Hey thanks a lot,
but the thread talks abt after the fact. When that person already filed his n-400. I wanted to know that since i havent yet filed my application, should i use the best guess to fill out the travel details or just list the ones that are on my passport and then during the interview provide an explanation.
in fact i called the Immigration office and they told me that i could use the FOIA(freedom of information act) to get a listing of all my travel records since 1984 but they have a 6 month backlog currently. so should i just apply for this in any case and take it with me during the interview so that i can show them that i genuinely tried to guess my internation trips as best as i could.
any help will be much appreciated.
I have a similar situation in that I made many short trips to Mexico. Some were by car, others on foot. While there may be an electronic record out there for some of the trips (either GC swipe or license plate scan) for others, there is nothing. For the longer trips, I could piece it together for the N-400, but for the shorter ones, it was impossible. I included a separate piece of paper with my application that stated the following:
"Please note: In addition to the trips listed above, between <date of GC receipt> and the present date I took occasional "day" trips to the Mexican state of Baja California. While the vast majority of these additional trips were less than 24 hours in duration, and hence are not reported on the N-400 form, several of them may in fact have lasted longer than 24 hours. I estimate, to the best of my recollection, that I took approximately 4 - 6 such trips greater than 24 hours in duration during the time period mentioned above. The duration of the longest of these trips not reported on the N-400 form was not more than two (2) days outside the US. "
By including such a statement, I feel that I am signaling the following:
(1) That I just don't remember all my trips, and no amount of scratching my head is going to cause me to remember. I simply don't have a paper trail to help me reconstruct them, and they were all personal trips
(2) That I am being honest, and not trying to conceal the fact that I took these trips
(3) That I am making a good faith estimate, based on my best judgement, to account for all time spent out of the US
My own feeling is that you can still be truthful, without being 100% accurate. Indeed, I don't believe that 100% accuracy is the goal: the real objective is to determine if you met the limits of physical presence and continuous residence, and one need not be 100% accurate on the N-400 form to help make that point. Since I am nowhere near the limits on either (total of 16 trips, 58 days outside of the US, longest trip duration of 8 days) then my additional trips are more or less a moot point in terms of adjudicating my application. To back this point up, I have a whole range of supporting documentation: tax transcripts, mortgage statements, pay stubs, letters from employers etc. Combined, these docs prove that I have resided in the US and been continuously employed, in a full time capacity and with no leaves of absence, since I received my GC.
In general, if you are close to the limits of either continuous residence or physical presence then the fact that you can't recall all trips could cause problems. However, if you are far away from either limit then a few weekend trips is really not material to the adjudication of the application. Just don't "forget" to mention a trip of, for example, 3 - 4 months duration since that could be a material fact in the adjudication of your case.
Best advice I ever got from an immigration attorney: "don't write the application for the USCIS. WRITE IT FOR THE JUDGE."
