Remove Conditional Residence or Apply for Citizenship

[abajaj 0]

Hello Frieds,

I am a US citizen and got married in June 2007 in India and my wife came to US on CR-1 visa in June 2008. Its now time to apply for removing her conditional residence on her green card and somebody told us that we could apply for her naturalization instead. I have checked the eleigibility requirements for naturalization of spouce of a US citizen and all rules say that my wife needs to have continuous residence in US for 3 years preceding application for naturalization. Since my wife has only been in the US for two years yet, i beleive we are not eleigible for applying for her naturalization. But I wanted to check with everyone here to see if I am not missing anything. We would rather apply for her naturalization if we are eligible now so we get done with everything in one go and don't end up paying more fee for her naturalization later. Please advice if there is a loop hole somewhere which makes my wife eleigible for citizenship at this point.

Thanks and Regards,

Avneesh Bajaj

[Bani 0]

Hi,

Your wife still needs to remove the conditions first. As far as I know in order to apply for citizenship, you need to have a permanent green card. On conditional green card you cannot apply for citizenship. You and your wife first need to start peparing I-751 documents to remove the conditions in 90 days before your conditional green card expires.

Bani

[letty 1]

. I have checked the eleigibility requirements for naturalization of spouce of a US citizen and all rules say that my wife needs to have continuous residence in US for 3 years preceding application for naturalization. Since my wife has only been in the US for two years yet, i beleive we are not eleigible for applying for her naturalization.

Avneesh Bajaj,

You have to wait till she has been 3 years continuously in the USA. I'm in the same boat, got married in May 2007, finally got my greencard in May 2008 (and moved to the USA), and so now I'm removing of conditions to get a 10-year green card. Next year I/we can apply for citizenship if we want to.....so that will be a very expensive 10-year greencard if we use it only 1 year.

Letty

[abajaj 0]

Thanks for the responses everyone! - USCIS is making good money from these petitions and follow up applications for sure!!!