In a small but major move, the Biden administration has announced an update to the policy manual used for calculating a non-citizen’s age in certain situations under the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA)– A step in addressing the issues of the aged-out children, a large number of whom are Indians, who came to the US legally with their parents.
As per the policy, for a child to obtain lawful permanent resident status based on their parent’s approved petition for a family-sponsored or employment-based visa, the child generally must be under the age of 21. If and if the child ages out” during the immigration process, the child generally is no longer eligible to immigrate with the parent based on the parent’s petition.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has officially made one of our long-requested policy changes. The USCIS will use the dates for the filing chart to determine CSPA age and any previously denied petition can be reopened,” said Dip Patel.
As per the updates, the USCIS will now use the Dates for Filing chart to calculate these non-citizens’ ages for CSPA purposes, which provides these non-citizens with more certainty about their eligibility to adjust their status, the federal agency said.
The CSPA was introduced to protect certain noncitizen children from losing eligibility to obtain lawful permanent resident status based on an approved visa petition by providing a method to calculate the child’s age that considers when an immigrant visa number “becomes available.”
The policy update is effective immediately and applies to pending applications. Therefore, some noncitizens with a pending application may now have a CSPA age that is under 21 based on this change.