California Immigration Lawyer Blog

United States and Citizenship Services ("USCIS") recently released a Policy Memorandum
that provides guidance to USCIS officers regarding recent amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA") that extend the ability to self petition to battered or abused parents of US citizens.

The authority for filing a self petition as a battered or abused parent of a US citizen is found in INA Section 204(a)(1)(A) of the Act. It provides that a parent who was subjected to battery or extreme cruelty by their U.S. Citizen son or daughter may self petition.

Who is eligible to apply?

Any parent, step-parent or adoptive parent may self petition.

The following parent/child relationships qualify:

1. The parent of a U.S. citizen son or daughter who is at least 21 when the petition is filed; or

2. The parent of a former U.S. citizen son or daughter who lost or renounced citizenship within the two years prior to filing the self petition as a result of an incident of domestic violence. At the time of loss of status, the son or daughter must have been at least 21 years of age; or

3. The parent of a U.S. citizen son or daughter who was at least 21 years of age and who died within the two years prior to filing the self petition.

In order for a step parent to file, that step-parent must prove:

1. The abusive U.S. citizen son or daughter had not reached the age of eighteen years at the time the marriage creating the step-relationship occurred;
2. The step-relationship existed, by law, at the time of the abuse; and
3. The step-relationship existed by law, or as a matter of fact, at the time of filing the VAWA self-petition. If at the time of filing, the step-relationship had been terminated due to death of the natural parent, legal separation, or divorce, the self-petitioning stepparent will remain eligible to file provided that, as a matter of fact, the step-relationship was ongoing. The relationship need not continue after filing.

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Today I will be giving a presentation on immigration law along with my colleague, V. Thomas Langford, to the Air Force JAG serving at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California. The Air Force JAG Corps are lawyers who provide legal advice to those serving in the Air Force.

Our training today will focus on the basics of immigration law. We will be covering family-based immigration law and outlining the procedures involved in petitioning for a family member to immigrate to the United States. We will also be talking about the Violence Against Women Act ("VAWA") and how an individual may self-petition for immigration status if he or she has been the victim of abuse or mental cruelty. Finally, we will discuss the naturalization laws as they apply to those serving in the military at a time of a conflict.

It seems that I always learn something while preparing for a presentation. While preparing for this one, I learned that staff from USCIS in Sacramento go to Travis Air Force Base twice a month to interview applicants for naturalization and administer the oath of citizenship on the same day. Kudos to USCIS for taking the time to do this. USCIS has an entire website page devoted to military naturalization ceremonies performed in May 2009. Included on it is the photo taken at Travis.