Dalila Dekovic, a lawful permanent resident, filed an I-130 petition in December 2017 for her son, Alejandro Jimenez Ramirez, seeking classification as a minor child of a lawful permanent resident (F2A category). At the time of filing, Alejandro was twenty years old. USCIS approved the petition in November 2019, at which point the F2A visa category for Mexico was current, meaning a visa was immediately available. Alejandro's statutory age was calculated under the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) by subtracting the time the petition was pending from his biological age, leaving him at twenty years old. In April 2021, Ms. Dekovic naturalized as a U.S. citizen. The National Visa Center subsequently reclassified Alejandro's petition from F2A to F1, categorizing him as an adult son of a U.S. citizen. This reclassification stripped Alejandro of his immediate visa eligibility and placed him on a waitlist with a priority date from 2004, meaning he could face a twenty-year delay before rejoining his mother. The district court upheld the government's decision, ruling that the statute referred to chronological age. The appellants appealed, arguing that the CSPA's protections should apply to prevent them from being penalized for their parent's naturalization.
The Tenth Circuit addressed two primary issues: whether the National Visa Center's reclassification was a final agency action, and how to interpret the age calculation under the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) when a parent naturalizes. First, the court affirmed that the reclassification was a final agency action. The court reasoned that the decision was definitive, determined the beneficiary's rights and obligations, and had immediate legal consequences by stripping the beneficiary of current visa eligibility. The court rejected the government's argument that the action was not final because a consular officer might make a different decision decades later, noting that such a delay would render judicial review meaningless and violate the Administrative Procedure Act. Second, on the merits, the court reversed the district court's interpretation of 8 U.S.C. § 1151(f)(2). The government argued that the statute's reference to 'age' meant biological age. The court, however, interpreted the statute in the context of the entire Immigration and Nationality Act. The court noted that the CSPA was enacted to prevent children from 'aging out' due to bureaucratic delays. The court found that interpreting 'age' as biological age would create three anomalies: it would penalize parents for naturalizing, create a gap in CSPA protections for a specific subset of beneficiaries, and grant preferential treatment to adult children over minor children. The court concluded that the statutory scheme intended to protect children from these outcomes. Therefore, the court held that 'age' in § 1151(f)(2) refers to the beneficiary's statutory age calculated under the CSPA, not their biological age. As Alejandro was a minor under the CSPA on the date of his mother's naturalization, he remained eligible for immediate-relative status rather than being reclassified as an adult son.
The decision requires the National Visa Center to reclassify Alejandro Jimenez Ramirez as an immediate relative, allowing him to apply for a visa immediately rather than waiting decades. This ruling aligns the Tenth Circuit with the First, Second, and Ninth Circuits, establishing that the CSPA's age-calculation formula applies when a parent naturalizes. It prevents the government from using a parent's naturalization to force a child into a longer visa queue. The case is remanded to the district court for proceedings consistent with this opinion, meaning the government must process the visa application under the immediate-relative category.
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