tiger2004 said:
So, does my wife need to have "Advance Parole
Document" to re-enter USA ?
As soon as your wife uses her EAD, it will invalidate her H status so, yes, she will need advanced parole to re-enter the US (and to keep her I-485 alive). As far as I know, you are not affected by this -- as long as you don't use your EAD, your H status is still valid even if your wife's isn't.
Make sure you allow enough time to get the AP, although I don't *think* these are taking *too* long these days. Does anyone know btw if an RFE on the I-485 can block the AP approval (as it can with an EAD)?
Also keep in mind that with your ND (11/18/03 from the tracker?), there is a distinct possibility that you could be approved before you leave on your trip. We just saw a 10/20/03 approval today, although these are fairly rare currently and I don't expect October 2003 approvals to start in earnest until Feb/Mar next year at the earliest.
Important: *If* your I-485 is approved *before* you leave the US you are entering a "gray area" in immigration law (this applies to you and your wife). Some people say that your H / L / AP status is invalid as soon as you are approved and you MUST get a I-551 stamp before leaving the US. My own lawyer *highly recommended* doing this but felt that it would be unlikely that we would be denied entry if we left without it anyway (e.g. if we got approval 2 days before our flights and had no time to get the stamp). I have yet to hear a definitive answer to this issue (if you hear anything from your own lawyer on this please share it
). I suppose I'd have to consider cancelling our trip if this happened to us and there was any doubt that we'd be able to re-enter and get the GCs (after waiting 6+ years for them...).
Note: If the I-485 approval comes *after* you leave the US, you should be ok -- you will re-enter on the H / AP then complete the PR process when you are back. I've argued elsewhere that there must be many people who travel out of the US without knowing that their I-485 has been approved (e.g. because they don't know about the online status check) and it seems highly unlikely that these people wouldn't be allowed back into the US to complete their PR process as long as they have / had valid H / L / AP. Apart from the issue of how the border people could know when you left the US (or whether they would even notice that you have an approved I-485) this seems to imply that there must be some flexibility in the system for handling these situations...
ETA
