits exceptional reasons for not applying for lawful permanent residence status within a year of a visa becoming available, we will consider them to have satisfied the “sought to acquire” criteria. We shall determine CSPA age under the Feb. 14, 2023, guideline if an alien exhibits exceptional reasons for not submitting an application for change of status before August 15, 2025.
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Sincerely,
Luke Bowman
The Law offices of Luke Bowman