Adjustment of Status: Becoming a Permanent Resident Without Leaving the U.S.

What Adjustment of Status Is

Adjustment of status is the mechanism, set out in INA § 245, that lets certain people already in the United States become lawful permanent residents by filing an application with USCIS rather than by leaving to process an immigrant visa at a consulate abroad. The application itself is Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status.

It is only available to someone who is already here. Someone living abroad who wants to immigrate through a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident relative, or through a U.S. employer, uses consular processing instead — see our consular processing guide for that path, which runs through the National Visa Center and an interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate rather than a USCIS office.

This guide covers affirmative adjustment of status — a case filed voluntarily with USCIS before anyone is in removal proceedings. Adjustment of status can also come up defensively, as relief requested from an immigration judge in removal proceedings, but that is a different practice area with different procedure, and our firm handles affirmative filings only.

The Three Requirements of INA § 245(a)

Under INA § 245(a), 8 U.S.C. § 1255(a), someone who was inspected and admitted or paroled into the United States (or, on narrower terms, an approved VAWA self-petitioner) may have their status adjusted to that of a permanent resident if three things are true: they apply for adjustment; they are eligible to receive an immigrant visa and are admissible to the United States for permanent residence; and an immigrant visa is immediately available to them at the time the application is filed.

Two threshold points are easy to miss. First, the requirement of having been "inspected and admitted or paroled" is written into the opening of the statute itself, before any of the three numbered requirements — it is not one of the bars discussed further below, and it is the reason how someone entered the country matters as much as anything that happened afterward. We cover that separately below, because it is often the single most consequential fact in a case like this.

Second, the statute frames the decision as discretionary on its face — it authorizes the government to adjust status "in his discretion, and under such regulations as he may prescribe." Meeting the three requirements makes someone eligible to be considered for adjustment; it does not, by itself, guarantee approval.

"Immediately Available": Priority Dates and the Visa Bulletin

The third requirement above — an immediately available immigrant visa — turns entirely on which category someone is immigrating through, and it decides whether a case can move now or has to wait, sometimes for years.

Immediate relatives of a U.S. citizen — a spouse, an unmarried child under 21, and a parent of a citizen who is 21 or older — are not subject to any annual numerical limit. A visa is treated as available to them at all times, so visa availability never slows their case down.

Every other family and employment category is a preference category, and preference categories are numerically capped each year, with further caps by country of birth. Someone's priority date — generally the date the underlying petition was properly filed — is their place in that line. The Department of State publishes a Visa Bulletin every month showing, category by category and country by country, how far the line has moved.

The Visa Bulletin actually contains two charts: an Application Final Action Dates chart, showing when a visa number is truly available to be issued, and a Dates for Filing chart, which is sometimes more generous and lets USCIS accept applications earlier when the Department of State expects more visas to be available for the year than there are known applicants. Each month, USCIS announces which of the two charts adjustment applicants may use to file — the Final Action Dates chart is the default, and use of the more generous chart requires USCIS to say so for that month and category.

Cut-off dates move backward as well as forward — retrogression — and that is a normal feature of an annually capped system, not a sign that something has gone wrong with a particular case.

Concurrent Filing: The I-485 Together With the Underlying Petition

When a visa is immediately available — always true for an immediate relative, and true for a preference-category applicant whose priority date is current under whichever Visa Bulletin chart USCIS has designated for that month — the I-485 can generally be filed at the same time as the underlying petition (Form I-130 or Form I-140), rather than waiting for the petition to be approved first. USCIS and practitioners call this concurrent filing.

Concurrent filing does not make the petition unnecessary or automatically approved — USCIS still has to approve the underlying petition, and an I-485 filed concurrently with a petition that is later denied is denied along with it. What concurrent filing buys is time: biometrics, the medical examination, and — in many cases — the work authorization and travel document applications can all move forward while the petition itself is still being adjudicated, instead of waiting for it to clear first.

When a visa is not yet available — the ordinary situation for most family and employment preference categories — the sequence is different. The petition is filed and, once approved, the case simply waits. No one files the I-485 in that category until the priority date becomes current, however long that takes.

The § 245(c) Bars, and Who Is Exempt From Them

Meeting the three requirements of § 245(a) is not the end of the inquiry. Section 245(c) separately lists categories of people who cannot use adjustment of status at all, even if they meet every requirement above. A case can be admissible and have a visa immediately available, and still be barred from adjusting for one of these reasons.

The list, in broad strokes: alien crewmen; someone admitted in transit without a visa; certain nonimmigrants described in INA § 101(a)(15)(S) (informants and witnesses); someone admitted as a Visa Waiver Program visitor; someone who is deportable under INA § 237(a)(4)(B) — the terrorist-activity ground; someone seeking employment-based adjustment who is not maintaining lawful nonimmigrant status; and — the bar that reaches the most people in practice — someone who continues in or accepts unauthorized employment before filing, who is in unlawful immigration status on the date of filing, or who has failed, other than through no fault of their own or for technical reasons, to maintain continuous lawful status since entry, plus a further, overlapping bar reaching anyone who was employed while an unauthorized alien or who has otherwise violated the terms of a nonimmigrant visa.

Now the exception that matters most in practice. Immediate relatives of a U.S. citizen — defined the same way as above: spouse, unmarried child under 21, parent of an adult citizen, under INA § 201(b) — are specifically carved out of several of these bars. The statute itself exempts immediate relatives from the unauthorized-employment/unlawful-status bar and from the Visa Waiver Program bar, and the USCIS Policy Manual's own table of bars and exemptions lists immediate relatives as exempt from the further unauthorized-employment/violation-of-status bar as well. Certain narrowly defined categories of "special immigrants" (identified by cross-reference to specific provisions of the definitions section of the INA) share some of the same exemptions.

What that means in plain terms: an immediate relative who was inspected and admitted or paroled at entry is not, generally, disqualified from adjusting status merely because they later worked without authorization or let a nonimmigrant status lapse. A preference-category applicant — someone immigrating through a more distant family relationship, or through employment sponsorship outside the narrow special-immigrant categories — generally does not receive that same forgiveness for the same conduct.

There is one further, narrower piece of forgiveness worth knowing about, aimed specifically at some employment-based cases. INA § 245(k) forgives, for applicants in the EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, and EB-5 employment-based preference categories and for special immigrant religious workers under INA § 101(a)(27)(C), an aggregate of up to 180 days — measured only from the applicant's most recent lawful admission — of failing to maintain status, working without authorization, or otherwise violating admission terms. Eligible derivative spouses and children may also use this forgiveness in their own right, provided each of them independently meets the 180-day requirement; it is not automatically extended to a family member just because the principal applicant qualifies. It is not a general safe harbor, and whether it applies to a given set of dates is exactly the kind of question that has to be worked out against the actual timeline of someone's case rather than assumed.

This entire section is a set of rules interacting with a specific set of dates in a specific person's history. We ask, in detail, about every entry, every job, every gap in status, and every departure before telling anyone whether a bar applies to them — that is not a question a general guide can answer for an individual case.

Entry Without Inspection Is a Different Problem

Everything in the section above is about what happens after a lawful entry — someone who came through a port of entry and was inspected and either admitted or paroled. Entering the United States without inspection is a different problem entirely, and it is addressed earlier in the analysis than the § 245(c) bars.

The requirement of having been "inspected and admitted or paroled" is written into the opening clause of § 245(a) itself, before any of the three numbered requirements. Someone who entered without going through inspection generally does not meet that threshold requirement at all, which means the § 245(c) bars — and their immediate-relative exceptions — are beside the point. The immediate-relative forgiveness described above answers the question "does this person's later conduct disqualify them," not the separate question "did this person enter lawfully in the first place." A sympathetic case and a valid petition do not change that answer.

There is one narrow, long-standing exception. INA § 245(i) grandfathers certain people who were the beneficiary of a qualifying immigrant petition or labor certification application filed on or before April 30, 2001, allowing them to adjust despite an entry problem or certain § 245(c) bars, on payment of an additional fee (Form I-485 Supplement A, filed alongside the I-485). If that qualifying petition or application was filed after January 14, 1998, the person must also have been physically present in the United States on December 21, 2000. This is a closed historical door, not an ongoing program — it reaches only someone with a real, provable filing from that window, and confirming whether one exists is a research question in its own right, not something to assume from a general description of the exception.

For someone who entered without inspection and has no § 245(i) basis, the route to a green card generally runs through consular processing abroad instead of adjustment of status here — which in turn raises the separate, serious question of whether departing the United States would trigger the unlawful-presence bars under INA § 212(a)(9)(B). That is a question our consular processing and waivers of inadmissibility guides cover, and it is one to raise with us before any decision to leave the country, not after.

What Happens After You File

USCIS issues a receipt notice and then schedules a biometrics appointment — fingerprints, a photograph, and a signature, used to run background and identity checks. Missing that appointment without properly rescheduling it can lead to a denial for abandonment.

Every applicant needs a medical examination on Form I-693, completed by a civil surgeon designated by USCIS — not a personal physician — covering required vaccinations and screening for certain health-related grounds of inadmissibility. Bring vaccination records to the appointment, and confirm current guidance on timing before scheduling it, since the rules on how long a completed exam stays usable have changed in recent years.

Whether there is an interview is decided case by case. Where one is scheduled, it happens at a USCIS field office; the officer confirms identity, goes through the application, and asks about anything that has changed since filing — a new job, a new relationship, a new arrest, a new address.

A decision does not always follow immediately. Even a complete, well-documented filing can be held for further review, and that is routine rather than a sign of a problem.

Because the statute itself frames adjustment as discretionary, a case that clears every eligibility requirement and every bar has still, formally, only reached the point where an officer may grant it — one more reason the initial filing should be built to answer questions before they are asked rather than after.

Working and Traveling While the Case Is Pending

Neither work authorization nor a travel document comes automatically with a pending I-485 — each is a separate application, with its own fee, filed on its own form.

Work authorization is Form I-765, filed under the adjustment-based eligibility category. It is commonly filed at the same time as the I-485, and our EAD guide covers eligibility, timing, and renewal in detail.

A travel document is Form I-131, advance parole. Leaving the United States while an I-485 is pending, without first obtaining an approved advance parole document, is generally treated as abandoning the application — some nonimmigrant categories are treated differently and can travel and return without one, so confirm before booking anything rather than after. Our advance parole guide covers that form and its own set of risks in full, including a recent, still-unsettled change in how travel on advance parole interacts with the unlawful-presence bars.

Anyone with prior unlawful presence in the United States faces a further layer of risk around travel, tied to the three- and ten-year bars under INA § 212(a)(9)(B) described in our waivers of inadmissibility guide. Whether a particular trip is safe is not something a general guide can answer — it depends on the exact history of entries and departures, and it is worth a conversation before travel is booked rather than after.

Grounds of Inadmissibility, at a High Level

Being eligible to receive an immigrant visa is not the same as being admissible, and § 245(a) requires both. INA § 212(a) sets out the grounds of inadmissibility, organized into broad categories: health-related grounds, criminal and related grounds, security-related grounds, public charge, grounds tied to labor certification and qualifications, immigration violations (including unlawful presence and prior removals), documentation and fraud-related grounds, and several others.

This guide is deliberately not going to try to enumerate those grounds in detail, or tell you which one might apply to a specific arrest, a specific prior denial, or a specific medical history. That kind of question depends on facts a webpage cannot see, and a wrong general answer is worse than no answer. Where a specific issue in someone's history might raise a ground of inadmissibility, our waivers of inadmissibility guide describes the waiver process that can sometimes address it, and the right next step is an individualized conversation, not a checklist.

What is worth saying plainly: a ground of inadmissibility does not necessarily end a case. Some grounds can be waived, and some are much narrower than people assume. But guessing which category applies, or assuming an old issue was resolved because time has passed, is exactly the mistake that turns a fixable problem into a denial.

What It Costs

The I-485 itself currently costs $1440 filed on paper, or $1390 filed online, for an applicant over the age of 14. An applicant under 14 who files at the same time as a parent's I-485 currently pays $950 on paper or $900 online instead.

The underlying petition is a separate fee, not included in the above. Form I-130 is currently $675 on paper or $625 online. Form I-140 is currently $715 on paper or $665 online, plus additional fees that apply to some employers.

An applicant proceeding under INA § 245(i) files Form I-485 Supplement A along with the I-485, currently $1000, whether filed on paper or online.

Work authorization and a travel document, if filed alongside the I-485, carry their own fees. Form I-765 is currently $260, paper or online, for an applicant whose I-485 was filed with a fee on or after April 1, 2024 and is still pending. Form I-131 advance parole, for someone with a pending I-485, is currently $630 on paper or $580 online. Form I-864, the affidavit of support, carries no filing fee.

These are government fees, separate from any attorney fee, and separate from the cost of the medical examination, which is billed by the civil surgeon directly rather than by USCIS.

Fees current as of September 7, 2026, taken from the USCIS fee schedule (Form G-1055, edition 05/29/26) — confirm the current amount at uscis.gov/forms/filing-fees before filing.

Who This Guide Is Not For

If you are currently outside the United States, this is not your guide — adjustment of status is only available to someone already here. See our consular processing guide instead.

If you entered the United States without inspection and do not have a provable, qualifying INA § 245(i) filing from decades ago, adjustment of status is very likely not available to you no matter how strong the rest of your case is. That does not mean there is no path to a green card — it means the path likely runs through consular processing, and it means the question of whether leaving the country is safe needs to be answered before anyone travels. Talk to us first.

If no visa is immediately available in your category and you do not fall into an exception, there is nothing to file yet — the priority date has to become current first, and we can tell you where your case stands against the current Visa Bulletin.

If a specific criminal, immigration, or medical history issue may make you inadmissible, this guide will not tell you whether it does or what to do about it — see our waivers of inadmissibility guide, and raise it with us before filing rather than after a denial.

If you are already in removal proceedings, adjustment of status may still be available, but as relief requested from an immigration judge rather than as an affirmative USCIS filing — a different practice area, which our firm does not handle.