Travel to India

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musiclover

Registered Users (C)
We will be traveling to India for 4-5 weeks soon with some firsts

1) First time with two children. Both US Citizens with valid PIO cards. Their first visit.
2) First time with us as Permanent Residents.

Wondering if I could get some questions answered from various experiences at this forum.

Questions:

1) My oldest child has another year of validity on the US passport and about 11 years on the PIO card. I read somewhere that for travel you need 6 months of validity at the time of travel.
---- Is this correct?
---- Also the picture in both the passport and PIO cards are when my child was an infant. Does this matter?
---- Other than a valid US passport and PIO cards, is there anything else I need to carry document wise for the children?

2) We will carry our Valid Indian passports and the Green Card with us.
--- Any other documents needed?
--- When the green card was approved, we were on H1B/H4 visas. From a previous visit on advance parole, we were issued i-94s at port of entry. Those are still in my possession. Do I just ignore those or turn them in at exit from US to airline personnel?
--- Also, I read that the US-VISIT applies to LPRs now. Does that just involve us getting fingerprinted and photographed at port of entry on return? Any extra documents (like employment verification etc.) needed?

3) Reaching the port of entry in India, we would first need to clear immigration. Do they have different lines for citizens and non-citizens? If so, being that we are citizens and kids are not, I am guessing that we could stand in citizens lines as adults with minor children. Correct?

Thanks in advance for your responses.
 
Whether in India or US, we made it a practice to stand in one line (when we had separate country passports). They don't care as much as about this mix as we do. And I have seen Indian officials waving people from one line to manage queues, so I think the lines are only for queue management and it really does not matter.

Return the I-94 or keep them. I would just keep it to ensure the airline person did not punch in an expired record.

On entry into US, they might take your picture and FP. They can ask for any document or they can ask any number of questions, but usually they are harder on people if A) they have something in the profile or file, or B) people who are returning after a long absence. 4-5 weeks is no biggie.

Passport with 1 year expiry is ok.

Pictures not matching due to age change ... no idea, best you can do is a) carry photos of their progression over the years and b) carry some cash to grease if they are delaying un-necessarily validating the baby picture, and you want to move fast. To be truthful though, we have never had an issue taking our 4-5 year old kids with baby pics on their passport, except on returning to US where the CBP officer asked whether it was my brother or sister's child I was bringing in US ;-). But that also was quieted down with my wife asking the officer what she was smoking (not the same words). But this is one example, and I am not sure what the best practice / advise is for this question.
 
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