## Facts

- A U.S. citizen petitioner was born out of wedlock in the British West Indies in 1928; his natural parents never married, and his mother left when he was an infant.
- The petitioner and his father later lived in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles; in 1942, the father married a woman who became the petitioner’s stepmother while the petitioner was still a minor.
- The beneficiary was born in Curaçao in 1953 to the petitioner’s father and the stepmother, making her the petitioner’s half-sibling by blood through the father, and also connected through the petitioner’s step-relationship with the beneficiary’s mother.
- The beneficiary entered the United States in 1971 as a nonimmigrant student and lived with the petitioner; the petitioner filed an I-130 in 1974 seeking to classify her as his “sister” under INA § 203(a)(5).
- The District Director denied the petition, concluding the petitioner had not been legitimated under Curaçao law and thus the parties were not “children” of a common parent for sibling classification.
- On appeal, the petitioner submitted materials on Curaçao law to support a legitimation theory and alternatively argued the parties qualified as siblings through the stepmother/mother relationship.

## Issues

1. Whether, under Curaçao law, a father’s acknowledgment of paternity without marriage to the mother legitimated a child for purposes of INA § 101(b)(1)(C).
2. What conditions must exist for two persons to qualify as “stepsiblings” for sibling preference classification, including when the continuing existence of the marriage creating the step-relationship is uncertain.

## Decision

- The BIA sustained the appeal and ordered approval of the visa petition classifying the beneficiary as the petitioner’s sister under INA § 203(a)(5).
- The BIA held that under Curaçao law, legitimation of a child born out of wedlock requires the subsequent marriage of the natural parents plus prior or contemporaneous acknowledgment; acknowledgment alone was insufficient, so the petitioner was not legitimated under INA § 101(b)(1)(C).
- The BIA held the beneficiary nevertheless qualified as the petitioner’s “sister” because the parties once qualified as “children” of their stepmother/mother for immigration purposes and continued to maintain a family relationship in fact, despite uncertainty about whether the parents’ marriage continued.

## Legal Principles

- Under Curaçao law, legitimation is effected by the subsequent marriage of the natural parents together with their prior or contemporaneous acknowledgment of the child; acknowledgment alone does not confer the status of a legitimated child for INA § 101(b)(1)(C).
- To qualify as stepsiblings, either (1) the marriage creating the step-relationships must continue, or (2) if the marriage has ended by legal separation, divorce, or death, the stepsiblings must continue a family relationship as a matter of fact.
- For sibling preference classification, a continuing factual family relationship can preserve step-sibling status even when the record does not establish whether the marriage that created the step-relationship is still in existence.

## Conclusion

The BIA rejected legitimation based solely on paternal acknowledgment under Curaçao law but approved sibling preference classification because the parties’ step-based family relationship, formed while the petitioner was a minor, continued in fact and therefore supported treating the beneficiary as the petitioner’s “sister” under the INA.


Matter of Mourillon, 18 I. & N. Dec. 122 (B.I.A. 1981)