US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently updated its policy manual, effective as of February 14, 2023, to include new provisions regarding how to calculate a “CSPA age” for dependent children approaching the age of 21. As was noted in an October 2022 article, the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) enables certain dependents to remain eligible for a green card despite reaching the age of 21 while their green card applications are still pending. ...........
Under USCIS’s new guidance, “age at time of visa availability” can be calculated as of the date when both:
- the immigrant petition on which the AOS is based has been approved; and
- USCIS indicates that it will accept the dependent’s adjustment of status application for filing based on either the Final Action Dates chart or the Dates for Filing chart (from the first day of that month), based on the immigrant preference category and priority date.
Sample CSPA Age Calculation
In October 2020, the applicant’s mother’s employer filed I-140 and AOS applications for her and the applicant while her priority date was eligible for filing under the Dates for Filing chart. The applicant was born on January 5, 2000, and was 20 years old at the time her AOS application was filed. The I-140 petition was approved in October 2022 but the priority date has never been current under the Final Action Dates chart.
This is a very common scenario among individuals who filed AOS applications in October through December 2020, when the Dates for Filing chart priority dates had jumped forward significantly. Under previous guidance, the applicant would not have benefited from an adjusted CSPA age, because the applicant’s priority date was never current under the Final Action Dates chart.
Under USCIS’s new guidance, assuming the applicant’s AOS application is still pending, the applicant would now be able to calculate an age at time of visa availability based on her age at the time (1) the I-140 petition was approved, and (2) her priority date became “current” for the purpose of filing an AOS application under the Dates for Filing chart. The later of those two dates would be in October 2022, when the I-140 petition was approved. This means that the applicant’s “age at time of visa availability” would be 22. Following the CSPA calculation:
22 (age at time of visa availability) – 2 years (length of time I-140 was pending) = 20 (CSPA adjusted age)
In this example, the dependent who was not eligible for CSPA protection under the previous USCIS guidance may now stand to benefit significantly from an adjusted CSPA age calculation.
