Who Cannot Adjust Status From Inside the U.S.: The Section 245 Bars

Index

• Key Takeaways
• What Section 245(a) Requires
• Entry Without Inspection: The Threshold That Holds
• The Bars in Section 245(c)
• Who Is Exempt, and What the Exemption Actually Covers
• Section 245(i): Who Is Still Grandfathered
• Clearing the Statute Is No Longer the Whole Test
• If a Bar Applies: What the Route Abroad Costs
• Start With the Entry Record
• Sources

Not everyone physically present in the United States is permitted to adjust status. Section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act is two provisions, and applicants usually read only the first. Subsection (a) sets out what a person needs in order to apply for a green card from inside the country. Subsection (c) sets out who cannot adjust status anyway, even after meeting every requirement in (a).

Most F2A denials filed from inside the country come from subsection (c). The applicant had an approved petition, a current priority date, and a genuine marriage. What they did not have was continuous lawful status.

This guide works through both provisions in the order USCIS applies them, and sets out what remains possible when a bar applies. For the category itself, see our F2A guide.

Key Takeaways

• The immediate relative exemption does not reach entry without inspection. It is an exemption from the 245(c) bars only. A U.S. citizen’s spouse who crossed the border without being inspected still cannot adjust status.
• For F2A, lawful status on the filing date is itself a requirement. A gap that opened and closed years ago can still block a filing made today.
• There is no 180-day forgiveness in family cases. Section 245(k) excuses limited violations for employment-based applicants. Family preference has no equivalent, and unauthorized work of any duration counts.
• Section 245(i) grandfathering attaches to the person, not the petition. The qualifying filing from 2001 or earlier can have been made by a different relative, in a different category, and need never have been approved.
• Since May 2026, meeting the statute no longer ends the analysis. USCIS has directed officers to treat adjustment as discretionary, which means a clean statutory record and an affirmative equities record are now two different things.

What Section 245(a) Requires

Three conditions, which must hold both when the application is filed and when it is decided.

Inspected and Admitted, or Paroled

The applicant must have been presented to an immigration officer at a port of entry and either admitted or paroled. The Form I-94 arrival record is the evidence, and the first document to retrieve when testing whether someone can adjust status.

Admission and parole are legally different but both satisfy this condition. A valid visa does not. A visa is permission to travel to a port of entry and request admission; the admission itself is a separate act, recorded on the I-94.

An Immigrant Visa Immediately Available

A number must be available in the category at the time of filing. For F2A that is governed by the Visa Bulletin and, for applicants inside the country, by which chart USCIS authorizes that month — the mechanics are in how to read the Visa Bulletin. If the date moves backward after filing, the application is not lost. It waits.

Admissible to the United States

Grounds of inadmissibility under section 212(a) — health, criminal history, security, public charge, fraud, prior immigration violations — are assessed separately from section 245. An applicant can satisfy every part of 245 and still be refused here, and the waivers available differ by ground.

Entry Without Inspection: The Threshold That Holds

Someone who crossed the border without presenting themselves to an officer was never inspected and admitted or paroled. The first requirement of 245(a) is unmet, and adjustment of status is unavailable.

This is a statutory threshold rather than a factor to be weighed. It is not cured by twenty years of residence, by U.S. citizen children, by an approved I-130, or by a category that has gone current.

One provision changes the answer: section 245(i), below. A later lawful admission or parole can also, but leaving the country to obtain one carries its own consequences under the reentry bars and in some circumstances triggers a bar with no waiver at all. Do not treat departure as a fix.

The Bars in Section 245(c)

Subsection (a) is what you need. Subsection (c) is who is excluded despite having it. Three of its bars reach family preference cases, and they do most of the damage in F2A files.

• Being in unlawful immigration status on the date the application is filed
• Failure to maintain continuously a lawful status since entry, other than through no fault of one’s own or for technical reasons
• Having accepted unauthorized employment at any point before filing

Entry as a nonimmigrant crewman, admission in transit without a visa, and certain security-related grounds also bar adjustment of status.

What a Break in Status Looks Like

The governing date is the one on the I-94, not the expiration printed on the visa. A visa can remain valid for years after the authorized stay has ended, and relying on it is among the most common ways a gap goes unnoticed.

The breaks that appear in F2A files are ordinary. An F-1 student who dropped below a full course load. An H-1B worker who stayed past the grace period. A B-2 visitor whose extension was filed late. Each ends lawful status on the date it happens, and the consequence surfaces years later at the I-485.

Unauthorized Employment

There is no duration threshold. Work performed without authorization counts whether it lasted three years or three weeks, and it includes self-employment, cash work, and contract or platform work that was never reported.

The Narrow Exception

The statute excuses a failure to maintain status that occurred “through no fault of his own or for technical reasons.” USCIS reads this narrowly: agency error, reasonable reliance on an employer or school that failed to act, or a technical violation outside the applicant’s control.

It is not a general fairness provision, and brevity or good intentions do not bring a violation within it. Whether a particular gap fits is a question for counsel, supported by documents.

Not sure whether a gap in your status blocks the filing?

Send us the I-94, the entry stamps, and the status history. We will tell you which provision applies before you pay a filing fee to find out.

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Who Is Exempt, and What the Exemption Actually Covers

Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens — a spouse, an unmarried child under 21, or a parent of a citizen aged 21 or over — are exempt from the 245(c) bars, as are certain special immigrant categories. F2A is a preference category and receives no such exemption, as the category guide explains.

The scope of that exemption is where families most often go wrong. It runs to subsection (c) and nothing else. It forgives an overstay, a lapse in status, and unauthorized employment; it does not touch the lawful entry requirement. An immediate relative who entered without inspection is in the same position as anyone else who did.

Self-petitioners under the Violence Against Women Act, asylees, refugees, and holders of U and T status adjust status under separate provisions and are outside the scope of this guide.

One consequence follows directly. If the petitioning spouse naturalizes, an F2A spouse converts to immediate relative and the 245(c) bars fall away with the conversion. The entry requirement does not. Naturalization solves an overstay; it does not solve an entry without inspection.

Section 245(i): Who Is Still Grandfathered

A grandfathering provision allows a limited group to adjust status despite bars that would otherwise be fatal — including, unusually, the lawful entry requirement. It is the only route that reaches an entry without inspection from inside the country.

The conditions are fixed by dates that have not moved in a quarter century. A qualifying immigrant petition or labor certification must have been filed on the applicant’s behalf on or before April 30, 2001, and if that filing came after January 14, 1998, the principal must also have been physically present in the United States on December 21, 2000. Adjustment then requires Supplement A to Form I-485 and a $1,000 statutory sum, which is not a fee and cannot be waived.

Two features are routinely misremembered, and both favor the applicant. Grandfathering attaches to the person rather than the petition, so the 2001 filing can have been made by a different relative in a different category and still be used today alongside a separate petition. And the old petition need never have been approved — only properly filed and approvable when filed.

Clearing the Statute Is No Longer the Whole Test

On May 21, 2026, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, reframing adjustment as a matter of discretion and administrative grace rather than the ordinary route to permanent residence for people already in the country.

The memorandum does not create new eligibility requirements, remove any category, or prohibit filing. It directs officers to weigh discretion as a separate step, so an applicant who satisfies 245(a) and is not barred by 245(c) can still be denied. Implementing guidance is developing and the policy is contested.

We cover what the memorandum says, and what it does not, in a dedicated analysis of the 2026 adjustment policy and a recorded session on the change. The practical point here is narrow: a record clean enough to file is no longer automatically a record strong enough to approve, and the equities in an F2A case now deserve to be documented rather than assumed.

If a Bar Applies: What the Route Abroad Costs

When adjustment of status is unavailable, the immigrant visa is pursued at a consulate abroad — our comparison of the two routes sets out how each works. For a beneficiary who has accrued unlawful presence, that route carries a cost attached to the departure itself.

Leaving after more than 180 days of unlawful presence triggers a three-year bar on returning; more than one year triggers a ten-year bar. The bar attaches on departure, which is why a case that looks manageable while the applicant stays put becomes a years-long separation the moment they board a plane. A separate and harsher provision, not reached by the provisional waiver, applies to someone who accrued more than a year in total, or was ordered removed, and then reentered or tried to reenter without being admitted.

The Provisional Waiver

Form I-601A allows an eligible applicant to obtain a decision on the unlawful presence ground before leaving, so the departure and the consular interview happen with the waiver already approved. The standard is extreme hardship to a qualifying relative, and a lawful permanent resident spouse qualifies — precisely the petitioner in an F2A case.

It waives unlawful presence and nothing else. Where there is also fraud, a criminal ground, or a prior removal order, a further application is required — our guide to Form I-601 and the extreme hardship standard explains which is which.

Start With the Entry Record

Nearly every question on this page is already answered by documents the family has. Eligibility to adjust status is determined by events that happened years before the petition was filed, and the record is what an attorney reads first.

Gather four things before doing anything else. The I-94 and any entry stamps. A complete status history with dates. An honest account of any work performed and when. And any immigration paperwork filed for anyone in the family on or before April 30, 2001.

Those four items settle the question faster than any processing-time estimate. Gozel Law Firm PC handles family petitions and the eligibility problems around them, including adjust status analysis, waiver strategy, and action when a case sits at USCIS too long.

Sources

Verified as of September 22, 2026. Immigration rules change frequently. Confirm current requirements against the primary sources below before acting.

1. Cornell Legal Information Institute — 8 U.S.C. § 1255, Adjustment of Status (INA § 245)
2. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations — 8 CFR Part 245, Adjustment of Status to That of Person Admitted for Permanent Residence
3. USCIS Policy Manual — Volume 7, Part B: 245(a) Adjustment
4. USCIS Policy Manual — Volume 7, Part C: 245(i) Adjustment
5. USCIS — Instructions for Supplement A to Form I-485, Adjustment of Status Under Section 245(i)
6. USCIS — Adjustment of Status
7. USCIS — Form I-601A, Application for Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver
8. USCIS Policy Manual — Volume 8, Part O: Registration Requirement and Unlawful Presence
9. U.S. Customs and Border Protection — I-94 Arrival/Departure Record Retrieval
10. American Immigration Lawyers Association — Featured Issue: New Policy on Adjustment of Status as Act of Extraordinary Discretion (June 2026)