Had green card for five years, how to go about applying for citizenship?

[windfiwhwiggles]

Hi,

I have been in the US for more than five years and obtained a green card through my dad, who is a US citizen, in my home state.

Literally the day after my green card was approved and received, I got married and moved to another state to go to university but was still considered a resident of my home state.

I later transferred to another university in another state, got my degree, but still retained my residency in my home state.

Finally, I moved to yet another state to work, but once again maintained my same driver's license.

In all this I did not report my address changes because I was a student and because my driver's license is still from my home state.

In all this I would file taxes every year but neither my husband nor I worked until this last year. We filed jointly for whatever state we were residing in at the time, but never filed taxes for my home state since we didn't actually live there.

This leads me to a few questions:
1. Since I retained my home state's driver's license, is it problematic that I did not change my address? I retained my driver's license because my father assisted our car insurance and owns our car, so I had to be a CO resident to be on his insurance.
2. Since I didn't actually make money for 4 of my 5 years as a permanent resident, will my application for citizenship look bad?

 

[Jackolantern]

If you're a full time college student being supported by your parent(s), you're generally allowed to claim your parent's address as your own address.

So your mistakes would start when you graduated and continued using the license of the old state beyond 30 days (or whatever the rule is of the particular state). It might be convenient to do so for insurance reasons, but doing so is against insurance rules and state regulations, and if you got into an accident the government and/or insurance company would be likely to investigate your situation, resulting in you being fined, jailed, and/or insurance refusing to pay your claim when they find out that you really don't live in the same state as your license and are no longer a college student.

You can't change the past, but get moving on fixing things going forward. File AR-11 to report your change of address to USCIS. Get a driver's license of the state where you actually live now, and get your own insurance for the car. Then wait 3 months after issuance of the driver's license before applying for citizenship, to reduce the chance of running into problems with the 3-month district/state residence rule (you're supposed to live in the same state for 3 months before applying for citizenship, or same USCIS district if the district crosses into more than one state).

Not making money for 4 years as a permanent resident is not a problem and it won't look bad. You were in university.

Literally the day after my green card was approved and received, I got married ...

I guess you were aware of the rule that would have nullified or delayed your green card eligibility if you got married before green card approval. Make sure to bring your marriage certificate to the citizenship interview, because they probably will want to check that you indeed got married after green card approval and not before.

 

[RogerE]

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