The Complete I-130 for Parents Checklist (2023)

Before starting an I-130 application to bring your parents to live in the US, you should be certain they are eligible and that you are pursuing the correct type of application.

In order to be eligible, you must be a US citizen and 21 years or older. You can not file a green card application for your parents if you are under 21 or if you are a lawful permanent resident. You must be a citizen.

You should also only file a stand alone I-130 application if you plan to pursue consular processing, meaning that your parents are currently living abroad and you want them to get a visa through the US embassy in their home country.

If your parents are currently in the United States and you want to file for them to get a green card through adjustment of status, you should file the I-130 along with the rest of the required forms in one packet, called a concurrent filing.

Once you know that you can file for your parents and that they are going to use consular processing, you can move forward with filing the I-130 application.

You should file your I-130 application online with a MyUSCIS account.

You have the option of filing online or by mail. The advantage of filing online is that your application will have a shorter processing time, since you avoid the delay of mailing it and having USCIS open and sort the application before reviewing it.

Additionally, when you file online, you will typically receive the receipt for your application from USCIS within 1 or 2 days, allowing you to check the status and ensure that it was accepted and properly filed quickly.

The next step is to create the I-130 application in your account.

When you get to the home screen of your USCIS account, you should select the option to “File a form online.”

This will bring you to a drop down list, where you will select form “I-130, Petition for Alien Relative.” You should choose that form and click the button to start it.

You will then click through a few informative screens until you get to the part of the application where you can enter the necessary information about you and your parents into the I-130.

The next step is to gather the biographic information you will need to complete the I-130 form.

Most of the biographic information on the form you will know from memory and can fill out easily, but some of the information you may need to dig for, so it can be helpful to get all of it to hand before you begin the online application.

The information you should gather beforehand are:

• Your passport information
• Your parent’s passport information
• Your address history for the last 5 years
• Your employment history for the last 5 years including employer name and address
• Your parents current address
• Your parent’s date and location of marriage

It is important that you have your complete address history and employment history. You need full addresses and the dates to and from, including the month, day and year.. If you can’t find an exact date, you can use the 1st of the month as start or end dates to approximate your address or employment history.

There are some questions on the I-130 that likely won’t make sense to you or typically raise a question when a layperson is filling out immigration forms. We’ll address each question in the order they appear in the online I-130 application.

• “What is your A number?”
  • This is also known as your ‘alien number.’ If you were born in the United States, you won’t have an A number. If you are a naturalized US citizen, your A number will either be on your old green card or on your naturalization certificate. It is an 8 or 9 digit number that starts with the letter A.
• “What is your USCIS account number?”
  • It is not necessary for you to include this information and the USCIS account number is very difficult to find. You can check the box for “I do not know my account number.”
• “Was the beneficiary ever in immigration proceedings?”
  • This question is asking if your parent was ever in removal or deportation proceedings in the United States.
• “What was the beneficiary’s class of admission?”
  • If your parent recently entered the US on a visa, you can find their class of admission on their most recent I-94, which you can pull using their passport information here: https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/
  • If your parents have never been to the US, they will not have a class of admission and you do not need to answer this question.
• “What is the beneficiary’s Form I-94 Arrival-Departure Record number?”
  • You can find your parent’s I-94 number by pulling their record using their passport information here: https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/
• “At which USCIS office will the beneficiary apply for adjustment of status to lawful permanent resident?”
  • You should only answer this question if your parent is currently in the United States, and you are applying for adjustment of status. If that is the case, you should also be filing all of your forms concurrently.
• “At which U.S. Embassy or Consulate location will the beneficiary apply for an immigrant visa?”
  • You should answer this question with the US embassy or consulate that handles immigrant visa applications in your parent’s county of residence or a nearby country if the US embassy or consulate in their country of current residence is closed.

While there are often multiple US embassies or consulates in a country, not all of them will handle your parent’s application.

Some embassies or consulates only handle “non immigrant visas,” such as tourist or student visas. You need to determine which embassy or consulate in their country of residence handles ‘immigrant visas.’

For example, in Mexico, immigrant visa applications are handled only by the US embassy in Juarez. Regardless of where a person lives in Mexico, their application will be heard at the Juarez office.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear list that the Department of State or USCIS has released with this information. The best way to figure this out is to search in google or a similar search engine “which US embassy in [county name] handles immigrant visas.”

Once you have gathered the more difficult information to hand, you are ready to complete the I-130 application in your USCIS online account.

The application page will have the sections for you to complete along the left hand sidebar, and you will need to go through them one by one, making sure to complete every single question.

Most of the questions you should be able to answer from memory and are straightforward. Use the information you prepared beforehand and attempt to complete the application.

If anything is confusing or doesn’t make sense to you, make a list of those issues to address after you have gone through the questions in the application in its entirety.

Once you have completed the application, the USCIS online system will give you a list of the documents you are required to upload.

The required documentation for an I-130 application you file for your parents are:

• Proof of your immigration status in the US, such as a US passport, US birth certificate, or naturalization certificate
• A copy of your birth certificate to show your relationship to your parents
• A copy of your parent’s birth certificate
• A copy of your parent’s marriage certificate
• A copy of your parent’s divorce decree including from prior marriages, if applicable
• A copy of your parent’s passport
• A copy of any name change order for you or your parents, if applicable

It is vitally important that the copies you upload are clearly legible and no parts of the documents are cut off. If you submit a copy that has portions of the document that are not visible or is of poor quality, it may cause delays in processing your case.

While you only need copies at this stage, your parents will need to bring originals to their interview at the end of this process, so you should ensure they have the originals in hand if some are in your possession. The exception is your naturalization certificate – the original is not needed at the interview.

If you or your parents do not have a birth certificate or marriage certificate because they are unavailable from your country of origin, you will need to submit secondary evidence to establish the birth and family relationship between you and your parents.

You should submit 2 or more of the following documents:

• A religious record documenting the birth or marriage. This document will vary depending on your place of religious worship, but it should be an official document from the religious ritual that was produced at the time of the ritual.
• A school record from the earliest school attended that includes information about the child’s date of birth, and ideally information about both of the child’s parents.
• Other government records indicating the date of birth, name, and marital status of you or your parents, such as a government identity card or census record.
• Affidavit from friend, family, or other persons who had personal knowledge of the birth or marriage. This means it must be someone who was alive at the time of the birth or marriage and had first hand knowledge of the event.

If the documents you submit are unacceptable to USCIS to prove the parent to child relationship, you and your parents can also get a DNA test done at an approved laboratory to prove your family relationship.

Depending on the country where you are trying to obtain documents, there can be idiosyncrasies or issues that make it unclear what birth or marriage certificate would be acceptable to USCIS.

The US Department of Status produces a reference called the “reciprocity schedule” that outlines the correct documents and how to obtain them for each country that are acceptable to immigration.

You should look up the information for your country here: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Visa-Reciprocity-and-Civil-Documents-by-Country.html

Once you have navigated to your country on the left sidebar, you can pull down information on various tabs for the type of document you are submitting to USCIS.

The reciprocity schedule also can direct you to commonly accepted secondary evidence of birth or marriage for a particular country if official documents are unavailable.

It is important to check this before finalizing your document submission, just to ensure that you are submitting supporting documents that will be accepted by USCIS.

Once you have finalized your application, you will pay the filing fee in your MyUSCIS account and submit the application.

One of the primary advantages of filing using the online account system is that you will get an immediate acknowledgement that your fee has been paid and your application submitted, avoiding the delay and uncertainty of filing using traditional mail.

Typically it will take USCIS 1 to 24 hours to process the filing and issue a receipt to you in your MyUSCIS account, which formally acknowledges that the application has been properly filed and accepted.

While you can continue to access your application in your MyUSCIS account, you should save a copy of the I-130 and the supporting documents you filed in your online account.

The online system is still relatively new, and you don’t want to run into an issue where some technical difficulty causes you to lose access to what you had filed.

It is vitally important that you retain a copy for yourself in case you lose access to what was submitted. It will be very helpful to review what you filed later in the process of applying for your parents when their case makes it to the National Visa Center, or before their interview with an immigration officer.