Naturalization interview/ceremony and travel abroad (merged)

[Viridian 10]

Today, out of the blue, I received the letter with my naturalization interview date - it's scheduled for June 6th (I filed N400 on November 3rd 2022). No movement on the I751, which still shows on the USCIS website as "Case Was Updated to Show Fingerprints Were Taken".

 

While this is great news, I'm a little concerned as my wife and I are planning to be out of the country in the second half of July for a (much belated due to immigration and COVID) wedding celebration in the UK with our families. Does anyone know if there's a possibility the citizenship process could interfere with this? E.g. is there any point during the transition from Green Card to US Citizen where you can temporarily lose the ability to travel abroad? I'm not very knowledgeable on this part of the process!

[Viridian 10]

Today, out of the blue, I received the letter with my naturalization interview date - it's scheduled for June 6th (I filed N400 on November 3rd 2022) at the Baltimore Office. I've seen no movement on my I751, which I filed in May 2021 and which still shows on the USCIS website as "Case Was Updated to Show Fingerprints Were Taken".

 

While this is great news, I'm also a little concerned as my wife and I are planning to be out of the country in the second half of July for a (much belated due to immigration and COVID) wedding celebration in the UK with our families. Does anyone know if there's a possibility the citizenship process could interfere with this? E.g. is there any point during the transition from Green Card to US Citizen where you can temporarily lose the ability to travel abroad? I'm currently on the 48-month extension letter - at what point in the citizenship process does this stop being valid for entering the country?

[OldUser 6,633]

 

20 minutes ago, Viridian said:

E.g. is there any point during the transition from Green Card to US Citizen where you can temporarily lose the ability to travel abroad? I'm not very knowledgeable on this part of the process!

@Viridian one you take the oath but don't have US passport in hand to travel overseas. Considering current passport delays...

[Markip1 71]

Once you are a US citizen you will need to use a US passport to leave and enter the United States. I believe you can request a super-expedited passport if you have travel plans booked and confirmed in the very near future, but I don't know how long that takes or what the costs involved are. More information available here: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/get-fast.html

 

I applied recently for the normal expedited passport, and that process looked like this:

 

Passport application received 3/28/23 - passport approved and shipped 4/12/2023. 15 days. I believe that is very much the outlier though as I was told it would be 7 weeks plus.

Edited May 12, 2023 by Markip1
Provided a link to Travel.State.Gov website

[D-R-J 192]

My wife recently had a combo interview at Baltimore. Make sure your spouse comes with you for the interview.

 

You are in a tricky spot. Not enough time to definitely get a passport with expedited service, but travel not close enough for the urgent travel service.

 

You will also need to send the original naturalization certificate, so it makes to impossible to do urgent if you’ve already sent in for expedited.

 

My mom had success getting a passport last minute with the help of her congressman’s office. I believe she did expedited service and they ensured her passport arrived the afternoon before her flight.

[JeanneAdil 6,491]

Interview date doesn't tell u when oath ceremony will be

Same day-maybe but many with combo interview have had to wait for the I 751 to be approved before naturalization is approved

 

u r really in limbo as if u take the oath, u turn in green card and possible will not have US passport in time

[Viridian 10]

Thanks all for the answers. I'm going to look into this further and see what my options are. In the meantime, I'd welcome any additional guidance.

[Alekezam 161]

We ran into the somewhat of a similar scenario. 

 

My thought was as long as my wife still has her green card we could still travel with no issues. The problem lies in the scheduling of the oath ceremony. It's completely random and could be either at your interview, a few days after your interview, or months after your interview....there's just no telling. Best case scenario, it gets scheduled after you take your trip. But, as luck would have it, it'll probably be either during your trip or before. In our case, they scheduled it right smack in the middle of our trip, despite asking our interviewing officer if he could put a note in our file or do something to ensure our oath ceremony date would fall sometime after our trip. Obviously, no dice there. 

 

We thought about rescheduling the oath ceremony but the process of doing so has way too many openings for error. First of all, you can't simply call or email them to request a reschedule. You have to physically mail in a letter stating the reasons for a change.....snail mail, really? And they do not clearly spell out the "excuses" you can use for a reschedule. They do, however, imply that it can only be done for emergencies, one being stricken with COVID or some other crazy sickness or if you need to travel due to an emergency like a direct family death, etc. etc....but again it's not completely clear. There are also indicators that mention that if you were to miss two ceremonies they will reschedule you automatically but any more than that and you have to start the whole process over again. I was not able to officially verify that anywhere other than through hearsay......

 

Even if the idea that they would just automatically reschedule if you just don't show up for one oath ceremony there's no telling how long in the future they would push you out. Same goes for mailing in a reschedule request along with the risk that they might claim they never received your request. Just way too much room for error. 

 

There's also the instant passport option where you can get your passport within a day so long as you have proof that you are traveling within 14 days from the time you are submitting your application but again, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to even get an appointment with the local passport agency that handles expedited requests. Heck, here in Houston you can't even get an appointment at a local Post Office for the next 3 months! So who knows how hard it is to get an appointment at one of those passport agencies that handle immediates. We weren't going to take the risk on that option either. 

 

So in conclusion,  we ultimately just decided it wasn't worth the risk and ended up eating the costs and rescheduling our trip. I know it sucks but in my opinion, it's better to be safe than sorry. 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2023 by Alekezam

[jackiegringa 419]

1 hour ago, Viridian said:

Thanks all for the answers. I'm going to look into this further and see what my options are. In the meantime, I'd welcome any additional guidance.

You could go to the interview and if offered same day oath say no - that's in the case that they approved both N-400 and I-751, which may happen. Or not! You gonna have to wait until you have an answer at your interview to make a plan.

 

Some people get the recommendation for approval of citizenship but have to wait for the removal of conditions approval that might take some days or weeks. Then you could simply travel on your green card because you haven't taken the oath.

 

There's also a chance of getting the oath scheduled for when you're abroad which is not great but you can reschedule and sometimes that goes by fast and sometimes it takes a while to get it through. It's a lot of moving pieces so it's hard to have one single plan, but overall these are the options and you can pivot as necessary. 

Edited May 12, 2023 by jackiegringa

[Viridian 10]

1 hour ago, jackiegringa said:

You could go to the interview and if offered same day oath say no - that's in the case that they approved both N-400 and I-751, which may happen. Or not! You gonna have to wait until you have an answer at your interview to make a plan.

 

Some people get the recommendation for approval of citizenship but have to wait for the removal of conditions approval that might take some days or weeks. Then you could simply travel on your green card because you haven't taken the oath.

 

There's also a chance of getting the oath scheduled for when you're abroad which is not great but you can reschedule and sometimes that goes by fast and sometimes it takes a while to get it through. It's a lot of moving pieces so it's hard to have one single plan, but overall these are the options and you can pivot as necessary. 

Thanks for laying out the options. I agree that part of the struggle is not being able to make a plan of action until after the interview. I assume from the responses that attempting to reschedule the interview is futile/out of the question? At this point, given the choice I wouldn’t mind if they kicked it back several months or even a year - we have sunk a great deal of time and money into this trip, as have the friends and family who have already booked their travel, and on an emotional level the idea of cancelling is completely heartbreaking to both of us.

 

So as I’m understanding it, we have two main paths:

 

1) Refuse same-day oath ceremony (if offered) and request a date in August —> if scheduled before/during our travel, attempt to reschedule

 

2) Do same day/pre-travel oath ceremony and apply for urgent passport processing 14 days before travel

 

And it seems like, of the two options, 1 has the greater chance of success, since urgent passport processing is unreliable?

 

I realise no one would recommend this, but in a worst case scenario (oath ceremony scheduled before travel, then rescheduled to a time still before/during travel) what would happen if I just didn’t show up (providing an honest explanation, but assuming I’d still be treated as an unexplained no-show)? My understanding is that, officially, you can get away with missing an oath ceremony without explanation twice - but what happens after that? Frankly, this trip is so important to us that I would file the N400 over again and wait another year if that’s what it takes. But would I then be at probable risk of deportation or other far more serious consequences?

[Ontarkie 14,218]

~~Hijack post and related reply split off an unrelated thread and merged with existing thread. Please do not post your question more than once and not in other members threads.~~

[Viridian 10]

1 minute ago, Ontarkie said:

~~Hijack post and related reply split off an unrelated thread and merged with existing thread. Please do not post your question more than once and not in other members threads.~~

Apologies - I first posted this in the I751 May filers thread and then realized this was a better place for it. Thanks for fixing.

[SalishSea 17,818]

6 hours ago, Viridian said:

Today, out of the blue, I received the letter with my naturalization interview date - it's scheduled for June 6th (I filed N400 on November 3rd 2022). No movement on the I751, which still shows on the USCIS website as "Case Was Updated to Show Fingerprints Were Taken".

 

While this is great news, I'm a little concerned as my wife and I are planning to be out of the country in the second half of July for a (much belated due to immigration and COVID) wedding celebration in the UK with our families. Does anyone know if there's a possibility the citizenship process could interfere with this? E.g. is there any point during the transition from Green Card to US Citizen where you can temporarily lose the ability to travel abroad? I'm not very knowledgeable on this part of the process!

Planned overseas travel is exactly why we delayed filing the N400.   Hope it all works out for you.

[Alekezam 161]

3 hours ago, Viridian said:

Thanks for laying out the options. I agree that part of the struggle is not being able to make a plan of action until after the interview. I assume from the responses that attempting to reschedule the interview is futile/out of the question? At this point, given the choice I wouldn’t mind if they kicked it back several months or even a year - we have sunk a great deal of time and money into this trip, as have the friends and family who have already booked their travel, and on an emotional level the idea of cancelling is completely heartbreaking to both of us.

 

So as I’m understanding it, we have two main paths:

 

1) Refuse same-day oath ceremony (if offered) and request a date in August —> if scheduled before/during our travel, attempt to reschedule

 

2) Do same day/pre-travel oath ceremony and apply for urgent passport processing 14 days before travel

 

And it seems like, of the two options, 1 has the greater chance of success, since urgent passport processing is unreliable?

 

I realise no one would recommend this, but in a worst case scenario (oath ceremony scheduled before travel, then rescheduled to a time still before/during travel) what would happen if I just didn’t show up (providing an honest explanation, but assuming I’d still be treated as an unexplained no-show)? My understanding is that, officially, you can get away with missing an oath ceremony without explanation twice - but what happens after that? Frankly, this trip is so important to us that I would file the N400 over again and wait another year if that’s what it takes. But would I then be at probable risk of deportation or other far more serious consequences?

The information I am providing is from personal experience after having actually completed the process. The poster you just quoted has not actually finished the process so what they've recommended is speculation based on hearsay. 

 

Don't even bother trying to request a specific date for your ceremony at the interview. The interviewing officer has no connection to the department that schedules oaths so they won't be able to help you there....we tried. 

 

Whether or not they automatically schedule your oath if you miss a ceremony is up in the air because there was nowhere I was able to verify that officially but supposedly they do this after two missed oaths. After that you're basically screwed and you have to start the  whole process over again (best case scenario but who knows how they think....could be even worse consequences than that which would invite a whole new slew of headaches). The main driver not to do so there is that you'll have to fork out another application fee as a result in addition to doing the waiting game all over again (which you don't have concern over). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2023 by Alekezam

[Viridian 10]

3 minutes ago, Alekezam said:

The information I am providing is from personal experience after having actually completed the process. The poster you just quoted has not actually finished the process so what they've recommended is speculation based on hearsay. 

 

Don't even bother trying to request a specific date for your ceremony at the interview. The interviewing officer has no connection to the department that schedules oaths so they won't be able to help you there....we tried. 

 

Whether or not they automatically schedule your oath if you miss a ceremony is up in the air because there was nowhere I was able to verify that officially but supposedly they do this after two missed oaths. After that you're basically screwed and you have to start the  whole process over again (best case scenario but who knows how they think....could be even worse consequences than that which would invite a whole new slew of headaches). The main driver not to do so there is that you'll have to fork out another application fee as a result in addition to doing the waiting game all over again (which you don't have concern over). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, I didn’t intend to sideline your response, which I found very informative and helpful. I understand that your advice would be to reschedule my travel plans; however, this is precisely the scenario I am trying to avoid - both on a financial and emotional level, the costs of cancelling would be extremely steep. So I’m looking for the best alternative solution, knowing full well that the situation is extremely far from ideal.