I had a client come in to talk about applying for citizenship. She told me that after she became a citizen, she wanted to sponsor her two (2) unmarried children. I advised her that there was no reason to wait until she became a citizen to sponsor her children. She could sponsor them now as a lawful permanent resident. When she became a citizen, she would simply change the status of her sponsorship to that of unmarried children of a United States citizen. They would have the earlier priority date from when she first filed. In other words, when she became a citizen she would not have to re-file or get into the back of the line.
Basically when you file a petition, you get a priority date. That priority date marks your place in line. If she were to file what is known as an F2B petition, or petition for unmarried children of a resident alien, she would get a priority date. If she later became a citizen, she would move out of the F2B line and into the F1 line, which is to say, the category for children over twenty-one (21) of United States Citizens. She would not go to the back of the F1 line, but would keep the priority date from when she was a lawful permanent resident. She also would not pay any additional fees.
However, when I checked the visa bulletin to help explain some things, it turned out that it did not make much of a difference. The current priority date for United States citizens’ unmarried children over twenty-one (21) is May 1, 2007. The priority date of unmarried children of lawful permanent residents is April 1, 2007. As such, citizen children are only getting here a month faster than resident alien children anyway. The one big advantage to citizenship, though, is that if the child should marry while waiting, they will eventually be able to come with their entire family. If the child of a lawful permanent resident marries, the child cannot come.