Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the difference between spouses of Green Card holders versus spouses of American citizens for purposes of Visa processing. I actually thought of making this video after reading a posting that was put on Our Country Our Choice's Twitter feed. I'll put this up on screen, it said: Biden offers path to citizenship to spouses of US citizens. Again not to go too deep into that, but the headline alone caught my eye because I said "well wait a minute, that's always been the case. Spouses of US citizens have always gotten priority treatment or preference if you will, there's actual preference categories I'll get into in a moment, but preferential treatment if you will when it comes to processing Immigration cases. So if you are an American citizen, you have a foreign spouse and you want to get him or her into the United States, yeah you are not in the same line as folks who are Lawful Permanent Residents of the United States wanting to bring their spouse in. These are what are called preference categories. American citizens have the highest level preference when it comes to their spouses. Again a Lawful Permanent Resident, a Green Card holder can petition for their spouse to come to the United States but it is in a different preference category; it is not as high a preference category.

So the thing to take away from this video and what I found kind of strange about that Our Country Our Choice posting was this notion that it's somehow anomalous that spouses of American citizens are somehow prioritized, even in the Immigration process they are prioritized over spouses of Lawful Permanent Residents and then spouse of anybody that's not either of those has no category under which to file unless they are filing as like the Non-immigrant spouse of a Non-immigrant Visa holder. I'm not even going to get into all of that, but from an Immigration standpoint “Big I” Immigration, Immigration as in becoming a Lawful Permanent Resident, yeah spouses have gotten that prioritization. Meanwhile, they also have priority insofar as it only takes 3 years to become eligible or I should say they are eligible to file for naturalization 90 days prior to the three year anniversary of either their arrival in Immigrant spouse status or adjustment to Immigrant spouse status from for example like a K-3 or a K-1 Visa. But once a spouse is in the United States as a Green Card holder, if they are the spouse of a US citizen, yes they get prioritized in terms of naturalization. They can do it about 2 years faster than folks who aren't married to a US citizen.

So this is something to keep in mind and to understand. I don't know why Our Country Our Choice put this up because it seemed to be putting it up, sort of noting it as a negative but it has always existed. US citizens have always had priority, well their spouses have had priority when it comes to the issue of both processing Immigration matters as well as naturalization to United States citizenship. And I have got to say, I mostly agree with what Our Country Our Choice talks about with regard to Immigration especially the crisis at the US border. But that said, I don't think we need to really be looking, we need to be dealing with that issue, the border issue more than anything. Okay maybe down the line there may be room for some tweaking of the rules associated with spouses of US citizens but my personal take on that is I don't see how that's worth it and quite frankly I think it's a good thing that spouses of American citizens are prioritized a little bit compared to other immigrants that have no connection to the United States of America.