When immigrating to the United States in the past a birth certificate documentation was all that was required to prove you are who you say you are or that relatives are in fact real relatives and not just some person paid to say they are your relatives, which is in fact a violation of federal law. Not only can this end up with you getting denied a visa or green card and denied entry but the persons helping you may be prosecuted and end up in jail and be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Regardless of the risks many persons feel the risks are worth the possible reward. Black market birth certificates are not all that hard to get and finding people to sponsor you and claim you as a relative isn’t all that hard to find either. Immigration, in an effort to cut down on fraud has decided not to simply take documentation, which can be faked, as proof of relationship.

DNA testing is now required to prove relationships. DNA cannot be faked. Perhaps hacking into a DNA labs database and changing out information might be possible to someone really skilled but the chances of that happening are quite remote and though not impossible I would say highly unlikely.

For a while Immigration was only accepting DNA from a parent or grandparent as acceptable DNA proof of relationship but as of April 17, 2018 sibling testing for immigration has become an acceptable form of proof as well since both grandparents and siblings each contribute the same amount of matching DNA which is 25%.

Since each parent contributes 50 percent of their DNA to a child, siblings would have 25% matching DNA with each other. The more markers that are tested the higher the accuracy of the test so a minimum of 20 markers are required to test but most labs that offer high marker testing will test 24 or 25 markers. After 25 markers there isn’t any change in the accuracy so testing more than that is pointless. And of course the testing has to be done in a lab that is AABB accredited and there has to be a chain of custody so that the persons having their DNA tested cannot tamper with the DNA and send it someone else’s DNA.

Since not everyone immigrating to the US has a parent or grandparent available to do a DNA test with allowing siblings to test with each other makes immigration available to more people.