US Family Immigration Class F1/F2A/F2B/F3/F4-Family Immigration Class-Leading visa (2024)

FAQs

What is F1 F2A F2B F3 F4 visa? ›

F1 is adult unmarried children of US citizens, F2A is spouses and minor children (under 21 and unmarried) of lawful permanent residents or green card holders. F2B is adult unmarried children of permanent residents (21 and older), F3 is married children of US citizens, and F4 is siblings of US citizens.

Second preference (F2B) - unmarried sons and daughters (21 years of age and older) of lawful permanent residents; Third preference (F3) - married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens; and. Fourth preference (F4) - brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens (if the U.S. citizen is 21 years of age and older).

The F2A Visa has been designed for the spouses and minor children of US citizens or LPRs. The F2B Visa has been created for an unmarried child aged over 21 years of age whose parents are LPRs or US citizens. As with other visa categories, the Family Preference Visa categories have limits.

Family preference visas

These include: F1 visas unmarried children who are 21 years of age or older. F3 visas for married children.

How long is the F2B visa processing time? Unfortunately, there is no set time that can be used to determine how long it will take to process the F2B visa. Because there is a limited amount of visas, many people end up waiting for 2 or more years, with extreme cases having waited for 7 years.

The F2B visa is a Family Based Green Card which falls into the category of US Family Preference Visa. It is designed for unmarried children over the age of 21 of U.S. Green Card holders.

The US student visa (F-1 visa) is one of the fastest visas to process. The study permit is often processed directly before your embassy interview. The interview is the last step of the application process. By the end of the interview, the consular officer should tell you whether or not your application was approved.

Wait times for green cards

When the sponsor is a green card holder (known as the F2A visa) is: 25 months. For more up-to-date timelines, Boundless analyzes monthly processing times at USCIS field offices across the country; you can find our timeline estimates for Form I-130 here.

Timescales for the F1 or F2B visa

At the present time, the processing of the F2B visa is quicker than for the F1 visa.

The Family Preference visas have a limitation on their number. These visas have an allocated amount of 114,200 visas per year. This cap of visas is allocated in this way to the two categories: F2A visa gets at least 79,940 visas or 70% of the total number of visas.

What category is F2A and F2B visa? ›

The F2A along with the F2B Visa falls under the second category of the 'preference relative Green Cards'. Every year, a quota is imposed on the number of category 2 preference relative visas which are issued. The quota is divided into 70% for the F2A category and 30% for the F2B category.

These categories are known as Preference Categories and include: First Preference (F1): Unmarried, adult (21 years of age or older) sons and daughters of U.S. citizens. Second Preference A (F2A): Spouses of permanent residents and the unmarried children (under the age of 21)) of permanent residents.

How Long Is the F-3 visa Processing Time? Because there are caps for the Family Green Cards, the processing times may be quite long. For the F-3 visa, the processing time can range from 1 year up to extreme cases of 10 years.

For the F3 immigrant visa, processing time can range from 1 year to 10 years. This is because there are so many people applying that they cannot all be processed at the same time. It is possible to submit an expedited request to USCIS for an immigration benefit.

The F-1 Visa (Academic Student) allows you to enter the United States as a full-time student at an accredited college, university, seminary, conservatory, academic high school, elementary school, or other academic institution or in a language training program.

F-3 visa is given to married children of US citizens who will go to the US with their spouses and minor children. F-4 visa is given to siblings of US citizens who will go to the US with their spouses and minor children. For this visa to apply, the US citizen must be at least 21 years old.

The family preference categories are as follows: First preference (F1): Unmarried children (over 21 years of age and older) of U.S. citizens. Second preference (F2A): Spouses and children under 21 of lawful permanent residents. Second preference (F2B): Unmarried children over the age of 21 of lawful permanent residents.

Family Preference Immigrant Visas are for more distant relatives, including: Children of U.S. citizens that are unmarried, and their minor children (F1) Spouses, minor children, and unmarried children of Legal Permanent Residents (F2) Children of U.S. citizens that are married, and their spouses and minor children (F3)

This is because F1 visas are for the unmarried sons and daughters of US citizens and their minor children, while F2B visas are for the unmarried children of a green card holder (LPR).