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APPLICATION ANSWERS · GOLD CARD FIELD GUIDE

Do all relatives share the principal’s eligibility automatically?

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THE DIRECT ANSWER

No. Review official family terms and each person’s circumstances individually. Current official terms add a US$15,000 processing fee and US$1,000,000 gift for each eligible joining spouse or unmarried child under 21, including corporate cases; confirm individual eligibility and the operative instructions.

Record the intended applicants

Relationships, ages and proposed inclusion need confirmation. A common residence objective does not establish the same immigration outcome for everyone. Hypothetical example: a public-radio engineering director who wants to include a spouse and a nineteen-year-old child.

At a first review, the first review should list every intended family member and test inclusion under the current official instructions rather than household expectations. The records most likely to settle that point are marriage and birth records, passports, age evidence, individual application information, and payment obligations per person. Sequence the work deliberately: decide who will be included before submitting the initial application, then update planning if a person’s facts change.

A common error is assuming a relative can be added later without checking the operative age, relationship, and process conditions; that error matters because a conclusion based on incomplete or mismatched facts may not carry to the final arrangement. Write down the decision that remains after the review, the fact that could change it, and the record needed to resolve that fact. This creates a usable file rather than a collection of documents that cannot be connected to the actual plan.