Traffic tickets and naturalization (threads merged)

Trust me traffic tickets are never an issue with any process of the INS hell. I started out on a TN visa and then married a USC and did all those AOS and such, got the GC and now my naturalization interview is a month away.

I've had about 20+ speeding tickets/warnings, including 2 court cases (in Colorado its mandatory), one was a rolling stop, and another a speeding ticket. I even missed my court date and had a warrent out (they let that go as I had the wrong date marked down). Last few years since marriage, I have only gotten one ticket. So no speeding/minor tickets don't mean a damn thing in the INS process. In fact form N-400 states not to put down that type of driving offence on the form. They're looking for major traffic violations, not speeding tickets...
 
Anami said:
Can you tell us how you got the print screen? Did you have to go to court or do they do it on phone?
Thanks
Click to expand...

i had to go to two different courts since the tickets were issued in two different disrtricts. a 15 min process to get it done.
 
Your ticket was for less then $100 ..so it is less then $500.. what you are required to do is to answer yes to Part#10 Section D Question No 16 of N-400 form. (this is if you were citied on that ticket incident, as I don't know what was it), and for the documentation that you are trying to get, you really don't need it. please here I am quoting the N-400 form instruction [page No. 2 of 7].


"you do not need to submit documentation for traffic fines and incidents that did not involve an actual arrest if the only penalty was a fine of less than $500 and/or points on your driver's license."

So ..you check yes for the question but no documentation needed...

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This is from my own reading, and isn't by any mean a legal answer, seek a lawyer if needed, or do your own homework.
 
traffic tickets raising again

Friends

I have the following driver tickets

November 1995 Speeding ticket in Albany NY $80 paid.
I paid but I dont have proof or the ticket itself.

September 2001
Non proof of Drivers ticket Georgia $25 paid (I have proof)
Proof of expired insurance ticket Georgia $15 (ticket waived, I have proof)

April 2005
Failing to stop at Stop Sign ticket Georgia $175 paid (I have proof)

October 2006
Incorrect parking in front of my house ticket Georgia $50 paid (I have proof)

Now that I dont have proof that I paid for the first ticket, what can I do.

I can list the tickets and then tell the officer that I did pay but I dont have proof

OR

Any number that I can call to obtain proof ?

-S
 
savithari said:
Friends

I have the following driver tickets

November 1995 Speeding ticket in Albany NY $80 paid.
I paid but I dont have proof or the ticket itself.

September 2001
Non proof of Drivers ticket Georgia $25 paid (I have proof)
Proof of expired insurance ticket Georgia $15 (ticket waived, I have proof)

April 2005
Failing to stop at Stop Sign ticket Georgia $175 paid (I have proof)

October 2006
Incorrect parking in front of my house ticket Georgia $50 paid (I have proof)

Now that I dont have proof that I paid for the first ticket, what can I do.

I can list the tickets and then tell the officer that I did pay but I dont have proof

OR

Any number that I can call to obtain proof ?

-S
Click to expand...
First of all you have to mention all the tickets on the N-400 form. Call the Court concerned of the 1995 ticket and for about $10.00 they will send you a certitifed disposition of ticket. If they cannot do that, have them do a screen print and mail it to you.
 
savithari said:
Friends

I have the following driver tickets

November 1995 Speeding ticket in Albany NY $80 paid.
I paid but I dont have proof or the ticket itself.

September 2001
Non proof of Drivers ticket Georgia $25 paid (I have proof)
Proof of expired insurance ticket Georgia $15 (ticket waived, I have proof)

April 2005
Failing to stop at Stop Sign ticket Georgia $175 paid (I have proof)

October 2006
Incorrect parking in front of my house ticket Georgia $50 paid (I have proof)

Now that I dont have proof that I paid for the first ticket, what can I do.

I can list the tickets and then tell the officer that I did pay but I dont have proof

OR

Any number that I can call to obtain proof ?

-S
Click to expand...

In NY, call the court which adjudicated the ticket (if you plead guilty, this is the court where you mailed the fine). Once you give them your drivers license number, they can give you a copy of the ticket and a court disposition. I got the court disposition for a ticket that I had in 1998 from Dobbs Ferry, NY.
 
It's ten years ago. I dont't think they'll be too upset even if they ask and you say "I couldn't get any paperwork for this one"
 
Why all the fuss about tickets

I think you guys are making too much of the traffic tickets, I did not declare them on the app and I only plan on mentioning them if asked about them. According to couple of accounts that have been reported the interviewer changed the answer to "NO" when the tickets were minor traffic violations. I have not yet read one case where the traffic tickets turned out to be a problem. If you are a perfectionist you may feel compelled to declare them but for the rest of us im-perfectionists, IMHO it does not matter..Period.
 
different opinions about speeding tickets

takadigi said:
Unless the ticket led to your arrest or the ticket was about DUI (either alcohol or drug related), you don't have to mention it in the application. However, if the interview officer specifically asks you about traffic violation, tell him/her the truth. Also, be prepared with court disposition on tickets to prove that you have formally closed the ticket by paying the necessary fines.
Click to expand...

But the FAQ section says you must list all traffic violations including minor violations and speeding tickets on the application.

Can this be clarified and if you in fact do not have to list the tickets the FAQ section be updated to that effect. Thanks.
 
NY_Applicant said:
But the FAQ section says you must list all traffic violations including minor violations and speeding tickets on the application.

Can this be clarified and if you in fact do not have to list the tickets the FAQ section be updated to that effect. Thanks.
Click to expand...

There is no need to report traffic ticket unless it is DUI or involves crime. The FAQ is inaccurate but I doubt anyone will bother to update that.
 
This is one of those contentious issues that likely will never be definitely resolved. If you want to be totally up-front, you'd declare all traffic violations as they fall under the heading of "citations".

Instructions for filling in your N-400 (n-400ins.pdf) does state there is no need to submit paperwork for tickets not related to alcohol/drug charges provided there was no arrest and the fine was less than $500. Some people take that to mean you don't need to declare these offenses either, so the choice is yours.
 
NY_Applicant said:
But the FAQ section says you must list all traffic violations including minor violations and speeding tickets on the application.

Can this be clarified and if you in fact do not have to list the tickets the FAQ section be updated to that effect. Thanks.
Click to expand...

This is a contraversial issue and there is a multitude of opinions on the topic.
Whatever FAQ says or anyone, including myself, advises in this forum, you should make up your own mind. Ultimately, the responsibility is yours.
I'll repeat here my own opinion from one of the previous posts.

The old version of N-400 in the question "Have you ever been arrested, cited or detained..." had an explicitly stated qualifier "excluding traffic violations". Several years ago N-400 was revised and the current version does not contain this qualifier. Now the question simply asks "Have you ever been arrested, CITED or detained by any law enforcement officer for any reason?"

A traffic ticket is a "citation" issued to you personally by a police officer, so the plain meaning of the question suggests that one should answer "yes" here if one had any traffic tickets.

Moreover, there is a passage in the N-400 instructions that is relevant:

"Note that unless a traffic incident was alcoholor drug related, you do not need to submit documentation for traffic fines and incidents that did not involve an actual arrest if the only penalty was afine of less than $500 and/or points on your driver's license".

This seems to indicate that one should mention traffic tickets but it is not necessary to provide documentation for them unless a DIU or a fine of more than $500 was involved.


There are some immigration lawers who now explicitly recommend mentioning traffic tickets in N-400, e.g. see:

http://chat.lawinfo.com/showthread.php/form_n_400-10327/index.html?amp;

Ron Gotcher: "It is better to err on the side of caution and report all brushes with the law, including traffic stops":
http://www.imminfo.com/articles-nats.html#

and

http://www.immigration-information.com/forums/showthread.php?t=503


It also appears that different immigration officers treat this issue differently.
Apparently most of them do not pay attention to traffic tickets but others do.

Someone was even given an RFE for the traffic ticket info, as recently as October 2006.

http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?t=227422&highlight=traffic+ticket

My personal feeling is that if you have or can get documentation regarding disposition of traffic tickets (i.e. proof that relevant fines were paid), it is better to mention them, just to be honest.

But if the tickets are too old and and it is not possible to get the disposition info, I probably would not mention them. The issue is pretty minor, and if you do mention such a ticket, there is a (pretty substantiual in my view) risk that some overly buraucratic IO will ask for the relevant documentation and the case might get stuck because of it.



Some recent threads mentioning this topic:

http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?t=234775&highlight=traffic+tickets+2006

http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?t=214694&highlight=traffic+tickets+2006

http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?t=231965&highlight=traffic+tickets+2006

http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?t=208676&highlight=traffic+tickets+2006
 
baikal3 said:
My personal feeling is that if you have or can get documentation regarding disposition of traffic tickets (i.e. proof that relevant fines were paid), it is better to mention them, just to be honest.

But if the tickets are too old and and it is not possible to get the disposition info, I probably would not mention them. The issue is pretty minor, and if you do mention such a ticket, there is a (pretty substantiual in my view) risk that some overly buraucratic IO will ask for the relevant documentation and the case might get stuck because of it.
Click to expand...

Frankly speaking, I felt your recommendation contradictory to itself. Basically, you are suggesting you can treat citation differently. Report the earlier one but forget the older one. I don't know what is the legal basis of such opinion. If you report, you report all. It is like someone ask you have you committed any crime at any time (actually one of the questions in N400), you only report recent ones but ignore an older one.

Since traffic tickets (except DUI) has no bearing or merit on N400 application, it should not be mentioned. It is not a matter of honesty, it is matter of irrelevancy. You don't report what you eat yesterday on N400, same things go with traffic ticket.
 
MNfiler said:
Frankly speaking, I felt your recommendation contradictory to itself.
Click to expand...

That is true, I admit it, my opinion is not entirely consistent. A consistent position would be either to report all of them or none at all. I approach this problem similarly to jaywalking: one does not do it on a whim (and certainly not in front of a policeman) but one does do it on occasion.

MNfiler said:
Since traffic tickets (except DUI) has no bearing or merit on N400 application, it should not be mentioned. It is not a matter of honesty, it is matter of irrelevancy. You don't report what you eat yesterday on N400, same things go with traffic ticket.
Click to expand...

It is true that non-DUI traffic tickets, unless perhaps one has a very large number of them, are not relevant to the N-400 application. However, N-400 does appear to ask for them anyway (unlike what you ate yesterday, which is not asked anywhere in N-400).
 
NY_Applicant said:
But the FAQ section says you must list all traffic violations including minor violations and speeding tickets on the application.

Can this be clarified and if you in fact do not have to list the tickets the FAQ section be updated to that effect. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Unless it was DUI/DWI related some people choose to declare the tickets and some don't.
My advice: Contact each court where each ticket was obtained and get a certified disposition of each and every ticket. Declare the all tickets on N-400. Do not send the certified disposition along with N-400. Take the certified dispostion to the interview. If asked during the interview show it to the officer.

As others have correctly pointed out, some choose to declare it and some don't. Some lawyers recommend declaring it and other lawyers recommend against it. Ultimately it is the person applying who has to make the decision.
 
Survey

When I was facing this question, I did a survey to help me decide. Here are the interesting results: http://immigrationportal.com/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=517

Personally, I did not list my tickets, but am prepared with proof of payments in case I'm asked for them during the interview. I know of no case where anyone's application has been delayed, or they were denaturalized, because of a failure to list minor (non-DWI) traffic tickets on the N-400 form.

I am not a lawyer.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Read N400_INSTURCTIONS

Instructions do not require that you submit documentation unless alocohol/drug related. accordingly, i don't think one has to worry about question D.15 of form N-400.


excerpt from instructions booklet for N400:

For example, if you have been arrested or convicted ofa crime, you must send a certified copy of the arrestreport, court disposition, sentencing and any otherrelevant documents, including any countervailingevidence concerning the circumstances of your arrestand/or conviction that you would like USCIS toconsider. Note that unless a traffic incident was alcoholor drug related, you do not need to submitdocumentation for traffic fines and incidents that didnot involve an actual arrest if the only penalty was afine of less than $500
 
The Solution

One of the posts (by Baikal3) in this thread said that a prior N-400 version explicitly said "excluding traffic violation.".

If this is true (I have not checked myself), then I FEEL the thing to do would be to USE THAT VERSION of N-400. Why? Because the USCIS website says that prior N-400 versions are acceptable. Why not make use of this?

No more speeding ticket headaches! Magic!

Hope this helps, though this is not legal advice by any means. FYI, I know for a fact that immigration lawyers quite often use older versions of forms... I mean in general, not necessarily N-400. I'm willing to bet that many lawyers are using the older N-400 even today.

Regards.

Sammy
 
samosa1 said:
One of the posts (by Baikal3) in this thread said that a prior N-400 version explicitly said "excluding traffic violation.".

If this is true (I have not checked myself), then I FEEL the thing to do would be to USE THAT VERSION of N-400. Why? Because the USCIS website says that prior N-400 versions are acceptable. Why not make use of this?

No more speeding ticket headaches! Magic!

Hope this helps, though this is not legal advice by any means. FYI, I know for a fact that immigration lawyers quite often use older versions of forms... I mean in general, not necessarily N-400. I'm willing to bet that many lawyers are using the older N-400 even today.

Regards.

Sammy
Click to expand...

That is a clever idea. Does anyone have/knows how to get a PDF file of the old version of N-400?
 
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