One of the requirements in your immigration process is that you would receive or have completed rather a medical exam. For this medical exam, we’ll discuss medical exams as they relate to the adjustment of status process.

An adjustment of status is a process that is completed inside of the United States. Someone who’s completing adjustment of status is married to a United States citizen and both the immigrant and the petitioner, the United States citizen, are living in the United States.

The entire process for the green card would happen in the United States. With that adjustment of status process, there is a medical exam that is required.  There’s been a lot of rumors that say, “I was told or I read that the medical exam is only valid for 60 days.”

Medical exams for adjustment of status cannot be more than 60 days old at the time that you file for your green card. That’s where the 60 days come in. The truth is that it can’t be more than 60 days old at the time you file your application.

Once you receive your medical exam and it’s filed with your application or once your immigration application is filed and you receive your medical exam, it’s valid for two years.

There’s a ton of documents that our clients need to collect. A lot of relationship evidence and financial evidence that has to be collected. We know the medical exam, once the client obtains it, it’s only good for 60 days. We tell our clients to wait on getting the medical exam.

Or if we know they happen to live in a state where it’s a bit of a longer wait to get the medical exam, we’ll have them go ahead and schedule it. But we make sure that when we file the application, the medical exam is not more than 60 days old.

We always make sure that we are working with the client to get the application filed first, not get the medical exam first. Often what we do is we will file the application without the medical exam. You don’t actually have to file your application with that medical exam. You can take it to the interview.

What we prefer to do with our clients is work on getting relationship evidence and financial evidence and prepare the adjustment of status application. If you’re able to get a medical exam quickly, then you’ll go ahead and get it. We can send it with the application. But if not, let’s not hold things up.

We go ahead and send the application when the medical exam is completed. The client will hang on to it. It’s in a sealed envelope that shouldn’t be opened and then you’ll receive a notice from immigration called a deficiency notice.

It’s not a bad thing and immigration knows you might decide to send it and bring it to the interview. And then, immigration will either have you mail it in separately or take that medical exam with you to the interview. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that your application is 100% ready to send then work on the medical exam, knowing you can either take it with you later to the interview or send it in later.

That’s not a required component to be able to send the application. Once that medical exam is completed, it’s valid for two years. Sometimes officers could decide that they want you to have another medical exam even if it’s not more than two years old. That’s unlikely.

What we see is that clients take their medical exam to the interview, the officer asks for it, we give them the medical exam, and everything is fine on that front because it’s valid for two years. There’s an old rule from 2018 that used to say the medical exam was only good for a year but that’s been changed to two years.