How to Get the Immigrant Visa after Form I-130 Approval for Brother/Sister Immigration?

Question:

My sister is a U.S. citizen who submitted the Form I-130 to USCIS for my immigration. After it's approval, how could I get the immigrant visa or get Green Card to enter United States?

Answer:

After USCIS approved the sibling (brother or sister) immigrant visa petition of Form I-130, the U.S. citizen's brother or sister will receive a "priority date," based on the day USCIS first received the Form I-130 petition. Then, the long waiting for immigrant visa will begin. If the brother or sister has children who want to come along to U.S. on this immigrant visa, these children must not get married before entering the United States with the immigrant visa. Because turning 21 years old will make them ineligible for the immigrant visa.

U.S. citizen petitioner then should start tracking the progress of priority dates in the family-based 4th preference immigration category, by monitoring the U.S. State Department's Visa Bulletin. When the dates shown on the family-based immigrant visa chart for the 4th preference category start to get close to your sibling's priority date, then U.S. citizen petitioner should look for letters coming from the National Visa Center (NVC), or contact the National Visa Center if you forgot to send them a change of address form.

If your sibling is in the United States on a valid visa, such as H-1B visa, J-1 visa, or F-1/J-1 visa, when the priority date becomes current, he or she should be able to adjust status inside the United States, to get the green card without leaving the United States. But if your brother or sister has only a tourist visa, such as B visa, and hope of adjusting status in the United States, it may constitute a fraudulent use of the tourist visa, and potentially lead to the green card application being denied.

For most cases, the U.S. citizen's brother or sister needs to go through the "consular processing", by having an immigrant visa interview at a U.S. consulate in his or her home country. If the interview goes well, he or she and family members will be issued immigrant visas to the United States. After entering the U.S., they will become permanent residents of United States, and receive their actual Green Cards a few weeks later.