Once the adorable child you so lovingly raised during its tender years of life—now a grown adult leaving a mess around the house. You just cannot wait to show him the door. “Not so fast” implies the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA).
Although it’s always tough on children to make it on their own initially, it can be even more challenging for a child coming from overseas to a new country and not be able to stay united with his or her family and not have legal status.
Congress recognized that many children were aging out due to large USCIS processing backlogs, so it enacted the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) to protect certain children from aging out.
What is Aging Out?
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) defines a child as a person who is both unmarried and under 21 years. If someone applies for lawful permanent resident status as a child but turns 21 before being approved, that person can no longer be considered a child for immigration purposes. This situation is referred to as “aging out” and often means that these applicants would have to file a new petition or application, wait even longer to get green card, or may no longer be eligible for a green card.
CSPA does not change the definition of a child. Instead, CSPA provides a method for calculating a person’s age to see if they meet the definition of a child for immigration purposes.
What is the CSPA Age?
According to the Child Protection Act, there is a formula USCIS uses to protect aging-out children. CSPA age is the number that USCIS will use instead of the child’s real age.
CSPA age is useful if your child has grown older than 21 years and his green card application is still pending. CSPA age protection is available for family, employment, asylum, refugee, and diversity-based green cards.
How is the CSPA age useful?
CSPA age is useful only if it is less than 21. It protects kids from aging out if their US green card application is pending when they turn 21. If the CSPA age is greater than 21, your child cannot be treated as your dependent and hence is not eligible for a green card.
How to Calculate the CSPA Age?
The formula is the age of child at the time of visa availability minus the pending time of the petition equals the CSPA age. Thereby, essentially freezing the age of applicant without penalizing him or her for the backlog that occurred. If only it was that easy to freeze our actual age.
To apply this formula, one must determine the date on which a visa number “becomes available” to the child and subtract out the number of days the underlying petition was pending.
Although your definition of a “child” determines that your child’s stay is long over, CSPA guides parents to be more sympathetic and to allow for the overgrown child to obtain his or her green card first before showing him the door.
21 and out? Not so fast!