Form I-130

Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative is a form submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (or, in the rare case of Direct Consular Filing, to a US consulate or embassy abroad) by a United States citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident petitioning for an immediate or close relative (who is not currently a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident) intending to immigrate to the United States. It is one of numerous USCIS immigration forms. As with all USCIS petitions, the person who submits the petition is called the petitioner and the relative on whose behalf the petition is made is called the beneficiary. The USCIS officer who evaluates the petition is called the adjudicator.
Approval of the petition can be used by the beneficiary to obtain a United States visa in the Immediate Relative (IR) or Family-Based Preference (F) category at a US consulate or embassy abroad, and, once the relative has immigrated to the United States, to obtain a Green Card (i.e., become a Lawful Permanent Resident). For relatives already present in the United States it can be used for Adjustment of Status to that of Lawful Permanent Resident.
For petitions filed by United States citizens, each I-130 petition can be on behalf of only one beneficiary, so a petitioner seeking to petition for multiple relatives (for instance, a spouse and children) must file separate I-130s for each of them. For lawful permanent residents, an exception is made in the case for the beneficiary's unmarried children.
Types of relationship between petitioner and beneficiary.
Form I-130 can be used for the following categories of relatives:
There are two subcategories of the IR category for which Form I-130 is not the appropriate form: IR-3 (orphan adopted abroad by a U.S. citizen) and IR-4 (orphan to be adopted in the U.S. by a U.S. citizen). For these categories, the appropriate forms are I-600 and I-600A (if the orphan is from a non-Hague Convention country) and I-800 and I-800A (if the orphan is from a Hague Convention country).
There are some subcategories of the F category that cannot be specified on Form I-130: these include the minor children of those in the F1-1 category, and the spouses and minor children of those in the F3-1 and F4-1 categories.
Note that Form I-130 "cannot" be used to obtain approval for K visas for fiancé(e)s. The appropriate form for that purpose is Form I-129F, Petition for Alien Fiancé(e).
Relation with the overall immigrant visa process.
While there is only one Form I-130, there are three different ways the form could be used:
Note that for the F category, that has numerical limits, the numerical limits that apply depend both on the category and country of chargeability. Moreover, the order of priority of applications is determined by the date the original Form I-130 petition was received by the USCIS, known as the Priority Date. The Visa Bulletin, published by the Visa Reporting and Control Division of the U.S. Department of State, provides cut-off dates for each category. If the Priority Date is earlier than the cut-off date, then the beneficiary can get an immigrant visa or apply for Adjustment of Status.
Legal Immigration Family Equity Act provisions related to Form I-130.
The Legal Immigration Family Equity Act has provisions targeting beneficiaries of pending or approved Form I-130 petitions. One provision specifically addresses overlooking of unlawful entry or presence for people who otherwise qualify for Adjustment of Status based on a Form I-130 petition filed on or before April 30, 2001. The other two main provisions address the issue of visas and change of non-immigrant status for people who have filed Form I-130 petitions but have still not been able to get visas or adjust status to that of Lawful Permanent Resident.
Filing details.
Forms submitted alongside.
The following forms may be submitted alongside Form I-130:
Addresses.
All (non-DCF) applications from outside the United States, as well as all applications with a concurrent Form I-485 (adjustment of status) "must" be filed with the Chicago lockbox facility. Standalone Form I-130s need to be filed at either the Chicago or the Phoenix lockbox facility, where the choice of facility is determined by the home address of the petitioner used on the form. DCF applications need to be filed at the appropriate U.S. embassy or consulate abroad.
Filing fees.
As of 2017, the filing fee for Form I-130 is $535. There are no filing fees for the accompanying forms that need to be filed along with this form (I-130A and G-1145). However, this fee "does not include":
Statistics.
Rate of petitions, approvals, and denials.
The USCIS releases statistics on a quarterly basis giving information on the number of applications received, approved, denied, and pending in that quarter. Here is the approximate data in most quarters:
The USCIS data on the number of petitions received, accepted, denied, and pending is broken down by service center and field office location.
Processing times.
USCIS processes Form I-130 on a first-come, first-served basis, so at any given time, the date received for the forms that have just finished processing provides a good estimate of processing time. USCIS makes this information available by a combination of form type and service center/field office on its website, and updates the information in the middle of every month, with a lag of 45 days for data quality auditing and control (so for instance the information posted on January 15 will provide processing times and dates as of approximately November 30). USCIS' target processing time for Form I-130 is 5 months, and if the date of the most recently processed form is 5 months or less it simply reports "5 months" otherwise it reports the date (to get the actual processing time, you need to see how far back that date is relative to the date "for" which the processing times and dates are reported). USCIS breaks down Form I-130 into six categories and reports processing times separately for each:
Processing times have in the past gone as high as 9 months according to the USCIS' own estimates, and to as high as 15 months according to the "New York Times", with the temporary increase attributed to the increased workload on the USCIS arising from the introduction of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program announced in June 2012.
Note that these processing times do not include wait times for visa numbers in the case of Form I-130 petitions in the numerically limited F category, which can be quite long in some cases. Also, they do not include the additional time spent processing the Form I-485 at the Field Office (in case the beneficiary is in the United States and applying for Adjustment of Status) or the additional time taken to obtain an immigrant visa after an immigrant visa number is obtained (in the case the beneficiary is not currently in the United States).
For petitions filed with USCIS international offices using Direct Consular Filing, the relevant processing time is that of the international office rather than of a US service center.
Constraints on beneficiary.
While the Form I-130 is pending or after it has been approved and the beneficiary is waiting for an immigrant visa number, the beneficiary is not forbidden from traveling to and from the United States. 
However, if the beneficiary is currently outside the United States and does not have a visa to enter the United States, it may be difficult to obtain a non-immigrant visa because the pending Form I-130 is an indicator of future immigrant intent. The beneficiary may still be able to obtain a B visa by convincing the consular officer that the current visit is temporary. Moreover, those who enter on a temporary business/tourist visa are generally not allowed to transition to a permanent resident status, and trying to file Form I-485 while on a temporary tourist status can risk inadmissibility bars.
Adverse decisions.
Initial response.
The initial response from the USCIS to a Form I-130 is one of these four:
In the case of a RFE or NOID, the petitioner's response will be taken into account by the USCIS when deciding whether to approve or deny the petition.
Concurrent filing: Stokes interview case.
In case 1, where the beneficiary is already in the United States and the Form I-130 is filed concurrently with the Form I-485, the petitioner and beneficiary are initially interviewed jointly by a USCIS officer. If, based on the joint interview or other reasons, the USCIS officer is suspicious about the petition, he or she may require a Stokes interview, where the petitioner and beneficiary are interviewed separately about their relationship and the responses of both are compared. The Stokes interview is generally used for marriage petitions (IR-1 and F2-1).
Standalone filing: revocation of petition and Notice of Intent to Revoke.
Based on new evidence suggesting that the original petition was fraudulent, the USCIS may issue a revocation of petition (i.e., revoke the petition entirely) or send the petitioner a Notice of Intent to Revoke, to which the petitioner may respond with additional evidence or challenge the reasons. The typical impetus for the USCIS to reconsider an approved petition is when a United States consular officer evaluating the beneficiary's visa application based on the petition encounters evidence suggesting that the petition was fraudulent. If the consular office finds such evidence, he or she returns the petition to USCIS along with the reasons the petition appears fraudulent, and issues a Section 221(g) quasi-refusal to the applicant (note that this is relevant to cases 2 and 3, and not to case 1 where the beneficiary is already in the United States). The following are worth noting:
Appeals process.
Appeals for Form I-130 (both denial and revocation) are handled by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). BIA is part of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is under the United States Department of Justice, a separate federal government agency from USCIS' parent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A petitioner who believes that his or her petition was incorrectly denied or revoked can file Form EOIR-29 with the USCIS to have an appeal heard by the BIA. 
This is in contrast with the appeals process for the vast majority of USCIS immigration forms is handled by the USCIS's Administrative Appeals Office, with which the petitioner is required to file Form I-290B.
In case of an unfavorable BIA decision, the petitioner can appeal the decision in the United States judicial system. This is supported by the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act, that states that United States citizens and residents adversely affected by government agencies can appeal the decisions in the judicial system.
The USCIS does not handle appeals for denials and revocations of visa applications based on approved USCIS petitions. Due to the doctrine of consular nonreviewability, visa denials and revocations can generally not be appealed in the United States judicial system, though there are some exceptions.