The August Visa Bulletin advanced the F2A spouse category by roughly 18 months just as a stricter public charge rule and a new Form I-485 take effect September 18. Loren Locke tells Newsweek why eligible couples should file under the old norms.
From the Article
"Even if your family is financially comfortable, it's preferable to file under the old norms, using established, familiar form versions, rather than to get scrutinized under the new public charge rule while the adjudicators themselves are still figuring out what they want to see."
"It's totally foreseeable that the new rule will introduce new complexity that will make the government process adjustment status of applications even slower than they already do."
Locke Immigration Law's Take
Two clocks are running in opposite directions here, and that is the whole story. The August Visa Bulletin moved the F2A final action date forward roughly eighteen months — an unusually large jump for the spouses-of-green-card-holders category — and USCIS is honoring the more favorable Dates for Filing chart, which lists F2A as current for every country. At the same time, DHS has set September 18 as the effective date for a broader public charge framework and a revised Form I-485, with older editions rejected from that day forward. The window between those two dates is the filing opportunity, and it may not stay open: the State Department has already warned that retrogression is possible if demand surges.
Loren's advice to file under the old norms is not about whether a family would ultimately pass the new test — it is about what adjudication looks like while a new standard beds in. The rescinded 2022 framework told officers exactly which benefits counted and which factors to weigh; the replacement restores broad, individualized discretion under a totality-of-circumstances review. Early cases under any new discretionary standard are where documentation demands are least predictable and where officers themselves are still calibrating, and her second point compounds the first: new rules and new form editions reliably slow processing across the board, so the cost of waiting is paid twice — once in scrutiny, once in queue time.
The caveat belongs in the same breath as the opportunity: F2A adjustment is less forgiving than the immediate-relative path, because spouses of permanent residents generally must have maintained lawful status, and unauthorized employment can bar adjustment. Whether a particular couple should file before September 18 turns on status history, manner of entry, and whether the required evidence can be assembled without cutting corners — a rushed or incomplete filing buys the worst of both worlds. Filing an adjustment application also unlocks interim work authorization while the case is pending, and for some families the cleanest long-term move is for the sponsoring spouse to naturalize, which lifts the couple out of the visa-number queue entirely.
Key Takeaways
- The August Visa Bulletin advanced the F2A final action date by roughly 18 months (to July 22, 2026 for most countries), and USCIS is honoring the Dates for Filing chart, which lists F2A as current for all countries in August.
- On September 18, 2026, DHS's broader public charge rule takes effect and USCIS will reject older editions of Form I-485 — creating a defined window to file under the current, narrower standard.
- Loren's advice: even financially comfortable families are better off filing under established norms than being early test cases while adjudicators are "still figuring out what they want to see" — and the new rule will foreseeably slow processing further.
- F2A applicants generally must have maintained lawful status, so whether to file now depends on individual circumstances — and a rushed, incomplete application is worse than a well-prepared one.