question about calculation of dates absent

S

sherbym

Registered Users (C)
how exactly is the number of days absent counted....
as i understand..i cannot be out of US for my than 900 days in a period of 5 years.
and each trip must be less than 6 months.

so if i leave for 5 months early 2010 and then again for 2 months end of 2010, is this counted as 7 months or 2 seperate trips both less than 6 months.
 
Those would be 2 separate trips. However, If they are back to back and for the same reason, immigration can claim you had one long trip and only broke it up to preserve continuous residence. With just a couple of trips like that, though, you should be ok.
 
no they were not back to back...
do we count a day trip to US to get entry stamp on the passport as an entry or not.
 
Yup, that would count as a day in the country. They say IN GENERAL exit and entry dates (partial days in the US) count as whole days in the US. What they mean by IN GENERAL, I'm not sure.
 
IN GENERAL can mean a whole lot of things. There was a case recently where a person tried to claim with double digit trips that one leg of arrival/departure should count as a day in US, the CIS did not buy it. The difference was absence of 910 days per his calculations and 926 days per CIS calculations. They denied him.

If your eligibility depends on immigration parsing the law so finely, then I think you are taking a risk and there are great chances of being denied (or approved). If you are in the clear, how does it matter? Note that you are reporting the trips, not the days inside. So if the trip is from Jan 1, 2009 through Jan 10, 2009 and then from Jan 10, 2009 through Jan 15, 2009, report them as such. I count their duration to be 9 days and 5 days in this case (taking a day off for both).
 
=====IN GENERAL can mean a whole lot of things. There was a case recently where a person tried to claim with double digit trips that one leg of arrival/departure should count as a day in US, the CIS did not buy it. The difference was absence of 910 days per his calculations and 926 days per CIS calculations. They denied him. =====



will it matter if the total number of days is less than 900 or 6 months each trip?
 
You mean total number of days outside US was less than 900. It should not.

But if you had 25 trips and your case depended on counting one day out of each trip as being in US ... and this made your numbers go to lets us say 920, it would matter.

I am not sure what you mean by "6 month each trip" ... it is the pattern of trips that matters, a single trip under 6 month should not be an issue, but 2 back to back trips (with 1 day, 1 week or 1 month in between) would be suspect.

The example you gave in the beginning ... 5 months in beginning and 2 months in end of 2010 ... would be 2 separate trips, each well within limits.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top