Urgent help - reapply or appeal?

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naina123

Registered Users (C)
My US citizenship application was rejected based on lack of physical presence in the country. The letter mentions dates of even 2 day trips which were not stamped in my passport (which I could have made to Canada as I went very frequently on personal trips). It mentions I have been out of the country for 996days as the reason.

1. I had applied for n400 on Mar10,2010. I was in the US for more than 3 months after my date of application. Should I appeal to have this included.
2. I got my GC on Oct2004 and since I applied only in Mar2010, I loose out on the entire oct2004 till mar2005 where I was present in the US. Can I use this reason to appeal?
3. If appealing is not a good idea, now that I have clocked the 96days which I was not present, can I reapply immediately or should I wait.
4. For reapplying, will they hold it against me that the application was rejected once and the 2 day trips which were not recorded in my passport where not mentioned in my application form?

Is there an officer at USCIS I can call(as I am out of the country now) and get these clarified and if so , please share the number.
 
If you were really out of country for 996 days, appeal will not change anything.

For re-applying, you need to check your days count. For every day you stay in US, you need to validate whether it is a gain, or does not change anything. Suppose you are in US on Aug 16, 2010 and were in US on Aug 16 2005, basically you have traded a presence for a presence for no net gain in presence. You need to calculate the number of days properly and then find when you have over 913 days at the minimum. Take a spreadsheet and calculate ...

Yes, it is ok for forget 1-2 day trips, but that is only when you have so much presence that these trips will not make a difference to your calculations. In your case, you are borderline (actually deficit) and adding these trips makes your case even worse, so not listing them is bad. I do not think they will hold it against you, but you should be ready to explain. And if you are again going with 913-925 days of presence, I would some questioning on this aspect.

Unfortunately, the physical presence rules are very black and white, and no amount of justification (such as Oct04-Mar05 presence) will help you in the appeal. If you want citizenship, be prepared to show much better numbers than their rules require.

You are lucky they have not made continuous residence an issue, and the next officer may not notice. If that was listed as an issue, you will have even longer wait to reapply.
 
naina123 said:
as I am out of the country now
Click to expand...

Sorry did not see this part ... you are going to have a hard time whether appealing or re-applying. If you need to fix something (want citizenship badly), you need to at least show that you are making an attempt to be here. Being 96 days out of the country (and more by the time you book a ticket), while awaiting your interview results is not going to look good ... they would have questioned you even if you had gotten an oath letter.
 
reapply

thank you for the response Sanjose.

I will then try to reapply when I have many more days than required as I understand my case will undergo alot more scrunity. In your opinion, what number of days would be ideal after which I should think of reapplying
 
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