Immigration | Which filing is faster - brother or husband?

Good morning Mrs Walker-Huntington:

My brother is in the military, and he wants to process paperwork for my daughter and me. However, my boyfriend is a US citizen and wants us to marry. I would like to know which process is faster and easier.

Thank you.

K.W.

Dear K.W.:

A sibling petition (US citizen sibling filing for their sibling) is the family preference category that has historically taken the longest. With the current backlogs, it is taking approximately 17 years for a visa to become available in the sibling F4 preference category. While wait times for visa availability vary, this might be the longest waiting time I have seen since I began practising law 28 years ago.

It takes this long because only a set number of visas are available in each preference category per year, and the sibling category has the largest number of applications. The positive to a sibling category is that the beneficiary’s spouse and children are eligible to migrate with them when the visa becomes available. However, due to the long waiting time for the visa, children can sometimes “age out” of eligibility, i.e., they are deemed over 21 years old for immigration purposes. Some over-21-year-old sons/daughters can still be considered children (under 21) for immigration purposes if a favorable Child Status Protection Act calculation deems them to be so categorised.

If someone marries their US citizen boyfriend, the US citizen husband can file for the immigrant to migrate, and that would be a quicker process than a sibling petition. The spouse would be considered an immediate relative, and there is no preference category – the application would be processed as quickly as possible and once approved, a visa would be immediately available. If the beneficiary wife has an under-18-year-old daughter when he/she marries their US citizen husband, then he can also file a petition for the child as the stepfather. If, however, the daughter is over age 18 at the time of the marriage, her stepfather would not be able to file a petition for her to migrate to the United States. The new immigrant parent would have to file for their daughter once they became a permanent resident.

Since January 2026, there has been a pause on the issuance of immigrant visas in Jamaica, and that would impact any finalisation of visas at the US Embassy. Readers should know that while the pause is in effect, an applicant would be interviewed, but the immigrant visa would not be issued. On the other hand, if someone has a US citizen fiancé, they can file for a fiancé visa, and there is no prohibition against issuing a fiancé visa as that is a non-immigrant visa.

Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington, Esq. is a Jamaican-American attorney who practises immigration law in the United States; and family, criminal & international law in Florida. She is a mediator and former special magistrate & hearing officer in Broward County, Florida. info@walkerhuntington.com