Continuous residence requirement

A

akj1976

New Member
My spouse is a US citizen by birth and I've been a Permanent Resident through marriage since 07/02/2003. I was in the US continuously until Aug 25, 2006 (>37months). I am a Ph.D. students and was overseas for my dissertation data collection from 08/25/2006 to 05/25/2007 (9 months). Spent the summer at home in the US and then accompanied wife and kids when she got a Fulbright for her dissertation fieldwork, also outside the US from 08/15/2007 to 07/16/2008 (11 months).
Maintained a mortgage, paid taxes, and was enrolled at the University the entire time (have all the paperwork).
I saw on USCIS website people with trips b/w 6 and 12 months in length must prove that these trips did not "break" continuous residence. With back to back trips like we had, what are my odds of meeting the continuous residence requirement if I file now? Also not sure about "Physical Presence".
 
The physical presence rule requires you to be inside the US for at least half the time of the past 5 years (or 3 years if using the married-to-USC rule).

You can't use the 3-year marriage rule because you have at least 20 months outside the US in the past 3 years, and the physical presence requirement means you must have spent no more than 18 months outside the US in the past 3 years.

But your green card was approved more than 5 years ago so you can choose that route, and you would meet the physical presence requirement of the regular 5-year rule, which is 30 months of the past 5 years inside the US.

For continuous residence, you have to show that you maintained your ties to the US during the long absences -- mortgage, taxes, bank accounts, cars, university enrollments, anything else you can think of. You have TWO trips longer than 6 months, so you may have to explain yourself more clearly and convincingly and present more evidence than somebody else who had just one trip, but given your situation you should have a decent chance of getting approved, as they tend to treat people who went overseas to study more leniently than people who went overseas to work.
 
Jackolantern, thank you so much for your prompt and detailed reply! I honestly did NOT realize that using the 5-year rule is my only option.

Would you recommend preparing a separate letter describing the nature of our trips and listing all the supporting documents we provide or is it more appropriate/normal to simply include our supporting docs with the N-400?

Thank you again for your help!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top