What Is SIJS? Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and the EB-4 Path

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, or SIJS, is a federal immigration classification that gives certain children in the United States a path to a Green Card when they cannot safely reunify with one or both parents because of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. It works in two phases. A state court first makes specific findings about the child’s welfare, and then U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reviews a petition based on those findings. If the petition is approved and a visa number is available, the child can eventually apply for lawful permanent residence.

Who Qualifies

Three baseline requirements apply to every applicant. You must be under 21 when the petition is filed, you must be unmarried, and you must be physically present in the United States.¹ “Unmarried” covers people who have never married and people whose marriage ended through divorce, annulment, or the death of a spouse. You need to stay unmarried from filing through the day USCIS decides the petition.

There is a gap between federal and state law that traps a lot of families. Federal law allows petitions up to age 21, but the state court findings you need have to come from a court with jurisdiction over children, and in most states juvenile and family courts lose that jurisdiction when a young person turns 18. The practical deadline for getting into state court is often years earlier than the federal cutoff. If you are approaching 18, the state court phase is the real bottleneck.

SIJS is not available from abroad. The child must already be in the United States and must remain here while the petition is pending.¹

One common misunderstanding: the child does not need to be separated from both parents. The statute uses the phrase “1 or both,” so a child living safely with one parent can still qualify if reunification with the other parent is not viable due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment.² Many real cases look like this, for example a child living with a mother who fled an abusive father.

The State Court Findings

Before anything is filed with USCIS, a state court has to issue a written order containing three specific findings. The court has to qualify as a “juvenile court” under federal regulations, which means any U.S. court with jurisdiction under state law to make decisions about a child’s dependency, custody, or care.³ Depending on the state, that can include family, probate, guardianship, dependency, and sometimes domestic violence or adoption courts.¹

The three required findings are:

The court declares the child dependent on the court, or places the child in the custody of a state agency, a department, or a court-appointed individual.⁴
The court finds that reunification with one or both parents is not viable because of abuse, neglect, abandonment, or a similar basis recognized under state law. The court does not need to terminate parental rights.⁴
A court or authorized agency determines that returning the child to their home country, or to a parent’s home country, would not be in the child’s best interest.⁴

Most SIJS cases succeed or fail on the language of this order. All three findings have to appear explicitly. Vague statements about a child’s well-being will not carry the petition. An order that says it is in the child’s best interest to remain in guardianship, but never addresses whether returning the child to their home country would be harmful, will be rejected by USCIS. Many state courts see few SIJS cases, so the order often has to be drafted with the federal requirements in mind from the start.

The USCIS Petition

The formal petition is Form I-360, Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant.⁵ It is filed by mail to the USCIS Lockbox address designated for your location, along with proof of the child’s age (usually a birth certificate) and a certified copy of the state court order containing all three findings.⁶

The base filing fee for Form I-360 under the SIJ category is $0, but under the USCIS fee schedule effective in 2026 an additional $250 fee applies under Public Law 119-21.⁷ Applicants who cannot afford the fee may request a waiver by filing Form I-912.

Federal law requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to consent to the grant of SIJS.² USCIS carries out that consent function by reviewing the court order and the evidence behind it, and by confirming that a primary reason the findings were sought was relief from parental abuse, neglect, abandonment, or a similar basis under state law.⁸ USCIS does not re-investigate the child welfare facts or second-guess the state court on those questions. It defers to the court’s expertise. But if the order looks like it was obtained solely to produce immigration status without a real underlying child protection need, USCIS can deny consent.

The EB-4 Wait After Approval

Approval of the I-360 is not the finish line, and this is the part of the process that surprises almost everyone. SIJS falls under the employment-based fourth preference (EB-4) category, and that category has been heavily oversubscribed for years. As of the April 2026 visa bulletin, the final action date for EB-4 is July 15, 2022, meaning only petitioners who filed on or before that date can currently move forward with adjustment of status.⁹ That roughly four-year backlog applies to all countries of birth.

For a young person who filed in 2025, that means waiting until roughly 2029 before a visa number opens up. During that stretch you have an approved petition but no Green Card and no guaranteed work authorization. The backlog is a congressional allocation problem. USCIS cannot speed it up, and neither can an attorney.

Deferred Action While Waiting

Starting in 2022, USCIS began automatically considering SIJS recipients for deferred action when no visa number was available. A grant of deferred action provided temporary protection from removal and eligibility for employment authorization, typically for four years.

That policy has been actively contested. USCIS rescinded it in June 2025, a federal court stayed that rescission in November 2025, and USCIS issued a new policy memorandum on April 10, 2026, again terminating automatic deferred action for SIJS recipients with a 30-day effective window. People with existing grants generally keep that status and their work authorization until it expires. After expiration they can request a new grant, but it will be reviewed under standard deferred action criteria rather than the more favorable SIJS-specific policy.¹⁰ Because this area is still being litigated, the rules could shift again.

Getting the Green Card

Once a visa number is available, you file Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status. The filing fee for I-485 under the Special Immigrant Juvenile classification is $0.⁷ You must be physically present in the United States when you file, and you must have been inspected and admitted or paroled into the country.¹¹

Along with the I-485, you submit a copy of the I-360 approval notice and a completed Form I-693, Report of Immigration Medical Examination and Vaccination Record, from a USCIS-designated civil surgeon.¹¹ You can also file the I-485 together with the I-360, or while the I-360 is still pending, as long as the I-360 is ultimately approved and a visa number is available when USCIS makes the final decision.

The Permanent Trade-Off

Getting a Green Card through SIJS comes with a lifelong restriction that catches many families off guard. Under federal law, no natural parent and no prior adoptive parent of someone granted SIJS can ever receive any immigration benefit through that person’s status.² You can never sponsor either parent for a visa or Green Card, not even after you become a U.S. citizen. The bar applies to both parents, including a custodial parent who may have protected you, not only the parent responsible for the abuse or neglect.⁸

The restriction is limited to parents. Once you become a U.S. citizen, you can petition for siblings through the family-based fourth preference (F4) category, which carries its own long wait, and you can sponsor a spouse or children in the normal way. The parent bar is the only family sponsorship restriction unique to SIJS.

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Special Immigrant Juveniles
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1101 – Definitions
3
eCFR. 8 CFR 204.11 – Special Immigrant Juvenile Classification
4
Government Publishing Office. 8 CFR 204.11 – Special Immigrant Juvenile Classification
5
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-360, Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant
6
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Instructions for Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. G-1055 Fee Schedule
8
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6 Part J Chapter 2 – Eligibility Requirements
9
U.S. Department of State. Visa Bulletin for April 2026
10
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Policy Memorandum PM-602-0198 – SIJ Deferred Action
11
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Green Card Based on Special Immigrant Juvenile Classification