Grandparents are not considered immediate family under U.S. immigration law and cannot directly sponsor a relative for a green card. However, they may still qualify for visas through other family-based petitions, which often involve longer wait times.
The U.S. immigration system has strict rules and filing procedures that the New Frontier Immigration Law team can help navigate. Keep reading to learn why grandparents are not considered immediate family for immigration law, who does have that distinction, and the legal options for different petition paths.
Grandparents fall under family preference categories instead of immediate relative status. According to U.S. immigration law, immediate relatives are limited to spouses, unmarried children under 21, siblings, and parents of U.S. citizens, if that individual is at least 21.
While your grandparents can temporarily visit the U.S. using a standard tourist visa (B-2), U.S. citizens and green card holders are not able to file petitions for extended family members. So, what path should your grandparents take?
If you are a U.S. citizen, you can legally sponsor your parents. Once they become U.S. citizens themselves, they can then sponsor their parents (your grandparents). This “parent-sponsor relay” is quite common, and takes roughly a year or two, as parents are considered “Immediate Relatives” and are not subject to annual visa caps. However, your parents must then apply for U.S. citizenship, which typically requires living in the country as a green card holder for 5 years.
If your grandparents have significant capital, they can bypass family ties entirely with an EB-5 Investor Visa. This process requires investing $1,050,000 into a U.S. business for standard projects (or $800,000 for projects in a Targeted Employment Area) that creates at least 10 permanent, full time jobs.
If your grandparents are still working, a U.S. employer could sponsor them, primarily through the EB-2 and EB-3 employment preference categories. They must either possess extraordinary abilities, be executives, or hold specialized professional skills.
Grandparents are not considered immediate family in immigration law, but that does not mean you are out of possibilities. Explore your family visa options and talk to the skilled attorneys at New Frontier Immigration Law now.
Our savvy immigration lawyers can help evaluate your family’s most viable opportunities to file a petition or assist with temporary visitor visas. Connect with us to explore alternative legal pathways, evaluate complex family dynamics, or properly assess a viable path to green cards and citizenship for your grandparents.
Hillary Walsh is one of America’s foremost immigration attorneys — a nationally recognized advocate whose career has been built case by case, client by client, in the most challenging corners of immigration law.
For over a decade, Hillary has represented immigrants, asylum seekers, trafficking survivors, and families facing deportation in proceedings before the Ninth, Sixth, and Fifth Circuit Courts of Appeals, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and immigration courts across the country. Her legal expertise spans removal defense, asylum, VAWA, T Visa, U Visa, green cards, and naturalization — the full breadth of immigration law, with particular depth in protection-based relief for vulnerable populations.
Her work has reached the highest levels of American jurisprudence. Hillary was invited to author an amicus curiae brief for a U.S. Supreme Court case — a distinction extended to attorneys whose command of immigration law is recognized at the national level.
Hillary founded New Frontier Immigration Law in 2019 with a simple but radical belief: that every person deserves a fighting chance, and that there is a solution for every problem. That legal philosophy has guided thousands of client outcomes across Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and communities nationwide.
She doesn’t just represent clients in immigration court; she shapes how immigration law is argued, understood, and applied.
