Continuous and Physical Residence requirements.

M

Michael Mays

New Member
I am a US citizen and my wife has had a green card and been married to me for more than three years. Suppose tomorrow she fulfills all the requirements with the continuous residence and physical residence requirements having been met exactly: 18 months in the US over the last three years. If she were to have to leave to leave the US the next week for five months, would those two residence requirements still be fulfilled?

Also what is 18 months? Is it 547 days?

And how is a day counted. If I enter the US at 23:55 and leave the next day at 00:05 is that two days?

Thanks
 
Continuous residence and physical presence are two separate requirements. She needs to have been continuously resident as a permanent resident for the last 3 years to be eligible for naturalization under the 3-year rule. Does she meet that? An absence of between 6 months and 1 year is presumed to interrupt continuous residence, although it can be overcome with strong evidence of ties. An absence of more than 1 year definitely interrupts continuous residence. If continuous residence is interrupted, it starts over counting from scratch. I find it unlikely she would have met the continuous residence requirement if she barely meets the physical presence requirement.

The physical presence requirement is 18 months when applying under the 3-year rule. It is not a number of days. The day of departure and day of arrival are both counted as days of physical presence.
 
She has been a permanent resident for much more than three years without any absences of more than 6 months at a time. The situation is that her parents have been ill and she has been spending more than 6 months a year outside of the US. Does she need to stay in the US for 18 months continuously with no interruptions to qualify for the physical presence requirements?
 
Michael Mays said:
She has been a permanent resident for much more than three years without any absences of more than 6 months at a time. The situation is that her parents have been ill and she has been spending more than 6 months a year outside of the US. Does she need to stay in the US for 18 months continuously with no interruptions to qualify for the physical presence requirements?
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Physical presence is cumulative, so it's just cumulatively 18 months over the last 3 years.

Or, if she has been a permanent resident for 5 years, and she has been physically present in the US cumulatively 30 months over the last 5 years, she can apply under the 5-year rule.
 
newacct said:
The physical presence requirement is 18 months when applying under the 3-year rule. It is not a number of days. The day of departure and day of arrival are both counted as days of physical presence.
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newacct said:
Physical presence is cumulative, so it's just cumulatively 18 months over the last 3 years.
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I am confused. If it is cumulative then you have to be counting days, correct? If so then 18 months is some number of days such as 547 which is 1.5 times 365 rounded down.
 
Michael Mays said:
I am confused. If it is cumulative then you have to be counting days, correct? If so then 18 months is some number of days such as 547 which is 1.5 times 365 rounded down.
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Oh, you're right. It's 548 days of physical presence under the 3-year rule (and 913 days under the 5-year rule).
 
Butt back to my original question. As a hypothetical, if over the last three years she spent 560 days in the US and then had to leave the country for a month, when she returned would those two requirements still be considered fulfilled?
Thanks for your patience.
 
As has been stated, there is the 'physical presence' requirement, and there is the 'physical presence' requirement.

Your wife would have likely still satisfied the 'physical presence' requirements, provided that she has more than 549 days within the past three years (at the date of application) Just to be on the convervative side, do NOT count the days she left and entered the US.

For example, if she left on January 1, and returned on January 10, she would be absent for the following days: Jan 1, Jan 2, Jan 3, ..., Jan 10 (so 10 days).

I'm not sure how exactly they count absences, but counting exit and entry dates as absences would help you stay on the safe side, especially since it seems that her case is a borderline one.

'Continuous Residency' is a separate requirement, and can be rather subjective. But if she never left the country for more than 180 days at one stretch (and never did anything that makes it look like she is abandoning her US residency), then she likely is fine.
 
Re above, the instructions on the form explicitly count the days of departure and arrival as days in the US.
 
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