filing n-400 while waiting for permanent green card

[NatHug 1]

Does anyone know the rules reagarding filing the N-400 application before receiving the permanent green card?

My wife's three year waiting period is complete, however we are still waiting for the permanent green card. We filed the I-751 in May and have the one year extension letter.

I beleive we can go ahead and fille the N-400 application and include the extension letter with the documentation.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks...

[smartie 0]

Does anyone know the rules reagarding filing the N-400 application before receiving the permanent green card?

My wife's three year waiting period is complete, however we are still waiting for the permanent green card. We filed the I-751 in May and have the one year extension letter.

I beleive we can go ahead and fille the N-400 application and include the extension letter with the documentation.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks...

I mailed mine today. I751 still pending. I read at VJ that it worked for some other people.

[gaviria00 0]

Don't worry you can send your n-400. I have a friend in the same situation, they filled the I-751 in june 2007, in april 2008 they didn't received the permanent green card but he applied for n-400 and include the extension letter with the documentation. Last week they received the permanent green card.

[motu 6]

Since your wife is a LPR (even though removal of conditions is pending - the LPR is extended automatically) go ahead and file for citizenship. Many people have done this - they will adjudicate the I751 concurrently, if its not done by that time, so its not a big deal. I intend to do the same for my wife whether the greencard is received or not in 8 months. Good Luck

Edited May 20, 2008 by motu

[coloradogirl 0]

Since your wife is a LPR (even though removal of conditions is pending - the LPR is extended automatically) go ahead and file for citizenship. Many people have done this - they will adjudicate the I751 concurrently, if its not done by that time, so its not a big deal. I intend to do the same for my wife whether the greencard is received or not in 8 months. Good Luck

Sure, you can do that. We did. Look at our timeline.

[Badal 0]

Yep! Thats what I did. I applied while i was waiting for, got the bio metrics before I received the card. Received my card few days ago and interview letter also.

[Gulskjegg 0]

We just got my wifes 10 year green card a few weeks ago, but had we not gotten it, we still would be filing the N-400. You stand absolutely nothing to lose. Just check the processing times of your local USCIS office and mark the calendar.

[NickD 203]

The 3rd anniversary on my wife's expired green card was June 27,2008 and sent in the N-400 88 days before that date with a copy of her expired green card and one year extension notice (along with a bunch of other stuff).

Her ten year card came in 2 1/2 weeks later, copied that and sent that in as new evidence, but they did accept her application and gave an appointment for some more biometrics before we received the new card. I have heard of several N-400's being rejected, sending in prematurely was one of them.

I question my immigration attorney on this same exact point, law says she must be a permanent resident for three years and we must show proof of that, and her expired green card with the one year extension notice is proof of that.

I don't know if this is a myth or not, but read cases on the web where some actually received their US citizenship before receiving their new green cards, wonder how they surrendered them. But if you new card does not come in before the expiration, better make an infopass appointment and bring in your foreign current passport for an I-551 stamp or a couple of passport type photos and apply for an I-94 so you are legal to work, travel, and to eat.

[NatHug 1]

Great.. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply and for your great advice..

[ilovecookies 0]

i guess i can say i did this lol!! haven't gotten the approval for my removal of conditions but went ahead and submitted the n400, and a few weeks ago i passed the interview and am now waiting for my oath letter.

[NickD 203]

i guess i can say i did this lol!! haven't gotten the approval for my removal of conditions but went ahead and submitted the n400, and a few weeks ago i passed the interview and am now waiting for my oath letter.

Ha, my attorney told me that things like that happen, but nice to meet someone that experience that.

Now if your PRC doesn't come in at the time you take your oath, how do you surrender your card? Ha, would just tell them I couldn't get that card, maybe you can, and if you do, you can keep it. Wouldn't say you can stick it someplace, LOL.

[Waiting4GC 0]

I actually never received my 10 year green card. For some reason my I751 was not approved until I had the citizenship interview. The officer at the time told me that I would probably would not get the 10 year green card before the Oath Ceremony and that is how it actually happened. The day of the oath ceremony I gave the Judge my expired 2 year green card and in exchange I received the citizenship certificate.

[NickD 203]

They can have that ten year green card, but never asked for the two year card back, ha, would like to keep that one as paid a fortune for it. I never really thought about immigration until I met my wife, turns out our grandparents lived very close to each other in Europe, but hers got on a boat to South America where mine took a boat to North America. So I just happen to be born in the USA and she in Colombia, all I knew, I just wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

Can recall my life when I was even less than one year old, mom had to work that put me in what they call a day care center today, never liked that, wanted to stay home with my mom, then it was the law that I go to school for 13 years, then was drafted that I didn't care for with another six years in the military, so I was actually 24 years old before I could start to make my own choices. Ha, so much for freedom.

So I finally meet the woman of my most wildest dreams and can't even be with her with even more laws, that was the longest year of my life waiting for pieces of paper just so she could come here and we could get married. And everything is done with forms, this form and that form. It is terrible to fall in love with a person and not being able to be near her, what is wrong with me, was living a life alone with my two dogs, was doing stuff. But just had to fall in love, would call her every night, but some nights the phones were out and went crazy dialing and redialing, just had to try and go to sleep and hope she was okay with an aching heart.

To help pass the time, purchased a digital camera, had no use for one before, took pictures of my home and e-mailed them to her for suggestions on how she would like each room, and shopped for things she would like to have, but it still was a very long year to wait. And why? Waiting for our government to process a piece of paper, it was extremely frustrating and what business does our government have dictating to me what I can or cannot do. But then I recalled the first 24 years of my life being dictated by our government.

I never really cared for college courses in political science, was all BS to me on how opinions of other people, mostly idiots, should dictate how we should live. I loved natural sciences, pure, clean, also with laws, but the laws created by a higher being, laws that I had to understand to make lives better for all of us. Unfortunately our government also had to get involved with these laws as what we can or cannot do, again we have idiots in this country making laws that hampered our advancement. They don't solve problems, just ship them to another country kind of thing and America has become a country where the only interest is making money, we use to be a hard working people capable of doing anything.

Those two years my wife had that stupid conditional resident card went by in an instant, now the same old ####### again with stress on explaining to even other government agencies why she has an expired green card. And why so long to process yet another piece of paper that would take all but five minutes, everything there, they already had.

I was ready to kill when my wife first arrived here holding her back for four hours with an interrogation and a strip search, man is this country going to hell. She didn't want to talk about it and didn't want me to do anything about it, I honored her wishes, but certainly a bad start to enter a country. One thing this country really lacks is common sense and the dignity of human beings, and yes we have a spoiled brat arrogant rich kid in charge of this country, that I blame on my stupid fellow Americans.

We are a little older and terribly humiliating to go in and have some kid dictate our lives, but I have to take my nice pills first. In my military days was trained to have more fear of my commanders than the enemy, but took years to realize I was expected to kill another kid my age that was the same boat that I was in. So why wasn't I killing the leaders instead? They are the ones that are making all the problems! Most of us just want to work and work hard to raise our families. Every year during tax time laugh at that $3,500 deduction for having a kid, you already had 15% of that money taken out for FICA taxes that is being wasted by our government, and you really aren't getting that $3,500 back, you just don't have to pay additional taxes on it. On the other hand, the government schools say it costs $11,000.00 per year to baby sit with your kids 12% of the hours per year. And that doesn't include clothes, medical expensed, entertainment, food, or housing. They don't even teach your kids anything either, if you want your kids to get on the high honor roll, have to spend an extra 2 hours a day with them teaching them their assignments along with hours on the week end, they don't care about your kids, you have to.

It is refreshing for me to help my wife with her civics test to get back to the basics of how this country was formed, but we sure got away from these basics. When Reagan wanted less government, maybe we thought the IRS that holds a strong iron fist over our heads, but no, the FTC so people can lie and cheat with every TV commercial, the FCC so foreign governments can own our airways and form stupid opinions for us, the EPA, OHSA, DOT, that is pushing our industries out of the country, the new DHS so we are no longer free to travel just because our CIA and FBI screwed up to let some terrorists into this country and really screw up our immigration system.

Maybe immigrants coming into this country getting US citizenship can make changes once they learn the basics of this country, but those born here are idiots. Did anyone ask you where you wanted to be born? And who made the rule that with over six billion people on this earth your natural mate would live next door? And why do they make it so difficult for the two of you to be together?

If you read the basics of our constitution, our laws are to be made by the will of the majority of the people, and our representatives are suppose to be servants of the people and not dictators, but somehow things have changed where one guy out of 300 million is calling all the shots. This is not what our founders intended, and until the American people wake up, this will happen.

Find it ironic that nothing is really accomplished by moving a football back and forth 100 yards between two goal posts, but yet the super bowl gets far more attention than the really important things in life.