documenting travel - lost passport

[cardinal 1]

Hi,

My husband can apply for naturalization starting in May, so we have started preparing. One place we have realized that we have an issue is documenting his travel. His passport was lost/stolen in Jan 2014 (he thinks it fell out of his pocket at a restaurant, and it was gone when he went back to look). He has the police report showing the passport lost/stolen, but this means that he doesn't have the passport stamps for 3 trips taken in 2012 and 2013. We are going through papers to see if he kept any of his boarding passes, but if not, what can we do? We have some emails from the airlines with itineraries, but obviously those don't prove that he actually flew on those dates.

He is a phd student at a french university, working remotely and travelling to france and his research site 1-2x per year. I worry that that fact plus the lost passport might raise concerns that he hasn't actually been residing in the US.

thanks in advance for any advice.

[Tarik 11]

Hi,

My husband can apply for naturalization starting in May, so we have started preparing. One place we have realized that we have an issue is documenting his travel. His passport was lost/stolen in Jan 2014 (he thinks it fell out of his pocket at a restaurant, and it was gone when he went back to look). He has the police report showing the passport lost/stolen, but this means that he doesn't have the passport stamps for 3 trips taken in 2012 and 2013. We are going through papers to see if he kept any of his boarding passes, but if not, what can we do? We have some emails from the airlines with itineraries, but obviously those don't prove that he actually flew on those dates.

He is a phd student at a french university, working remotely and travelling to france and his research site 1-2x per year. I worry that that fact plus the lost passport might raise concerns that he hasn't actually been residing in the US.

thanks in advance for any advice.

You don't need the passport as long as you remember the dates of travel. Uscis will not ask you to send your passport or even present it at the interveiw. If they really wanna know when you left the country I'm sure they have that info somewhere on records .

[JimmyHou 611]

Hi,

My husband can apply for naturalization starting in May, so we have started preparing. One place we have realized that we have an issue is documenting his travel. His passport was lost/stolen in Jan 2014 (he thinks it fell out of his pocket at a restaurant, and it was gone when he went back to look). He has the police report showing the passport lost/stolen, but this means that he doesn't have the passport stamps for 3 trips taken in 2012 and 2013. We are going through papers to see if he kept any of his boarding passes, but if not, what can we do? We have some emails from the airlines with itineraries, but obviously those don't prove that he actually flew on those dates.

He is a phd student at a french university, working remotely and travelling to france and his research site 1-2x per year. I worry that that fact plus the lost passport might raise concerns that he hasn't actually been residing in the US.

thanks in advance for any advice.

You don't need the passport as long as you remember the dates of travel. Uscis will not ask you to send your passport or even present it at the interveiw. If they really wanna know when you left the country I'm sure they have that info somewhere on records .

I have to disagree with the other responder. Everyone is asked to being their passport to the interview, except in extremely rare cases. If there has been a lot of travel, the interviewer will look through the passport to verify the dates of the stamps.

If the passport is lost, take the police report with you; that'll be fine. USCIS has access to the CBP database and can check your dates. Some applicants have posted on VJ that their interviewer pulled up all their trips on-screen during the interview. If that doesn't happen, the interviewer may take a few days to double check travel before approving the application, but this is unlikely. Do your best to find the exact dates of travel from the sources you mentioned and take those emails, receipts, and itineraries with you, but don't worry about them not being considered official proof. As I said, USCIS can find the exact dates if they want to. They will only care if you are close to the continuous residency or physical presence limits. In many cases they don't even open the passport at the interview because they already know there hasn't been much traveling.

[DC85 113]

Just let him take the police report and itinerary print out. They can pull his travel record with a click of button, don't worry about it.

[janacek 0]

on a side note - we were asked To bring the expired passports, which we can not as it is requirement of our country to return the passport once we pick up the new one. We hope this will not be a problem to prove the travel as we have exact travel dates for the last 5 years.

[JimmyHou 611]

on a side note - we were asked To bring the expired passports, which we can not as it is requirement of our country to return the passport once we pick up the new one. We hope this will not be a problem to prove the travel as we have exact travel dates for the last 5 years.

This shouldn't be a problem. USCIS can pull all your travel dates if they want them.

Many countries don't return an expiring passport when you apply for a new one and many people don't hang on to their old passports.