NOT ALL FILIPINO PARENTS SHOULD NATURALIZE
by Michael J. Gurfinkel, Esq.

On August 06, 2002, the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) was signed into law. Section 6 of CSPA allows unmarried sons or daughters of lawful permanent residents to remain classified as F-2B even if their immigrant parent should later naturalize.

This law was a tremendous benefit to Filipinos, because the Philippines is the only country where it takes longer for an adult single child of a citizen (category F-1) to get a green card, than it does for an adult single child of a green card holder (category F-2B).

Before CSPA’s enactment, many Filipino parents were unaware of this “backward” situation, and had mistakenly believed that by becoming a U.S. citizen, they could speed up the processing of their single adult child's eligibility for a visa. But after naturalizing, they discovered the tragic truth that, as a result of their naturalizing, their child was forced to wait five or more additional years than would be necessary had the parent remained an immigrant.

CSPA was then enacted, to allow adult single children of immigrants to remain in the F-2B category even if their parent naturalized. However, not all children of immigrants can benefit from CSPA, so not all immigrant parents can safely naturalize. There are certain children of immigrants who do not qualify for CSPA Section 6 benefits.

Recently, CIS headquarters in Washington DC came out with a new memo, providing further guidance on the applicability of CSPA Section 6. The memo notes that only those adult single children who were originally petitioned in the F-2B category can benefit from CSPA.

Under this memo, the following conditions must be met to qualify for Section 6 of CSPA:

1. The green card parent initially petitioned their unmarried son or daughter after the child’s 21st birthday (F-2B).
   
2. The green card parent later naturalized

CSPA does not apply to:

1. A child who was initially petitioned by a green card holder parent while the child was still under 21 years of age (F-2A), and then the child “aged-out” (or turned 21), converting the case to F-2B.
   
2. The parent naturalized

The reason is that a strict reading of CSPA says that Section 6 applies only to "a petition under this section initially filed for an alien unmarried son or daughter’s classification as a family- sponsored immigrant under” the F-2B category. However, a petition of a minor child is not “initially filed” as an F-2B petition. It is initially filed as F-2A, and then converts to F-2B when the child turns 21.

So, if an immigrant parent initially petitioned their child while the child was under 21 years of age (category F-2A), and then the child turned 21, (thereby converting the case to F-2B), then the parent should not naturalize, as the child would not be eligible for the benefits of CSPA Section 6.. This is because the case was not originally or “initially filed” as an adult single child (category F-2B).

I know that this distinction among children seems very hyper-technical. However, I wanted to make sure that the Filipino parents who are thinking about naturalizing (because they heard about CSPA), should make sure that they did not originally petition their child while the child was under 21. If they did, then CSPA Section 6 would not apply, and the child will be forced to wait a lot longer in the category of adult single child of citizen (category F-1).

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