For millions of families, the most important date in their lives is not a birthday, anniversary, or graduation. It is a filing date. Somewhere in a drawer or an email archive sits a receipt from the U.S. government bearing a priority date that determines when a family can become whole again. For many families, that date is already more than a decade old.
At Mendoza Law, we conducted a data-driven analysis of the U.S. family immigration system to measure the true cost of waiting. Behind the statistics are millions of families living apart, and our research shows that one variable often determines how long that separation lasts: where a family member was born.
The Foundation of America’s Immigration System
Family reunification has long been the centerpiece of America’s legal immigration system. Every year, family-sponsored immigration accounts for the largest share of new lawful permanent residents admitted to the United States.
In fiscal year 2024, the United States issued about 1.36 million green cards. This was the highest number seen in more than 10 years. More than half of those went to family members of U.S. citizens and green card holders (including spouses, children, and parents).
People from Mexico made up the biggest group of green card recipients, at about 15% of all approvals. Cuba came next with around 13%, and then China, India, and the Dominican Republic, each at roughly 5%.
Altogether, the top ten countries accounted for close to 60% of all green cards issued in 2024. What these numbers really show is how many families are spread out across countries, with ties that stretch across borders and generations.
At the same time, the foreign-born population of the United States reached an estimated 53.3 million people, representing the highest immigrant share of the population ever recorded.
Approved, But Still Waiting
The numbers only capture part of what’s going on. Behind every case is a real family, often living in different countries and just trying to get back together. For millions of U.S. citizens and green card holders, it’s not an abstract idea; it’s the whole reason they apply in the first place.
But even when a petition gets approved, that doesn’t always mean the wait is over. For many families, it’s really just the start of a much longer process.
According to Mendoza Law:
- “People think of immigration as a legal process. What they do not see is what happens to a family during a 20-year wait. Children grow up without a parent. Siblings become strangers. Petitioners die before their cases are resolved. By the time some of these families finally reunite, the relationship the petition was filed to protect no longer looks the same.”
Today, roughly four million people with approved family-based petitions remain stuck in immigration waiting lists overseas, waiting for a visa number to become available under quotas that have changed little since 1990.
The backlog goes beyond just visa limits. USCIS started 2025 with more than 11 million cases still waiting to be processed. Even family-based petitions can take over a year just to move through the initial steps, before people even get to the visa number stage. For many families, the wait begins long before they ever reach the official queue.
The Country You Were Born in Determines When You Will Reunite With Your Family
The United States immigration system is often described as family-based. In practice, however, the experience of family reunification depends heavily on geography.
Two siblings can file the exact same petition on the same day, under the same family relationship to the same U.S. citizen, and go through the same process—same forms, same fees, same system. But depending on where they were born, one might end up waiting years longer than the other.
The F4 Category: A Clear Illustration
The clearest example appears in the family-sponsored fourth preference category, known as F4, which covers brothers and sisters of adult U.S. citizens.
The government is currently issuing visas for most F4 petitions filed in September 2008. That means applicants entering the line today are effectively joining a queue stretching back nearly eighteen years.
The Impact of Country of Birth
For Mexican–born applicants, however, the picture is dramatically different. The current cutoff date sits in April 2001, representing a backlog exceeding 25 years.
The difference between these two applicants is not their relationship to the petitioner, their documentation, their qualifications, or their conduct. It is their birthplace.
The Role of the Per-Country Cap
The disparity stems from a provision of immigration law that limits any single country to approximately 7% of annual family-sponsored visa allocations.
The rule applies equally to countries with populations of a few hundred thousand and countries with populations exceeding one hundred million. Over time, this cap has created separate realities for families from high-demand countries such as Mexico and the Philippines.
The Human Consequences of Unequal Timelines
Unequal wait times aren’t just an administrative issue; they affect real lives. For families in places like Mexico City, Manila, or Guadalajara, the immigration process can look very different compared to families in cities like Bogotá, Hanoi, or Paris. The timelines aren’t the same, and neither are the day-to-day realities of waiting.
The years accumulate differently. Children age. Parents grow older. Relationships evolve under the pressure of prolonged separation. The wait becomes part of family history itself.
A Pattern Across Visa Categories
The pattern repeats across nearly every family preference category. In the F1 category, which covers unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens, Mexican applicants are currently waiting on petitions filed roughly eleven years earlier than many applicants from other countries.
In F2B, which covers unmarried adult children of permanent residents, Mexico and the Philippines remain years behind worldwide processing times.
In category after category, the same conclusion emerges: the strength of the family relationship does not determine the wait; geography does.
A System Built on Two Very Different Timelines
To understand how millions of families became trapped in decades-long queues, it helps to understand the architecture of the system itself. Family immigration operates through two entirely different tracks.
A defining feature of the system is that these waits begin only after USCIS completes petition processing. Families do not spend a decade waiting for approval. They spend a year or more obtaining approval, then enter a queue that may last another decade or two.
Immediate Relatives of U.S. Citizens
The first is reserved for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens. For these families, the primary obstacle is administrative processing.
Spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents fall into this category. Congress does not place annual numerical limits on these visas. Once a petition is approved, the applicant can move directly through the remaining immigration process without waiting for a visa number.
The Family Preference System
The second track is where the backlog lives.
Everyone else enters the family preference system:
- Adult children of citizens
- Spouses of green card holders
- Adult children of green card holders
- Married children of citizens
- Siblings of citizens
Together, these categories are limited to approximately 226,000 visas annually. Demand exceeds that number by a significant margin.
As of the latest State Department estimates, roughly four million people with approved family petitions remain waiting abroad. Every applicant receives a priority date (the date USCIS receives the petition), which effectively determines their place in line.
The Visa Bulletin
Every month, the U.S. Department of State puts out the Visa Bulletin, showing which priority dates are moving forward. For a lot of families, checking it turns into a regular routine, something they end up looking at over and over, hoping to see progress.
Movement is often measured not in years, but in weeks or months. A queue that has already stretched across decades may advance only slightly from one bulletin to the next.
How Long the Wait Actually Is
The numbers illustrate the scale of the challenge:
- F1 (unmarried adult children of citizens): Waits approaching a decade for many applicants, longer for oversubscribed countries.
- F2A (spouses and minor children of permanent residents): Among the shortest categories, yet still involves years of separation.
- F2B (unmarried adult children of permanent residents): Often approaches a decade.
- F3 (married children of citizens): Exceeds 14 years worldwide and can surpass 25 years for some countries.
- F4 (siblings of citizens): The most backlogged category, with over two million people in line and limited annual visa availability.
The Hidden Impact on Married Couples
Among the most overlooked consequences of the family preference system is what it means for married couples. The difference between being married to a U.S. citizen and being married to a lawful permanent resident can mean years of additional separation. A citizen who marries a foreign national can petition for a spouse as an immediate relative. There is no visa quota and no waiting line.
A green card holder goes through the same process—files the petition, pays the fees, and submits the same documents. But their spouse ends up in the F2A category, which puts them in a waiting line. It might sound like a small technical detail, but it has a real impact on everyday life.
Couples often put big life plans on hold because they’re not sure where they’ll actually be living. Parents end up missing pregnancies, births, birthdays, and those early years they can’t get back. In a lot of cases, families are basically running two separate households across different countries while still trying to plan a life together.
For newlyweds, the first years of marriage (which often establish the foundation of a family’s life together) can instead become years spent navigating time zones, international phone calls, and periodic visits.
This kind of separation isn’t the short-term wait people often picture when they think about immigration delays. It can stretch on long enough to actually change the shape of a relationship. On paper, nothing really changes—the forms are the same, the process is the same. But in real life, the experience is completely different.
Where the Waiting Lives
The family immigration backlog is often discussed as a national issue. In reality, it is concentrated in specific communities. California is home to close to 11 million immigrants, and Texas has around 5.8 million.
Florida, New York, and New Jersey add millions more on top of that. Altogether, these states make up more than half of the foreign-born population in the U.S. They’re also where the impact of long immigration backlogs tends to be felt most directly.
In places like Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Queens, San Jose, and Newark, this isn’t some abstract policy debate; it’s everyday life. It’s siblings who haven’t seen each other in over a decade, parents still waiting abroad, and kids whose petitions were filed when they were young and are still stuck in process well into adulthood.
This concentration shows up even more clearly at the city level. The New York metro area alone has nearly six million immigrants, and Greater Los Angeles has over four million. Miami, Houston, and Chicago aren’t far behind. In these places, the people waiting aren’t strangers; they’re family members.
Most of the people in these cases are already tied into life in the U.S. through relatives, schools, jobs, and neighborhoods. So the backlog isn’t just slowing down immigration. It’s also preventing families that are already partly built across borders from finally being together.
What Waiting Actually Does to Families
Immigration stats usually track things in years. Families tend to measure it differently. It’s the birthdays they didn’t get to share, the funerals they couldn’t attend, the graduations they missed—whole stretches of life lived apart.
This isn’t about sudden displacement or crisis zones. It’s really about waiting.
Years of not knowing what comes next.
Years of trying to stay close while living in different countries.
Years of building a life around something that still hasn’t been resolved.
For a lot of families, waiting just becomes the normal way things are.
The Risk of Children Aging Out
The most immediate risk involves children. Under immigration law, a child generally loses eligibility for certain benefits upon turning 21. Although legal protections exist, lengthy waits can still place thousands of young people at risk of aging out of the categories designed to keep families together.
When the wait stretches past twenty years, it becomes hard to ignore the impact. A child included on a petition might already be an adult by the time a visa finally opens up. On paper, the family is still listed as one unit, but legally, things don’t always line up the same way anymore.
When Time Outruns the Petition
Then there’s something most families don’t want to think about: death. Many family petitions are filed by parents, siblings, or adult children who fully expect to still be around when reunification finally happens. But when the wait stretches into 20 years or more, that expectation starts to change. Some people don’t make it to the end of the process.
There are some limited options in those situations, but they don’t cover every case. For people already stuck waiting for decades, it’s not just a distant fear; it’s a real possibility built into how long the process can take.
The Emotional Toll of Separation
The emotional consequences are equally significant. Research examining prolonged family separation consistently links extended waiting periods to elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and trauma–related symptoms.
Research has found that people who are separated from close family members tend to experience significantly higher levels of mental health strain compared to those who are able to reunite. And as that separation goes on, the risks generally increase as well.
The Countries Carrying the Heaviest Burden
No two countries show the uneven impact of the family preference system more clearly than Mexico and the Philippines. Both have long migration ties with the U.S., and both see strong demand for family reunification. And for years, they’ve run into the same hard caps in the system, which shows up clearly in the Visa Bulletin.
Applicants from Mexico often end up facing some of the longest wait times across nearly every family preference category. Filipino applicants see similar delays, especially in categories involving adult children and siblings.
The disparities become most dramatic in F3 and F4. For married children of U.S. citizens, Mexican applicants are currently waiting on petitions filed more than 25 years ago. For siblings of U.S. citizens, the queue extends back more than 24 years. A petition submitted when George W. Bush was president is only now approaching eligibility.
For many families, the wait has lasted longer than some marriages. Longer than many careers. Longer than the childhoods of the children attached to those petitions.
The system treats these families differently, not because their relationships are different, but because demand from their countries exceeds statutory limits established decades ago. The consequences accumulate year after year. The backlog becomes self-perpetuating, and the gap widens.
The Financial Cost of Waiting
The cost of family separation is often discussed in emotional terms. It also carries a substantial financial price tag. Every petition begins with filing fees.
Today, filing a Form I-130 costs hundreds of dollars before any additional immigration expenses are considered. Visa application fees, immigrant fees, medical examinations, document translations, travel costs, and related expenses all follow.
But government fees are only the beginning.
What Remittances Actually Represent
The real financial strain shows up in how long families must financially support one another across borders, often for years or even decades. These money transfers aren’t just about economics. They’re about responsibility and keeping families afloat while they’re separated. For many households, sending money back home becomes a long-running commitment that lasts the entire wait for a visa.
These numbers show just how much money is being sent across borders to support families split up by immigration systems. In 2024, global remittances were about $700 billion. Mexico received a record $64.7 billion, and the Philippines brought in more than $40 billion.
These remittances cover many different situations, like:
- Parents helping support their kids
- Adult children sending money to aging parents
- Siblings helping each other out
- Spouses trying to maintain two households while living apart
To put it in perspective, a family sending around $395 a month over 24 years would end up sending more than $113,000 before they’re finally reunited. That doesn’t even include travel costs, legal fees, lost income opportunities, or the expense of running two separate households for so long.
The longer the wait goes on, the more the financial strain builds up. In a way, the immigration backlog doesn’t just slow down family reunification—it turns it into something that can carry real financial weight for years, sometimes even across generations.
The Human Cost Behind the Numbers
A lot of immigration debates end up centered on border security, enforcement, or political arguments. The family visa backlog is a different story. It’s about people who followed the rules, filed the paperwork, did everything they were supposed to do—and are still left waiting years to finally be reunited with their families.
People who filed the required forms. People whose petitions were approved. People who remain waiting anyway. As experienced immigration lawyers, we are on your side.
According to Mendoza Law:
- “Legislative proposals exist, such as the Reuniting Families Act and the Dignity Act, bipartisan bills introduced across multiple Congresses. The data to justify action has existed for decades. What has been missing is the political will to treat family separation as the crisis it actually is, and our hope is that campaigns like this one help make that case.”
The results from our study “Waiting To Reunite: The Length of Family Petitions” reveal staggering numbers. Millions of approved applicants. Decades-long queues. Billions of dollars in remittances. But the most important measurement may be the simplest one. Time.
Keeping families together is supposed to be one of the main goals of the U.S. immigration system. For a lot of people, it really just turns into years of waiting. Instead of helping families come together, the process ends up putting life on pause.
The delays aren’t just about forms and paperwork; they’re felt in missed birthdays, important milestones, and long stretches of time away from the people who matter most.