The one year absent rule

[oabailey]

Hi all,

Wondering if anyone can give me some advice. After 27 years I am applying for citizenship. I think I have sorted out other questions about form N-400 but in part 7 time outside of the usa since becoming a permanent resident which was 1985 I have a question. In approximately 1986 or 1987 I left the USA to sell our home so we could purchase a house here in the USA. My problem is that I am not sure how long I was gone. I know it was longer than a few months and could have been a little over a year. My deceased husband had left the USA but returned before me. At that time I did not know about the reentry permit requirements. Now I am concerned that I may have been gone longer than a year and this may affect not only my application for citizenship but also my permanent resident status. I have tried to find out if any laws have changed since the late 1980s but had no luck. Do I need an attorney just for this or am I worrying for nothing? By the way on returning I had no problems getting back into the USA and no questions were asked of me.

Thank you in advance.

 

[baikal3]

Hi all,

Wondering if anyone can give me some advice. After 27 years I am applying for citizenship. I think I have sorted out other questions about form N-400 but in part 7 time outside of the usa since becoming a permanent resident which was 1985 I have a question. In approximately 1986 or 1987 I left the USA to sell our home so we could purchase a house here in the USA. My problem is that I am not sure how long I was gone. I know it was longer than a few months and could have been a little over a year. My deceased husband had left the USA but returned before me. At that time I did not know about the reentry permit requirements. Now I am concerned that I may have been gone longer than a year and this may affect not only my application for citizenship but also my permanent resident status. I have tried to find out if any laws have changed since the late 1980s but had no luck. Do I need an attorney just for this or am I worrying for nothing? By the way on returning I had no problems getting back into the USA and no questions were asked of me.

Thank you in advance.

IMO, in the absence of definitive information to the contrary, you should assume that the trip in question ((1986/1987) was less than a year long. Even if you don't remember it now, the passport control officer at the port of entry would have asked you how long you had been abroad - this has been the standard operating procedure for years. If there had been a problem, you would have been told about it then.
So my suggestion is that you write approximate dates for that trip, the best you can remember (e.g. "1986/87 - approx 10 months" or something like that), but indicate the approximate duration of less than a year. The CBP only started keeping electronic entry/exit records in mid 1990s, so they won't have the records for 1986/87 in their system, and it unlikely that the IO adjudicating your N-400 would be interested in that trip.
For the purposes of satisfying the continuous residency and physical presence requirements for naturalization, only the last 5 years are relevant.
There is a rather remote possibility that, if you tell the IO that that trip was longer than a year and that you did not have a reentry permit, that the IO (if you get really unlucky) may decide to make an issue of it in terms of the validity of your admission as an LPR - which is a separate requirement for naturalization. But this is rather unlikely, given the passage of time and the absence of records from that long ago. So I think that, unless you yourself indicate that the trip was over a year long, you should be OK.

 

[Jackolantern]

IMO, in the absence of definitive information to the contrary, you should assume that the trip in question ((1986/1987) was less than a year long. Even if you don't remember it now, the passport control officer at the port of entry would have asked you how long you had been abroad - this has been the standard operating procedure for years.

On one of my entries to the US as a green card holder, the immigration officer at the POE didn't ask me anything. And back in the 1980s they must have been more lax than they are today. So it's far from certain that oabailey was asked about the length of that trip, if asked anything at all.

 

[baikal3]

On one of my entries to the US as a green card holder, the immigration officer at the POE didn't ask me anything. And back in the 1980s they must have been more lax than they are today. So it's far from certain that oabailey was asked about the length of that trip, if asked anything at all.

Yes, I suppose it is possible that on return from that visit the IO at the port of entry did not ask the OP about the length of her stay abroad. However, in the absence of substantial evidence to the contrary, I think that one should proceed on the assumption that the OP's admission as an LPR back into the U.S. after that visit was proper. In this situation, unless the OP can dig up the precise dates, I would suggest indicating the approximate length of that trip in the N-400 as something below 1 year - say approximately 10-11 months. I think she should be fine then.