I-131 Re-entry Permit - To Return to US Within 12 Months Due to 16 Month Average Processing Time or Not?

[Family 3,988]

39 minutes ago, OldUser said:

If you're willing to take the risk and potentially deal with CBP / immigration court should it come to that, you're more than welcome.

 

There is NO additional risk .
On the contrary, filing is indisputable evidence of immigrants intent to maintain US residence. …

Travel  before a decision is safeguarded in 8 C.F.R. § 223.2(b)(1 …

 

@OldUser, your fears are unwarranted , in this instance…but I enjoy your occasional USCIS humorous take downs😂.

 

OP did some good research and I presume just wants reassurance. Just have your wife and child stay in Japan without worries til she finishes school. Even without the I-131 she would have made it past CBP unscathed .

 

 

8 C.F.R. § 223.2(b)(1 

 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/223.2

247.

(d) Effect of travel before a decision is made. Departure from the United States before a decision is made on an  application for a reentry permit or refugee travel document will not affect the application.

[OldUser 6,611]

40 minutes ago, Family said:

 

There is NO additional risk .
On the contrary, filing is indisputable evidence of immigrants intent to maintain US residence. …

Travel  before a decision is safeguarded in 8 C.F.R. § 223.2(b)(1 …

 

@OldUser, your fears are unwarranted , in this instance…but I enjoy your occasional USCIS humorous take downs😂.

 

OP did some good research and I presume just wants reassurance. Just have your wife and child stay in Japan without worries til she finishes school. Even without the I-131 she would have made it past CBP unscathed .

 

 

8 C.F.R. § 223.2(b)(1 

 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/223.2

 

247.

(d) Effect of travel before a decision is made. Departure from the United States before a decision is made on an  application for a reentry permit or refugee travel document will not affect the application.

Yes, I agree, I tend to be on very cautious side when it comes to USCIS.

 

I'm not saying I-131 will be denied because of leaving the US. It may get denied for some other reason. What I'm trying to say: pending or especially denied I-131 is not as convincing to CBP as approved petition. My understanding is, this presents a chance of getting NTA upon return.  Only approved and valid I-131 "shields" LPR from getting NTA upon return, if I interpret it correctly. Everything else (pending, denied I-131) - up to CBP. If they have a bad day they could issue NTA since you don't have approval to be out for extended period of time.

 

Somebody had a case not too long ago, and it's sad they never came back to give an update:

 

Either way, I think I contributed as much as I could. Good luck to OP.

 

 

Edited June 8 by OldUser

[puma1552 5]

21 hours ago, OldUser said:

In theory, you're only supposed to leave the US for extended stay after I-131 is approved. Not after applying, not after biometrics. But after you have approval. This almost guarantees you won't have issues.

 

USCIS cannot speak for CBP, and vice versa. So no wonder why USCIS cannot give definitive answer.

 

Sure, in a perfect world, everyone who needs a re-entry permit could wait 16+ months for the approval before traveling.  But think pragmatically - why are people typically getting re-entry permits to begin with?  So many people are heading overseas on short notice to care for terminally ill relatives, or in my wife's case, go back to school where school curriculums and enrollments are independent of USCIS and their timelines.

 

To illustrate this, let's do a thought experiment - let's say my wife decided just today that she wanted to go back to school and do a 2 year program.  Let's say she applies for a re-entry permit today, and waits 16 months before presumable approval in October 2025.  Then another month after that to have it in hand and depart, so call it November 2025.  Well, if her school program had started in September 2025, she'd be screwed.  And if that then meant she couldn't start until September 2026, then guess what, she's screwed that way too because the re-entry permit would expire before her 2 year program would be complete (leaving then having to potentially seek an SB-1 out of the discussion for simplicity).  So you either deal with immigration problems on the front end, or on the back end, so whether you wait for approval or not, you'll likely have problems with immigration somewhere. I think pragmatic reasons like this are explicitly why USCIS says go ahead and leave once biometrics are done.

 

The problem here is it's taking 16 months to approve re-entry permits while a green card is only valid for re-entry for 12 months, and USCIS hasn't provided any guidance on what to do if you are abroad after 12 months and still don't have a decision, despite USCIS having established procedures to explicitly give you the OK to leave the US while the application is pending.  The other issue is USCIS historically typically hasn't taken more than 12 months to make decisions on these, so they haven't needed additional guidance prior, which they now need and are lacking.  USCIS automatically extends an expiring green card for 2 years while an I-90 renewal is pending; they used to extend it one year, and then changed it to 2 years because at one point they were not able to process a lot of them within that 12 month extension.  Why can't they just apply similar logic to the green card's ability to re-enter the country when a re-entry permit is pending?  If the green card is typically valid for entry for 12 months but USCIS admits it's taking them 16+ months to process re-entry permit applications, then simple logic would dictate that a pending I-131 should automatically extend the timeframe that a green card can be used to re-enter the US without hassle; set it to be "until a decision is made" or just make the green card good for an additional 12 months - enough to cover even the worst cases.  Or, let's say she's abroad at 14 months and I have a catastrophic accident at home and she needs to come home to help me - due to USCIS's own lack of prescriptive guidance, she's officially in purgatory where her green card isn't technically valid for re-entry, yet she still doesn't have a decision on the re-entry permit, so she officially has no legal means to re-enter the country.

 

Also, USCIS and CBP absolutely should be communicating, when it's a CBP officer deciding if someone can enter based entirely on documentation provided by USCIS; on that note, CBP can see pending items from USCIS in their system upon entry.  My wife did a green card renewal in March last year, received it in 2 weeks (wow!!!), but DHS made a mistake in her name, so we had to reapply for another one (boy was that fun to get USCIS/DHS to fix a mistake).  We traveled around that time on her old, soon-to-expire green card while waiting for them to correct the original mistake (had to send that errant card back to USCIS), and the immigration officer was a little confused because he could see in the system that she had a new green card just issued (the one with a mistake), another application for another one (to fix the mistake), and yet she was coming into the country on her soon to expire green card (which was the only one she actually had in her possession).  So CBP and USCIS do communicate, as they should.  To what degree, I don't know though.

 

16 hours ago, jan22 said:

This is not accurate.  There is an established process where, after biometrics, you can leave the US and, on your application form, request to pick up the issued permit at the Embassy/Consulate nearest you.  This process would not exist if you weren’t supposed to leave until the permit is issued.  It is described in USCIS literature at: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/guides/B5en.pdf.

 

Thank you - and that is exactly what we did - they will be sending her re-entry permit to the consulate in Japan for her to pick up.

 

We'll have to decide what we're going to do here pretty soon, because September isn't far off so if we are going to send her to Guam we will have to start flight shopping soon.  Really surprised how hard it's been to find an instance of anyone else in this pretty common situation.  Again, given all the ties she has here, etc., and the fact she comes from a close ally/top 5 economy/non-terrorist/safe/low crime first world country with a dual citizen child in tow, I really struggle to see why they would hassle her, but who knows.  All depends on the CBP guy that day since USCIS isn't providing guidance.

Edited June 8 by puma1552

[puma1552 5]

15 hours ago, Family said:

 

There is NO additional risk .
On the contrary, filing is indisputable evidence of immigrants intent to maintain US residence. …

Travel  before a decision is safeguarded in 8 C.F.R. § 223.2(b)(1 …

 

@OldUser, your fears are unwarranted , in this instance…but I enjoy your occasional USCIS humorous take downs😂.

 

OP did some good research and I presume just wants reassurance. Just have your wife and child stay in Japan without worries til she finishes school. Even without the I-131 she would have made it past CBP unscathed .

 

 

8 C.F.R. § 223.2(b)(1 

 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/223.2

 

247.

(d) Effect of travel before a decision is made. Departure from the United States before a decision is made on an  application for a reentry permit or refugee travel document will not affect the application.

 

Thank you - I've gone down rabbit hole after rabbit hole over the years to successfully understand the laws better than most of the support agents at USCIS and navigated a lot of immigration processes without issue:

 

1) Sponsoring via Direct Consular Filing

2) Removal of conditions

3) Green card renewal where DHS makes a mistake on the card

4) Getting DHS to correct the mistake and issue a corrected green card

5) Applying for a re-entry permit (up to this point)

 

If I can just get past this last chunk, then we should be good for a long time and it'll hopefully just be smooth sailing on 10 year card renewals from here on out.

 

Curious - what makes you say she would get past CBP without issues even without the I-131?

Edited June 8 by puma1552

[Family 3,988]

49 minutes ago, puma1552 said:

Curious - what makes you say she would get past CBP without issues even without the I-131?

You have taken all preemptive steps to establish her permanent ties to the US and the temporary nature of her stay overseas. ..

 

As you have read, there are plenty of threads of LPR successfully returning after years long absence. …some navigated in real time by @Mike E , myself and others. My own experience is work related with plenty hands on predating my presence on forum.
 

 

 

 

[puma1552 5]

All potential headaches avoided.  She left the US on 9/12/23, and just yesterday on 8/21/24 the re-entry permit was approved, just under a year from the time she left, thankfully.

 

Waiting on the approval notice to be sent to me here in the US and then it looks like she just needs to check with the consulate in Japan in a few weeks (where it's being picked up) to make sure they have received it, and once they have, she can set up an appointment to go pick it up.

 

Best I can tell, she does NOT need to bring the approval notice that is being sent to me; looks like that is just for our records/notification that the permit is approved, but that she doesn't need to bring that in order to pick up the permit so I don't think I need to then mail that to her.  Looks like she just needs to bring:

 

1) Appointment letter, which I assume is something she'll get when she sets up an appointment for pickup

2) I-797C from last year when they notified her of biometric reuse

3) Passport

4) Greencard

 

https://jp.usembassy.gov/visas/immigrant-visas/green-card/maintaining-permanent-resident-status/reentry-permit-status/

 

Thanks all, this has been a major stressor for the last year.  Obviously we aren't really done until the permit is in hand, but it is approved so I can hopefully plan on smooth sailing now.

Edited August 22 by puma1552