Needing a Green Card and Passport?!

B

BahamaBurger

New Member
Sorry I intended to create a new thread about this. So here it is:

My friend and I want to visit the Bahamas for 2 days. Just a hop over there from Miami. She came to the USA when she was just a child. She has been a green card holder ever since. Yet I am reading that Bahamas requires a Green Card *and* a valid updated passport from your country of origin.

There have to be tens of thousands of kids who came to the USA. She's not going to have an updated Passport from her country in Africa 26 years later .... why would she? Surely they are going to treat her as a US Resident if she has just the green card?

We are really frustrated right now because she's gone to college and worked in the USA for over 20 years .... yet she can't fly to the bahamas? LOL ....

Someone please tell me there's an exception for people who came here as children and never went back?
 
She's not going to have an updated Passport from her country in Africa 26 years later .... why would she?
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Why wouldn't she? Most people who hold a green card for decades continue to renew their original country's passport, with the help of their country's embassy in the US.

We are really frustrated right now because she's gone to college and worked in the USA for over 20 years .... yet she can't fly to the bahamas?
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She can't fly to ANYWHERE* in the world outside the US without a passport or acceptable equivalent. The Bahamas is not part of the US, why do you expect that she should be able to fly there without a passport? Maybe Bahamas doesn't require a passport for US citizens, but having a green card is not equivalent to US citizenship.

Is there something stopping her from obtaining a passport? Is she here as a refugee? Does her country no longer exist? Does her country not have an embassy in the US?

If she cannot obtain a passport, she can obtain a reentry permit or refugee travel document from the US, which most other countries will treat as the equivalent of a passport for travel purposes. However, such documents take months to obtain and are only valid for 1 or 2 years, unlike passports which are generally valid for 5 to 10 years.

Did any of her parents become a US citizen before she turned 18? If yes, she might be a US citizen, depending on when she turned 18, when her parent(s) naturalized, their marital status and custody arrangement (if separated or divorced). Being a US citizen would enable her to get a US passport.


*Except maybe Canada and Mexico. They allow green card holders to enter without a passport via land, but I'm not sure if the same is true for entry by air.
 
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Why wouldn't she?
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Are you serious? She moved here when she was three. From Africa. She has grown up here and lived her whole life here. She has no memory of that country and has no intentions of going back. I think your question is the illogical one. If I left a country at age three and my entire identity was the USA, I wouldn't be nurturing and updating a passport for a country I never plan to go back to. The bahamas should only care that she's a legitimate US Resident. She can prove that via a Green Card. They dont need to know about a distant past country she's basically never been to, except as a fetus. Its an illogical rule, using very basic logic. Now if the law was more intelligent - like anyone who became a Resident after age 18 - must retain and update a passport from their original country - then that would make logical sense. Requiring a fetus to update their passport is absurd.
 
BahamaBurger said:
Are you serious? She moved here when she was three. From Africa. She has grown up here and lived her whole life here. She has no memory of that country and has no intentions of going back.
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Did she also have no intentions of ever traveling outside the US? Long-time green card holders who don't return to their original country usually still renew the passport for the purpose traveling elsewhere. In almost all cases, the passport can be renewed without personally leaving the US, either through the country's embassy in the US, or by sending the passport application and supporting documents via international courier to the particular country. So the intention of going back to that country has nothing to do with it.

The bahamas should only care that she's a legitimate US Resident. She can prove that via a Green Card. They dont need to know about a distant past country she's basically never been to, except as a fetus. Its an illogical rule, using very basic logic.
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There's nothing illogical about it. It is a worldwide standard of all countries to require a passport for visitors (and most require a passport even for their own citizens to reenter after international travel), with only a small number of exceptions, such as Canada and Mexico.

Green card holders are often exempt from having to obtain a visa for countries they visit. But that exemption is only for the visa, not the passport.

Now if the law was more intelligent - like anyone who became a Resident after age 18 - must retain and update a passport from their original country - then that would make logical sense. Requiring a fetus to update their passport is absurd.
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Fetus? Don't be ridiculous. She is an adult now and is capable of renewing her passport now. There is no requirement to continuously renew her passport since birth. The requirement is only to have a valid passport for the dates of international travel.

Is there something making it impossible to renew it, such as being an asylee or refugee or the country no longer existing? And if her identity is so tied to the US, why hasn't she applied for US citizenship and a US passport after all these years?
 
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BahamaBurger, clearly you've been living in an American bubble. Renewing the passport OF HER COUNTRY OF CITIZENSHIP is the process, regardless of when she left her country in Africa (which is a continent in case you didn't know). I have never lived in my original country of citizenship, but I always had a passport from that country because I WAS A CITIZEN OF THAT COUNTRY and as such that country issued me a passport when I needed it to travel TO OTHER COUNTRIES, not necessarily that specific country. A passport is a travel document, and it is issued to people that are citizens of a country. That's how it works.

If your friend has a green card and lives in the US, and intends never to travel internationally,she doesn't really need a passport. Now that she does want to travel internationally, she should apply for one from her country of citizenship.
 
BahamaBurger said:
Are you serious? She moved here when she was three. From Africa. She has grown up here and lived her whole life here. She has no memory of that country and has no intentions of going back. I think your question is the illogical one. If I left a country at age three and my entire identity was the USA, I wouldn't be nurturing and updating a passport for a country I never plan to go back to. The bahamas should only care that she's a legitimate US Resident. She can prove that via a Green Card. They dont need to know about a distant past country she's basically never been to, except as a fetus. Its an illogical rule, using very basic logic. Now if the law was more intelligent - like anyone who became a Resident after age 18 - must retain and update a passport from their original country - then that would make logical sense. Requiring a fetus to update their passport is absurd.
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If you didn't want feedback, you should not have posted a thread.

For the sake of your girlfriend, she should explore her possibilities as to having derived U.S. citizenship from her parents. If not, she needs to contact her counrty of citizenship's Consulate or Embassy OR apply for a re-entry permit from USCIS on form I-131.
 
26 years and she never thought of giving up her former citizenship?
BTW, I can say she/you are 100% american based on your expectations that bahamas will treat you like you want them to. No other country's citizen can do that.

As many have said, you need passport for travel, unless there are agreements between countries, like US has with Canada. There's no way around it.
 
And now the US requires a Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) approved document like a passport, enhanced DL, passport card, etc., to RETURN to the US, so despite another country like Canada allowing you in without one of these documents, you need one anyway to come back.
 
@Cafe - a quick question ... if you traveled to Canada, would not US let you back in by just seeing the green card? I think it might be possible via land crossing, but not sure if the airlines would allow it. My feeling is they might ... I do not remember punching my passport information 2-3 years back when I returned from Canada, but my memory of that travel has faded so I might be wrong.
 
sanjoseaug20 said:
@Cafe - a quick question ... if you traveled to Canada, would not US let you back in by just seeing the green card?
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Yes, the US will let you return with just the green card, even with air travel from other countries (although some other countries or airlines may have a problem with you departing there without a passport).

But remember that the US govt. issued the green cards, so it's natural that they would trust it at least as much as (and maybe more than) foreign-issued passports. Most other countries aren't going to give the green card that much respect.
 
My mistake, the GC is also one of the approved documents. The passport requirement is for US citizens and non LPRs, but LPRs returning from a country that requires a passport will most likely be asked to show a passport or travel document, or to explain the absence of one.
 
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