Time Spent Outside the US - Unknown? How to get answers...

[Justdazed 1]

I have no one to blame but myself for this. If I had known this was going to be a question I would have kept track more diligently.

For Part 7. Time Spent Outside the US during the last 5 years, I cannot completely account for my visits to Canada. I've called family, the border crossing, USCIS, and even the U.S. Department of State. Immigration services at the border (BC crossing) say they cannot disclose this information anymore. The USCIS representative was just doing her job, unfortunately no answers there. I'm well below the 30 months, my issue is accounting for when I travelled over the last five years. I live just over an hour away from my family in Canada and I would travel for special birthday weekends or holidays.

Would scheduling an InfoPass appointment help get answers?

Would it be lying if I can't account for every trip & day count?

I read on another immigration forum that someone provided a notarized letter stating he travelled out of the country for birthdays & holidays. Is there ANY alternative for providing to the day and trip count?

Thank you,

[nwctzn 55]

I have no one to blame but myself for this. If I had known this was going to be a question I would have kept track more diligently.

For Part 7. Time Spent Outside the US during the last 5 years, I cannot completely account for my visits to Canada. I've called family, the border crossing, USCIS, and even the U.S. Department of State. Immigration services at the border (BC crossing) say they cannot disclose this information anymore. The USCIS representative was just doing her job, unfortunately no answers there. I'm well below the 30 months, my issue is accounting for when I travelled over the last five years. I live just over an hour away from my family in Canada and I would travel for special birthday weekends or holidays.

Would scheduling an InfoPass appointment help get answers?

Would it be lying if I can't account for every trip & day count?

I read on another immigration forum that someone provided a notarized letter stating he travelled out of the country for birthdays & holidays. Is there ANY alternative for providing to the day and trip count?

Thank you,

If you tried every avenue and you cannot get the exact dates, enter your best estimates and include a letter stating that those dates are estimates. Since you are well above 30 months presence and most likely do not have any trip more than 6 months, you will be fine.

You can try to locate your credit card statements (online) if you used your card for spending while you were in Canada and try to get some good estimates on the dates from those statements.

Also, if you have day trips shorter than 24 hours to Canada, you do not have to enter those days. Enter those trip which lasted longer than 24 hours.

Edited February 27, 2012 by nwctzn

[Leatherneck 693]

If all else fails, then attach a statement explaining that you have no records of your travels, can not recall the dates of travel, you made vigorous attempts to locate such records and list those efforts in your statement. Not much else you can do.

[pepper 34]

Going for an infopass is not gonna help. Like you, I forgot the exact dates of our visits to Canada as they don't stamp passports at the border. CBP doesn't disclose infos like border entries and such. So on my N400 I did exactly what the immigration officer told me to do....I handwrote EST(estimate) after each date that I was not sure of. It's not gonna be a problem I was told because as we all know they have a way of getting all our travel info. Don't worry too much its gonna be okay.

[NotBonJovi 6]

Justdazed - See the below post. That will help you as they had a similar situation.

http://www.visajourn...ost__p__5112255

[Justdazed 1]

Thank you nwctzn, pepper, Leatherneck and NotBonJovi for your help. I'm currently making a spreadsheet of the dates I know of, as well as estimate dates. I will also supply a statement in addition that addresses the pattern of my visits and reasons for not being able to account for all. My mother, bless her heart, dug up her calendars for the past 6 six years in which she noted when I was coming to visit. So that's definitely a good place to start.

pepper - Thank you for the tip of noting EST(estimate) beside estimated dates. I will definitely do this as well.

Now time to dig through my credit card statements