N-400 + Freq. Trips to Canada (Past 20 Yrs)

[cdnemigrant]

Hello,

I am a Canadian citizen who has lived in Seattle for about 20 years on a green card granted to me at around five years of age (which has been continually renewed). I want to become a citizen, but I have traveled to Vancouver far too many times to possibly recall, and the N-400 requires a listing of all trips abroad (including Canada) since having been granted the green card as well as the dates and lengths of trips within the past five years. This is absolutely impossible to produce, but I am wondering what my recourse would be (eg: providing an estimate of some sort?).

Thank you in advance,

Canadian Emigrant

 

[Flydog]

Yeah, it's tough.

We lived within about a 5.5 hour drive of Montreal (our home town) for the first 3 or 4 years of our green cards. When we first thought about becoming US Citizens, I downloaded the N-400 and gasped at the travel record requirement.

Our solution was to wait another 3-4 years until we had 5 good years of travel records. Then, on the N-400, we didn't list the trips on the form itself, we simply said "see attachment". On the attachement, we listed the trips in our own format with a note at the end that said:

During the time between when I received my Green Card in the spring of 1996 and November, 1999, I lived in XXX. This is only a 6 hour drive from my parents in Montreal, Quebec, Canada or a 1 to 1.5 hour flight to my in-laws in YYY, Canada or ZZZ, Canada. During this time, I did not keep a good record of my travels.

During this period, the family made occasional visits to XXX, YYYand ZZZ. These visits lasted from 3 days to 10 days (necessarily less than 16 days). We took no more than a half dozen of these visits per year.

The important thing to remember is that the statutory requirements that they are checking are the "continuous residence" rule (you never left the country long enough to (or with the intention of) abandoning your permanent residence) and the "physical presence" rule (during the "statutory" period (normally the last 5 years)) you were in the country more often than you were out of the country. You need to make it very clear that there is no way that you broke either rule.

 

[yummyk]

Hello,

I am a Canadian citizen who has lived in Seattle for about 20 years on a green card granted to me at around five years of age (which has been continually renewed). I want to become a citizen, but I have traveled to Vancouver far too many times to possibly recall, and the N-400 requires a listing of all trips abroad (including Canada) since having been granted the green card as well as the dates and lengths of trips within the past five years. This is absolutely impossible to produce, but I am wondering what my recourse would be (eg: providing an estimate of some sort?).

Thank you in advance,

Canadian Emigrant

I am in a similar situation to you in that I have made a lot of trips to Mexico over the course of the past five years, and I don't have a great record of my trips, particularly the short ones - 1-2 days. Of the trips that I have listed, I have a grand total of 15 trips, outside the US for a total of 53 days (longest trip - 8 days). Using Flydog's advice, I plan on putting together the best estimate I can for the longer trips and then a statement on my application to the effect of:

"In addition to the trips listed above between dd/mm/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy I also made numerous shorter trips to Mexico, the vast majority of which were less than 24h in duration and hence are not reported on the N-400. However, some of these trips may in fact have lasted longer than 24 hours. I estimate that I took no more than 6 of these trips since becoming a PR, and the longest duration of any of these trips was approximately two days outside of the US."

I have no idea how this will go over with the USCIS or at the interview. To Flydog's point, I believe they are really trying to establish physical presence and continuous residency requirements in this section, and they are more concerned with the "big picture" than they are with any one individual trip. As such, I plan on bringing documentation that substantiates my claim that I have met both these requirements, despite the fact that I can't recall every trip. I will bring employment verification letters and pay stubs that indicate I was employed continuously and full time throughout the time that I have been here, along with mortgage info etc. Flydog, how did your actual interview experience go when the IO learned that you had trips you could not remember? What did the IO say to you and your wife?

Before I submit anything, however, I do plan on speaking with an immigration attorney and running my application by her, just to ensure that I am not doing something foolish. However, I think it is more truthful to state that you don't remember something than to simply ignore it or make something up. After I consult the attorney, I will post here to share the conversation with the other forum members. Take care and best of luck.

 

[Flydog]

It never came up at either my wife's or my interview. Good thing too - we had no proof of anything.

As far as I know, all they are interested in is Continuous Residence and Physical Presence. If you are not close to breaking those rules (we were miles away), then they *shouldn't* really care.