Immigration Corner | Can my daughters be helped?

Dear Mrs Walker-Huntington,

I would like to know how to proceed with my over-21-year-old daughters. Their stepmother had put them on thei r father’s filling when they were three and four years old, but he never took them with him to the embassy when he went for his interview. It is now 18 years since their father has been living in the United States. Their stepmother now wants to go through the filing process.

JC

Dear JC,

When a parent or step-parent files a petition for their spouse and lists the spouse’s children, it is not the same as filing a petition for the children. In an instance such as this, the children needed their own petitions.

Unfortunately, many people who process their own petitions, or go to non-lawyers, fall into the mistaken believe that because in some instances children are derivative beneficiaries of their parents, that they are in every circumstance. This causes unnecessary delays and separation of families that could have been solved with correct guidance.

Someone can only attend an immigrant visa interview if the National Visa Center lists them on the interview notice. There are times when derivative beneficiaries can be added to the filing by the embassy, but those instances are rare and again, permission must be had in advance.

As your girls are now over 21 years old, they are considered adults, and their filing will take a much longer time than had either their father or stepmother filed for them earlier. Now, either their father or stepmother can file for them, as the legal relationship exists for the girls to derive immigration benefits from their stepmother. However, if you were never married to their father, the US government will need evidence of the biological and parent-child relationship with their father during this filing process.

Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington, Esq, is a Jamaican-American attorney who practises immigration law in the United States; and family, criminal and international law in Florida. She is a diversity and inclusion consultant, mediator, and former special magistrate and hearing officer in Broward County, Florida. info@walkerhuntington.com