Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) Age Calculator

An introduction to CSPA age and the aging-out problem

A person qualifies as a child for United States immigration purposes only while unmarried and under twenty-one years of age (INA 101(b)(1)). Because family-sponsored and employment-based preference queues routinely run for years, a beneficiary who was plainly a child when the petition was filed can be well past twenty-one by the time a visa number is finally reachable. Congress addressed that mismatch in the Child Status Protection Act, Pub. L. 107-208, signed on August 6, 2002. For preference principals and derivatives the Act did not freeze age outright; instead, INA 203(h)(1) (8 U.S.C. 1153(h)(1)) directs that age be measured on the date an immigrant visa number becomes available and then reduced by the number of days the applicable petition was pending, provided the beneficiary sought to acquire lawful permanent resident status within one year of that availability.

This calculator implements that statutory subtraction literally and in whole days, using the two dates printed on your Form I-797 notices and the Final Action Dates chart of the Department of State Visa Bulletin. It reports the resulting CSPA age in years, months and days rather than as a rounded decimal, because the twenty-one-year threshold is frequently decided by a margin of days. It also reports the two dates that actually control planning: the one-year sought-to-acquire deadline, and the aging-out horizon, meaning the last calendar date on which a visa could become available and still leave the beneficiary under twenty-one after the deduction. Everything runs in the browser; no case data leaves the page.

Two policy details matter enough to state up front. First, a different rule applies to immediate relatives: under INA 201(f), added by section 2 of the same Act, the child of a United States citizen has their age fixed on the petition filing date and there is no sought-to-acquire requirement, so the subtraction below simply does not apply to IR-2 cases. Second, USCIS changed its position on which Visa Bulletin chart establishes availability, moved to the Dates for Filing chart on February 14, 2023, and then reversed course: under the policy alert issued August 8, 2025 and effective for requests filed on or after August 15, 2025, USCIS again reads availability from the Final Action Dates chart, aligning with the Department of State. Adjustment applications already pending with USCIS before August 15, 2025 keep the benefit of the 2023 guidance.

How to use this CSPA calculator with your I-797 notices and the Visa Bulletin

1. Enter the beneficiary's date of birth exactly as it appears on the birth certificate used in the case.
2. Enter the petition receipt date from the Form I-797C receipt notice for the Form I-130, I-140 or I-360 that confers the classification. Do not substitute the priority date: in employment-based cases the priority date is usually the labor certification filing date and is earlier, which would inflate the deduction.
3. Enter the petition approval date from the Form I-797 approval notice. If the petition went through a motion or an appeal to USCIS before final approval, that administrative review time is already inside the receipt-to-approval span and needs no separate entry.
4. Enter the date the priority date first became current under Final Action Dates. For an oversubscribed category this is the first day of the Visa Bulletin month in which the priority date is earlier than the listed cut-off date, so it will normally be the first of a month. If the category showed C when the petition was approved, enter the approval date instead.
5. Optionally enter the date you sought to acquire status, that is, the date Form DS-260 or Form I-485 was filed, or the date the DS-260 or I-864 fee was paid. Leave it blank to see the deadline without an assessment.
6. Read the CSPA age, the protection verdict, the deadline and the aging-out horizon, then use the retrogression what-if table to see how the answer would change if the case does not stay current.

The calculator deliberately has no field for discretionary extra credit. Neither INA 203(h) nor the agency guidance allows an applicant to invent additional deductible days for lockbox rejections, mailing delays or a retrogression pause; the only deductible quantity is the receipt-to-approval span of the qualifying petition. Retrogression is handled where the law actually places it, in the sought-to-acquire timeline and in the choice of availability date, not as a subtraction from age.

The INA 203(h) formula and how each term in it is measured

Write for the date of birth, for the petition receipt date, for the petition approval date, and for the date the priority date first became current on the Final Action Dates chart. The visa availability date is the later of the two events that must both have happened before a number can be used:

Formula: D_v = max(D_c, D_a)

The pending period is a count of whole days between two dates on paper, with no adjustment and no added day:

Formula: P = D_a − D_f

The statute then says the CSPA age is the age on reduced by days. Because an age is not a number you can subtract days from without ambiguity, the operation is implemented exactly as the statute describes it, by moving the measurement date back:

Formula: R = D_v − P days

Formula: A_CSPA = calendar age of the beneficiary on R

Here is the reduced reference date. Computing the calendar age on is what keeps leap days honest. A decimal-year shortcut that divides elapsed days by 365.25 or 365.2425 drifts by up to a day or two over a twenty-year span, and a case decided by a two-day margin is exactly the case that reaches a CSPA calculation, so this page does not use one.

The protection test is a strict inequality against the twenty-first birthday , which is the calendar anniversary :

Formula: protected ⇔ R < B_21

The sought-to-acquire deadline is one calendar year after availability, not 365 days after it. The difference is real: an availability date of March 1, 2027 yields a deadline of March 1, 2028, whereas adding 365 days would land on February 29, 2028 and understate the window by a day.

Formula: D_deadline = D_v + 1 year

Rearranging the protection test gives the planning quantity this page calls the aging-out horizon: the latest availability date that still leaves the beneficiary under twenty-one after the deduction.

Formula: D_horizon = B_21 + P − 1 day

For immediate relatives the machinery collapses. INA 201(f)(1) fixes the determination at the filing date, so and no sought-to-acquire clock runs at all. INA 201(f)(2) and 201(f)(3) substitute the parent's naturalization date or the date a marriage legally terminated where a petition converts for those reasons.

One consequence of the strict inequality deserves emphasis. Because is fixed once the petition is approved, the CSPA age advances day for day with the availability date. Every month the Final Action Date fails to reach the priority date is a month added to the CSPA age, which is why a beneficiary can be protected on one Visa Bulletin and unprotected two bulletins later.

A worked example: an F2A derivative whose true age has already passed 21

A lawful permanent resident files a Form I-130 for a spouse in the F2A category, and their child is a derivative beneficiary under INA 203(d). The child was born on March 14, 2005. The Form I-797C receipt notice shows a receipt date of August 2, 2016; a request for evidence and a long queue delayed adjudication, and the Form I-797 approval notice is dated November 27, 2019. The priority date first becomes current on the Final Action Dates chart of the April 2026 Visa Bulletin, so availability begins April 1, 2026. The family files Form DS-260 for the child on June 15, 2026.

Start with the pending period. From August 2, 2016 to November 27, 2019 is three years, three months and twenty-five days, which is days once the leap day of February 29, 2020 is correctly excluded and the leap day of February 29, 2016 is correctly counted as already past. The availability date is . On that date the child's true age is 21 years, 0 months and 18 days, so without the CSPA the child has already aged out.

Now apply the reduction. Moving the measurement date back 1,212 days from April 1, 2026 gives the reduced reference date:

Formula: R = 2026-04-01 − 1212 days = 2022-12-06

The child's calendar age on December 6, 2022 is 17 years, 8 months and 22 days, which is the CSPA age. Because December 6, 2022 falls well before the twenty-first birthday of March 14, 2026, the child is a child for immigration purposes. The sought-to-acquire deadline is April 1, 2027, and the DS-260 filed on June 15, 2026 lands 290 days inside it. The aging-out horizon is : even if the category retrogressed for three more years, the child would stay protected as long as a visa became available on or before July 7, 2029.

Two contrasts make the arithmetic vivid. Had the same family used the decimal-year shortcut of 1212 divided by 365.2425, the deduction would read 3.32 years and the CSPA age would be quoted as roughly 17.75 years, a number that is impossible to compare against a birthday and that hides a one-day error. Had they added a spurious day to the pending period, the reference date would move to December 5, 2022 and the horizon to July 8, 2029, a discrepancy small enough to survive review and large enough to lose a case decided at the margin.

Comparison of CSPA treatment across immigrant categories

The subtraction above governs preference cases. Other categories use entirely different rules, and applying the wrong one is the most common structural error in CSPA analysis. The table summarises the treatment set out in INA 201(f), INA 203(h) and the Department of State guidance at 9 FAM 502.1-1(D).

Note the F2A conversion rule that sits alongside the table. If a lawful permanent resident petitioner naturalises while an F2A petition is pending and the beneficiary's true age is under twenty-one on the naturalisation date, the petition converts to IR-2 and the age is frozen there instead. If the true age is over twenty-one, the petition converts to F1, and in the Second and Ninth Circuits, following Cuthill v. Blinken and Tovar v. Sessions, the CSPA age computed as of the naturalisation date may be used in place of the true age. This calculator does not model conversions; enter the dates for the classification actually in force.

Reading the result and the retrogression what-if table

The headline output is a CSPA age in years, months and days together with a verdict. A verdict of protected means only that the first of the two statutory conditions is met on the dates supplied. The second condition, seeking to acquire lawful permanent resident status within one year, is tested separately and reported separately, because a beneficiary with a CSPA age of sixteen still loses protection by missing the deadline. Conversely, the Department of State treats action taken before availability as satisfying the requirement, so an early DS-260 or a fee payment made while the category was still backlogged counts.

The retrogression what-if table answers the question families actually ask, which is not what happens today but what happens if the case does not stay current. It recomputes the CSPA age at availability dates six, twelve, twenty-four and thirty-six months later than the one entered, and marks the point at which protection would be lost. That reflects the operative rule at 9 FAM 502.1-1(D)(9): if a category retrogresses before the beneficiary has had a full year of availability and the beneficiary did not act, the clock restarts and the age is recalculated on the new availability date. The aging-out horizon in the summary panel is the exact boundary that the table samples.

The timeline drawing places the receipt date, the approval date, the reduced reference date, the twenty-first birthday and the availability date on one axis so that the size of the deduction is visible at a glance. When the reduced reference date sits to the left of the birthday marker, the beneficiary is protected; when it crosses to the right, protection has been lost. The comma-separated summary can be downloaded to attach to a case file.

Limitations and assumptions built into this CSPA estimate

This page is informational and is not legal advice. USCIS and the Department of State make the actual CSPA determination, and a consular officer or adjudicator may reach a different conclusion on the same dates. The following assumptions are baked into the arithmetic and should be checked against the case file.

• Preference cases only. The subtraction implemented here applies to family and employment preference principals and derivatives. Immediate relative, widow or widower, asylee and refugee cases follow the freeze rules in the comparison table and will be computed wrongly if entered here.
• Chart and policy era. Availability is read from the Final Action Dates chart, matching the Department of State practice and the USCIS position for requests filed on or after August 15, 2025. An adjustment application that was already pending with USCIS before that date may instead be governed by the February 14, 2023 guidance, under which the Dates for Filing chart could establish availability and would usually produce an earlier availability date, a lower CSPA age and an earlier deadline.
• One availability event. The calculator evaluates a single availability date. A case that became current, retrogressed and became current again may have several, and each one restarts a full year. Use the what-if table to test the later dates rather than trying to encode a pause.
• No discretionary credits. Only the receipt-to-approval span is deducted. Motions and appeals to USCIS are already inside that span; consular return time, labor certification processing and time waiting for a priority date are not deductible at all.
• Diversity visa cases need substitute dates. For a DV derivative, enter the first day of the entry period as the receipt date and the selection notification date as the approval date, per 9 FAM 502.1-1(D)(5)(a)(4).
• Leap-day births. Anniversaries are computed by clamping to the last day of the target month, so a person born on February 29 is treated as reaching an anniversary on February 28 in a non-leap year. A different convention shifts the result by one day; flag such a case for professional review.
• Calendar scope. Dates are parsed as UTC calendar dates with no time component, which removes any daylight-saving or local-timezone drift, and the proleptic Gregorian calendar is assumed throughout. The CSPA itself applies only as provided in section 8 of Pub. L. 107-208, so cases finally decided before August 6, 2002 are outside its reach.
• Marriage. Marriage ends child status regardless of CSPA age. The calculator does not ask about marital status and cannot detect this.

Frequently asked questions about CSPA age

Sources and policy update dates

Primary sources relied on for the formula, the definitions and the policy position on this page:

• Child Status Protection Act, Pub. L. 107-208, 116 Stat. 927 (Aug. 6, 2002), U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo. Sections 2 and 3 add INA 201(f) and INA 203(h).
• 8 U.S.C. 1153(h) (INA 203(h)), United States Code, govinfo: age on the date a visa number becomes available, reduced by the number of days the petition was pending, and the one-year sought-to-acquire condition.
• U.S. Department of State, Foreign Affairs Manual, 9 FAM 502.1-1(D), Child Status Protection Act. Calculation of CSPA age at 9 FAM 502.1-1(D)(5) (CT:VISA-2163, updated July 3, 2025); sought-to-acquire actions at 9 FAM 502.1-1(D)(8) (CT:VISA-2163, July 3, 2025); retrogression at 9 FAM 502.1-1(D)(9) (CT:VISA-3004, November 27, 2024).
• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Policy Manual, Volume 7, Part A, Chapter 7 (Child Status Protection Act), 7 USCIS-PM A.7(F) to A.7(H). Policy updates: February 14, 2023 (visa availability read from the chart USCIS was accepting filings under), August 24, 2023 (the 2023 change treated as an extraordinary circumstance), and August 8, 2025, effective for requests filed on or after August 15, 2025, restoring the Final Action Dates chart as the sole measure of availability.
• U.S. Department of State, Visa Bulletin, for the Final Action Dates (Chart A) used to establish the availability date.

Informational only, not legal advice, and not affiliated with USCIS or the Department of State. USCIS and the Department of State make the actual CSPA determination on your case. Verify every date against your Form I-797 notices and the Visa Bulletin, and consult a licensed immigration attorney or an accredited representative before acting.