Federal immigration officials will allow a New Jersey girl to reunite with her Salvadoran sister. A visitor visa will bring the siblings together for three months, which may be enough time to save the life of the youngest one.

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez pushed immigration authorities to permit the visit. The woman from El Salvador is donating bone marrow to her 5-year-old sister, who has already undergone chemotherapy for a life-threatening medical condition.

The travel arrangement is known as a humanitarian parole. Two previous visa applications for the foreign-born sister had been denied. The senator criticized immigration authorities for failure to let "common sense" win "over bureaucracy."

According to the immigration attorney representing the family of the sick child, the Department of Homeland Security did not want to grant the visa. Immigration officials feared the Salvadoran sibling, who has several other relatives who are U.S. residents, would try to overstay a visa end date.

Doctors at Beth Israel Children's Hospital in Newark, where the bone marrow transplant will take place, say the five-year-old's life is on the line. Waiting for her sister's visa to be approved has taken its toll on the young girl.

Chemotherapy treatments, which might have been unnecessary if a transplant had been done earlier, put the child at added risk by weakening her health. While medical authorities offer no guarantees with the bone marrow procedure, they believe the transplant is the child's best hope for survival.

The operation will take place shortly after the start of the new year.

Source: CBS New York, "N.J. Sen. Menendez: Sister Will Get Visa To Help Sick Sibling Needing Transplant," Dec. 2, 2011