What Is SIJS? Eligibility, I-360 Petition, and EB-4 Green Card

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, known as SIJS, is a federal immigration classification for children in the United States who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned by a parent. It works in two steps: a state juvenile court first issues findings about the child’s family situation, and then the child files a petition with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). An approved petition puts the child on a path to a green card, though visa backlogs often stretch that wait to several years.

Who Qualifies

Federal regulations set five requirements, and all of them have to be met:

The applicant is under 21 when the petition is filed.
The applicant is unmarried when filing and remains unmarried until USCIS decides.
The applicant is physically present in the United States.
A state juvenile court has issued an order with specific findings about abuse, neglect, or abandonment.
USCIS consents to the classification.¹

Marriage at any point before USCIS decides ends eligibility. The age is locked in on the date the petition is properly filed, so an applicant who turns 21 during processing is not disqualified for that reason. There is a practical wrinkle underneath the federal age limit: many state juvenile courts only have authority over children under 18, so the state court order often has to be obtained well before the federal cutoff.²

Federal law also protects children from processing delays. As long as the applicant was under 21 when USCIS received the petition, the green card application cannot be denied later just because the person aged past 21 while waiting.³ The juvenile court order stays valid even if the court’s authority over the child later ended because the child aged out or was placed in a permanent guardianship or adoption.

The State Court Order Comes First

Before USCIS gets involved, a state juvenile court has to issue what practitioners call a predicate order. This order is the factual foundation of the whole case, and it must contain three findings:

The child is declared dependent on the court, or placed in the custody of a state agency, department, or a court-appointed individual.
The child cannot be reunified with one or both parents because of abuse, neglect, abandonment, or a similar basis under state law.
Returning the child to their home country, or the parent’s home country, would not be in the child’s best interest.

The court does not have to terminate parental rights.¹ What matters is a finding that the parent-child relationship is broken because of mistreatment, using language that tracks the state’s own definitions. Any juvenile court in the United States with authority under state law over a child’s dependency or custody can issue the order.

Orders that are vague or missing one of the three required findings are where most SIJS cases run into trouble at the federal level. USCIS will not fill in gaps the court left out. The order also needs a reasonable factual basis for each finding rather than conclusory statements, and it must be signed and certified by the court clerk.

Filing the I-360 Petition

The formal petition for SIJS is Form I-360, Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant.⁴ A complete packet includes:

Form I-360 with biographical information matching the supporting documents.
A certified copy of the state court predicate order.
Proof of age, typically a birth certificate with a certified English translation if needed. A passport or school records can substitute when a birth certificate isn’t available.⁵

Fee schedules change; the current amounts appear on USCIS Form G-1055.⁶ The packet is mailed to the designated USCIS lockbox.

USCIS Consent and the Bona Fide Requirement

Even a perfect court order does not automatically produce SIJS. USCIS has to independently consent, and it will do so only if the request is bona fide, meaning the primary reason the applicant sought the juvenile court findings was to get relief from parental abuse, neglect, or abandonment rather than to obtain an immigration benefit.¹ Approval of the petition itself counts as the grant of consent.

Federal law directs USCIS to decide a properly filed SIJS petition within 180 days, but the clock does not start until USCIS has all required evidence and can be suspended when the agency issues a Request for Evidence.⁷ RFEs commonly go out when the court order is missing one of the three findings, the factual basis is thin, or the court’s jurisdiction is not clear.⁸ Failing to respond leads to denial.

What Approval Actually Gives You

An approved I-360 means USCIS has granted SIJS classification. That is a real milestone, but on its own it is not a green card, not work authorization, and not permission to travel.

Because the visa backlog leaves many approved petitioners waiting years, USCIS since 2022 has automatically considered approved SIJS recipients for deferred action, a discretionary decision not to pursue removal that also makes the person eligible to apply for a work permit. The policy has been actively litigated. USCIS attempted to rescind it, but a federal court in the Eastern District of New York ordered the policy to remain in effect, and as of November 2025 USCIS is continuing to automatically consider approved SIJS petitioners for deferred action and accepting renewal requests.² USCIS has said publicly it disagrees with the ruling. Renewal requests for deferred action must be submitted within six months of expiration, and USCIS keeps discretion to terminate a previously granted deferred action case by case.

The Green Card Step and the EB-4 Wait

SIJS recipients apply for permanent residence by filing Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status.⁹ SIJS falls under the employment-based fourth preference (EB-4) category, which has a capped annual number of visas and a significant backlog. You can only file the I-485 once a visa number is available for your priority date.

The Department of State’s monthly Visa Bulletin shows which priority dates are current. In the April 2026 bulletin, the EB-4 final action date was July 15, 2022, and the filing date was January 1, 2023, applied uniformly across all countries.¹⁰ The practical result is a multi-year wait, and there is no reliable way to predict a specific applicant’s timing because it depends on how many earlier-priority applicants complete their cases and how many EB-4 visas are issued in a given year.

The SIJS path removes several common obstacles at the green card stage. Federal law exempts SIJS applicants from the public charge ground, the labor certification requirement, the three- and ten-year unlawful presence bars, entry-without-inspection issues, and the documentation requirements that would otherwise block adjustment. USCIS treats the applicant as if paroled into the country, and it can waive other grounds of inadmissibility for humanitarian purposes, family unity, or the public interest. Serious criminal and security grounds cannot be waived.¹¹ SIJS applicants can also request an I-485 fee waiver without providing income documentation; a copy of the I-797 SIJS approval notice is enough.¹²

Two Limits Worth Knowing Up Front

SIJS carries a permanent restriction on family sponsorship. Once someone gets SIJS-based permanent residence, neither their biological parents nor any prior adoptive parents can ever obtain immigration benefits through that person, whether as a green card holder or later as a citizen.¹³ Congress built that rule in because SIJS rests on a finding that the parental relationship was harmful.

Travel is the other trap. SIJS classification itself does not authorize international travel. Leaving the country while an I-360 or I-485 is pending, without first obtaining advance parole, can cause USCIS to treat the application as abandoned. The safest choice is to stay in the United States until the green card is approved.

Children in Federal Custody

Unaccompanied children who arrive at the border are placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), part of the Department of Health and Human Services. For these children, an extra procedural layer applies. Under federal law, no state juvenile court can determine the custody or placement of a child in HHS custody unless HHS specifically consents.¹³

A child in ORR custody who wants a state court to change their custody or placement has to first request specific consent from ORR by email, using a completed consent request form and proof of authorization to act on the child’s behalf. ORR aims to respond within 30 business days, and urgent requests, such as one filed close to the child’s 18th birthday, can be flagged for faster processing. If a consent request is denied, the child’s representative has 30 business days to seek reconsideration from the Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, who must issue a final decision within 15 business days.¹⁴

If the child is only seeking a dependency order for SIJS purposes and is not asking the state court to alter their custody or placement, HHS consent is typically not required. The consent requirement is triggered specifically when the child asks the state court to move them out of federal custody.

1
eCFR. 8 CFR 204.11 – Special Immigrant Juvenile Classification
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Special Immigrant Juveniles
3
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 7, Part F, Chapter 7 – Special Immigrant Juveniles
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-360, Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant
5
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Instructions for Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant
6
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Form G-1055 – Fee Schedule
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1232 – Enhancing Efforts to Combat the Trafficking of Children
8
Federal Register. Special Immigrant Juvenile Petitions
9
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status
10
U.S. Department of State. Visa Bulletin for April 2026
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1255 – Adjustment of Status of Nonimmigrant to That of Person Admitted for Permanent Residence
12
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 1, Part B, Chapter 4 – Fee Waivers and Fee Exemptions
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1101 – Definitions
14
Administration for Children and Families. Program Instruction – Specific Consent Requests