USC sponsoring their parents - advice regarding health insurance?

[jefkorn]

What are the health insurance options available to parents who will not be able to work and are around 60 years of age. US Citizen will sponsor them and they will arrive in US after their green card is approved.

Imagine a typical young couple (both working) and received their citizenship. Now they want to sponsor their parents so the parents can come and live with the couple. It looks like if the parents are going to be stay at home types (not educated and can't find work or are unable to work because of health related issues), it will be pretty difficult financially to provide for their health insurance if one has to completely pay out of pocket?

How are rest of the folks accomplishing this feat?

 

[dhlunar]

I would like to know also. My wife wants to sponsor her parents (already filed the I-130, waiting to hear back from USCIS) but she hasn't really considered their health insurance needs.

 

[Jackolantern]

What are the health insurance options available to parents who will not be able to work and are around 60 years of age.

1. Have wealthy relatives
or
2. Go back to the original country when major treatment is needed
or
3. Don't immigrate to the US


#2 would be my plan if my parents move to the US.

 

[jefkorn]

Thank you folks for your feedback.

I didn't think of this as being something serious up until now, meaning getting the health insurance. The major treatment may not really be needed, one of the parents has Hepatitis B and takes medicines on regular basis. The patient could carry sic months worth of medicines and then get more supplies via mail or in person from native country.

Question still remains though for some sort of regular checkups or if need arises to visit a doctor, the parent would need some sort of health insurance.

Since the petitioner is working and receiving the health insurance benefit through employer, never thought of health insurance to be a big issue until now..

I'm sure lot of other USC or soon to be USC in similar situation are waking up to this ugly reality that they can't simply add their parents to their existing policies..it would have been much easier that way ..

Regarding option # 3, one of the advantages of getting the parents first to US may be to reduce the time for siblings to immigrate. In other words if USC were to sponsor their siblings, it might take longer than if the parents sponsored them. Actually it may not be a whole lot of different. First parents need to immigrate (12 months to 18 months for them to land in US, 5 years to apply for citizenship and then become eligible to apply for their children living overseas..meaning it will be roughly 5-6 years before they start the I-130 for their children living overseas. Compare this to a US citizen directly sponsoring his siblings bypassing the parent route, it shaves off the 6 years that it would have taken going through the parent route..

F3 (married children of USC) 22 JAN03
F4 (married siblings of USC) 08 AUG01

For example, if a USC files for siblings today, they may get a priority date of say 2013. But if the parent files for their married children (siblings of USC overseas), the priority date of their application will be 2013 + 6 years = 2018

Looks to me for siblings, the best route might be to go through F4 (Fourth preference) instead of F3(third preference). What do you think?

If parents are to be sponsored, that's fine but parents immigrating to US first and then eventually sponsoring siblings of USC living overseas doesn't speed up the process.

Does this math make sense? I need to look at the priority dates closely for rest of the world and various categories..

 

[Jackolantern]

Permanent resident parents can file for their unmarried adult sons and daughters (category F2B), then upon obtaining citizenship the petition can be upgraded (category F1) and retain the original priority date.

But for their married children, the sibling category (F4) is likely to be faster because of the 5+ year delay for the parents to become citizens before they can file the petition.

 

[jefkorn]

You are right, F4 for married siblings of USC is likely to be faster than F3(married sons and daughters) because of the delay from GC to USC for the petitioner USC parent.

I don't know how accurate this guy's estimator tool is:

http://www.myprioritydate.com/

If the current visa bulleting shows a priority date of say 2001 for F4 (Family 4th Preference), it doesn't necessarily mean that there's 12 years worth of wait untill someone who applies in 2013 will get approved.

Are there any general estimates on the timelines for F4?

This thread is getting little bit off topic, but I have a question about affidavit of support? If USC is sponsoring 4 siblings (all married with kids), how much money does the sponsor need to show for him to be aceptable as the sponsor and have no problem in getting the immigrant visa for the siblings?