Laid off on TN, overstayed grace, need new TN..what to do?

D

defacto

New Member
Ok so here's the deal.
I got laid off under my TN, I made the mistake of overstaying the grace period to find a new job. Now I got a new offer and need to get a new TN. I'm worried the overstay might backfire on me. Should I

1- Go back to the border and pretend I just recently quit this job for the new one I'm submitting the TN for?

2-Hand over my I94 to the Canadian officer on my way to Canada and then reapply for a TN on my way back like nothing happened?

I know one way or another, I'm in illegal territory. The question is : can they find out I was laid off a month ago? Is there a way they can verify? What is the best way to approach this? Please advise.
 
The bad news is that you had no grace period when you lost your TN. You were out of status as of that day.

The good news is that you don't accumulate any illegal days of presence until the day after your I-94 expires.

The even better news is that unless you stay more than 180 days past that I-94 end date, there is no statutory bar that kicks in.

So, yes, you should now go to the border, hand back your TN to the Cdn officer, and then turn around and go back to the US POE and apply for TN.

For the next time, remember that you should have applied for a B2 by mail, using I-539 on the day you were let go, requesting 6 months to 'get your US affirs in order'. While you were not accumulating illegal presence this time, you could have been escorted out of the US at any time in the last month if you had been either stopped on a traffic violation or, more likelr, had been caught in a CIS spot check of your status (this is happening more an more frequently within 100 miles of the border and at airports on internal US flights).
 
Ok well that's good to know (sigh)!
I guess they have no way of telling, unless somebody would have snitched:cool:. One thing for sure I won't let that happen again!
 
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