Principal Applicants, Derivative Family Members, and Category Codes

01

Derivative Applicants in Employment-Based Categories

USCIS explains that the spouse or unmarried children under age 21 of an employment-based immigrant principal applicant may apply for green cards as derivative applicants. Derivative applicants must meet the official requirements, such as the principal applicant having obtained or being in the process of obtaining permanent resident status, visa availability, and the derivative applicant being admissible.

02

How Codes Reflect Roles

Statistical codes typically combine “category + role + method of obtaining status.” Take the EB-5 regional center rural set-aside in this website’s data as an example: RR6 denotes the principal applicant, RR7 the principal applicant’s spouse, and RR8 the principal applicant’s children; all are conditional permanent residents who obtained status through adjustment within the United States. These relationships come from this website’s existing evidence-supported relationship data, rather than inferences based on letter patterns.

Similarly, E14 and E15 denote, respectively, the spouses and children of EB-1 principal applicants in categories such as E11–E13 (admission through consular processing). Not all codes follow the same numbering pattern; when reading them, rely on the definition and sources on each code’s page.

03

Immediate Relative Categories Have No Derivative Beneficiaries

Unlike employment-based or family-sponsored preference categories, USCIS makes clear that the spouse or children of an immediate relative of a U.S. citizen cannot qualify as derivative beneficiaries; they must independently qualify and apply on their own. This point is explained in detail in the “Family-Based Immigration” section.