An I-130 denied because the petitioner did not meet the burden: what the decision settles, and what it leaves open

Three things can follow a denial, and they are not variations on each other. Each asks a different question of a different body, and they are described here definitionally rather than comparatively, because which one fits a given decision is exactly the judgement this page will not attempt.

An appeal asks a different body to review the decision. For an I-130, that body is the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the section below covers where it is filed, which is the step most often got wrong.

A motion to reopen asks the office that decided the case to look again in light of new facts, supported by affidavits or other documentary evidence. Before USCIS, new means not previously submitted in the proceeding; there is no separate requirement to show the material could not have been found earlier. Evidence already in the file, resubmitted, does not meet it.

A motion to reconsider asks the same office to find that the decision misapplied law or policy to the record as it already stood. New evidence has no place in it. The two motions can be combined in one filing, and both are made to USCIS on Form I-290B rather than to the Board.

This is the detail that costs people their window, because the general USCIS appeal form is not the right one. Form I-290B, which covers appeals and motions across much of the agency's work, cannot be used to take an I-130 denial to the Board; USCIS says so in its own I-290B materials. The Board's appellate jurisdiction over petitions filed under section 204 comes from 8 CFR 1003.1(b)(5), and the notice of appeal from a decision of a Department of Homeland Security officer is Form EOIR-29.

An appeal is not sent to the Board. Under 8 CFR 1003.3(a)(2) it is filed with the Department of Homeland Security, which forwards the record, and the Board's own practice manual and the face of the form both say not to post it to the Board directly. USCIS added filing-location guidance for Form EOIR-29 in May 2026 directing it to a lockbox rather than to the office that issued the decision, so the address to use is the one on the USCIS page for the form on the day of filing rather than the address printed on the denial.

Timeliness is measured by receipt rather than by postmark, which removes the margin people assume they have. Sources disagree about whether service by post adds days to the period, and that disagreement is a reason to work to the shorter reading and to file early rather than to bank on the longer one.

Fees for this filing were quoted inconsistently across sources at the time of writing, so no figure appears here. The amount is on the official pages for the form, and it is worth checking on the day rather than relying on any secondary summary.

Only the petitioner may appeal. A beneficiary has no standing to bring one, which surprises people whose spouse is the person most affected by the outcome. And this route is specific to the I-130: other petitions that look adjacent, including orphan and several special immigrant petitions, are reviewed by the Administrative Appeals Office instead, so guidance written about them does not transfer.

A decision that the petitioner did not meet the burden of proof is a finding about a record. The standard is preponderance of the evidence, and the burden sits with the petitioner, which is the proposition Matter of Brantigan is cited for in these notices.

A finding under section 204(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act is a different thing entirely. It requires substantial and probative evidence, a standard the Board has placed above preponderance and below clear and convincing, that the beneficiary entered into, attempted, or conspired to enter into a marriage to evade the immigration laws. Where it applies it is permanent, it cannot be waived, and it bars approval of later petitions, including ones filed by a different petitioner and including employment-based ones. It also does not require that an earlier case made the finding: it can be made in the case being decided. The Board has applied the provision where no marriage ever took place.

So the two possibilities point in opposite directions, and a reader has an obvious incentive to conclude they received the milder one.

This page will not help anyone work out which they received, and the reason is that both errors are severe and neither is recoverable by trying again. Someone who wrongly concludes the bar does not apply may spend months and filing fees on a petition that could never be approved, and may put further sworn statements on the record while doing it. Someone who wrongly concludes it does apply may abandon a case that was answerable. Deciding which is which means reading the whole decision against the file it came from, and that is the work of a lawyer or an accredited representative, which is why this page ends the question here rather than offering a checklist of phrases to look for.

An adjustment application filed on the basis of a petition cannot be approved once the petition supporting it is gone, and USCIS will ordinarily deny it in consequence. Employment authorisation and advance parole obtained through that pending application are tied to the application rather than standing on their own.

One trap here is worth naming because it is counterintuitive and it is permanent. A pending adjustment application cannot be moved onto a replacement petition after the original has been denied. Where a substitution is possible at all, the replacement has to be filed and designated as the basis while the original petition is still valid. By the time a denial has arrived, that door has closed, and a reader who assumes the adjustment application can simply be re-pointed at a fresh petition is planning around something that does not exist.

There is no appeal to the Administrative Appeals Office from a USCIS denial of an adjustment application. A motion to USCIS is available, and where removal proceedings are commenced the application can generally be renewed before an immigration judge, who then holds jurisdiction over it. Whether proceedings follow is a separate question: a Notice to Appear may be issued after an adjustment denial where no authorised stay remains, issuance is not automatic, and proceedings begin when the notice is filed with the court rather than when it is served.

A good number of people reach a page like this after the date on their notice has passed, and a page written only for those still inside the window either misleads them or reads as a verdict.

A lapsed period closes the routes that depend on it. It does not, by itself, make the underlying relationship unprovable or foreclose a fresh petition, and the flat claim that a missed deadline makes a denial permanently final is wrong often enough to be worth contradicting. What a lapsed period does mean is that the remaining questions are narrower and more technical, which raises rather than lowers the value of advice on the specific file.

The one thing a lapsed period never means is that the section 204(c) question has gone away. That determination attaches to the beneficiary and travels forward regardless of what happened to any particular window.

Matter of Brantigan appears in these decisions for a narrow proposition: in visa petition proceedings the burden of establishing eligibility rests on the petitioner. It is a 1966 Board decision and it is cited accurately when used that way.

It settles who has to prove the case rather than how convincingly. The standard is preponderance of the evidence, more likely than not, which comes from Matter of Chawathe. And it governs petition proceedings before USCIS rather than removal proceedings, where the allocation of proof is different. A denial resting on Brantigan is therefore describing a shortfall in a record, which is a smaller statement than it sounds like when read cold.