J1-home residence please!

[criticalcure]

Hi,

Can anyone help with this? For mandatory 2 year home residency requirement aftre J1 visa does one have to stay for 2 years 'continously' or can one leave the country on and off and accumulate the 2 years over time?

Thank you in advance!!

 

[hadron]

You can piece it together, no problem. You can actually do it 1 week at a time.

(I know one guy who had a J1 with HRR and then O1s. Every vacation he took to his home country added up. After 6 years or so, he had accumulated 2 years of vacation/travel/conference/sabattical time and was allowed to pick up his extraordinary ability green-card.)

Realistically, they only really look whether you spend all of your time 'on vacation' in the US. If you are lets say from Yemen but you did a couple of months of locums in the Emirates during your 2 years, I doubt they will care too much (but that is just my personal speculation).

 

[gbored]

How do they define "home"?

How do they define "home" for the HRR J1 visa?

When on J1 visa if you change your country of permanent residence or citizenship what will happen.

Example. A person from Pakistan is a J1 resident in United States. During the course of residency he accepts Australian permanent residency (retains his Pakistani citizenship). He visits Australia during residency and declares Australia as his country of last legal residency. Then he completes residency and is subjected to home country residence requirement.

Where does he have to go? To Pakistan (country of citizenship) or Australia (country of Permanent residence).​

What happens if he changes his citizenship? i.e. he gives up his Pakistan citizenship in place of Australian citizenship.


Hadron! You are the man

 

[hadron]

> A person from Pakistan is a J1 resident in United States. During the
> course of residency he accepts Australian permanent residency (retains
> his Pakistani citizenship). He visits Australia during residency and
> declares Australia as his country of last legal residency.

He has to go to Pakistan, at least for J1 purposes. (of course he is free to go to AU now, but he won't be able to return to the US on H1 or GC until he returns to Pakistan for 2 years or obtains a waiver). It is the country of last permanent residence you declare on your first IAP66 that counts.

Your scenario is a very common one. Many people obtain canadian PR as a backup so they don't have to go to their home country in case it doesn't work out with a waiver. But time spent in cdn or au doesn't count towards the 2 years in this scenario.

There are some people who read into the statute that you can return 2 years after you become an aussie citizen, but I doubt that this is how the goverment reads it.

If you become an LPR of AU BEFORE you obtain your first J1 AND you get your letter of support from the AU goverment, you can go to AU for your 2 years.