puma1552

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.

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?

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. 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.

Truncating an extended stay abroad because a re-entry permit hasn't been approved completely defeats the purpose of bothering to apply for a re-entry permit to begin with. I'm done here though. Not getting any help or useful replies, yet getting my own comments deleted for being 'non contributory.' Have fun, no need for me to update with the outcome later, I'll just do what I have to and that'll be that. Useless website.

For what it's worth, I just called USCIS and asked the agent about if she needs to return within 12 months. This particular agent said it's "a difficult question to answer and largely unknown" (basically confirming USCIS themselves have no real policy/explicit guidance), but basically yes/probably. I then confirmed if a short visit and then leaving again is ok and he said no. He said if you're gone for 10 months, you need to stay in the country for 10 months before you can leave again or it doesn't count. Basically, you would need to stay in the country for at least as long or longer than you were gone or the trip is pointless/does nothing for you. So according to that guy, re-entering the US for a few days or a couple weeks and going back to Japan wouldn't do anything for us. Doesn't make any sense at all given the nature/purpose of re-entry permits and the inherent function of them being to allow you to re-enter after extended stays abroad. I take everything Tier 1 agents say with a grain of salt. I know from experience I can call 3x and get 3 different answers to the same question, so it is what it is, but for this question, I guess that's the flavor of the day from the Tier 1 agent.

That's really the crux of why this thread exists and why I'm asking that question about a trip back within 12 months and if it's really necessary or not. USCIS doesn't provide explicit guidance either way. USCIS doesn't appear to provide an explicit extension of the 12 month green card travel validity period for extended re-entry permit processing times (like they now do for extended processing times on green card renewals via the 24 month I-797), but USCIS also doesn't explicitly state that one must re-enter the US within the 12 month period if the re-entry permit is still processing. The only reason I can imagine it would be denied is if she's out of the country for 12+ months by the time they process it and they cite that alone as reason for denial, but I don't know if that's a realistic concern since she followed the proper procedures and left the US after biometrics which USCIS says is perfectly acceptable to do. Seems strange they would say "go ahead and leave while we process it now that biometrics are done," and then later say, "well it turns out that even though we said you could leave, since it took us so long to process it on our end, we are going to now penalize you and deny the application because you were gone 12+ months while we were taking 12+ months to process the application." I see other threads of people gone for years, not following proper procedures, etc., and being let back in with no/minimal hassles and I look at our case and see procedures thus far being followed correctly, tons of strong ties to the US, etc., so it has me wondering if it's really necessary for her to load up a 2 year old for an international trip for just a few days or not. This seems like a pretty common situation where it should be somewhat easy to find people who have been in the same position.

Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship after age 20 and she doesn't want to give up her entire Japanese nationality/passport and all the rights that come with it just to basically be able to also vote here; I wouldn't either.

I'm a US citizen. My wife is a Japanese citizen and a 10 year green card holder. She's lived in the US since 2011. She just renewed her 10 year green card last May/June, so it's good for another ~9 years. We also have a toddler son who is a dual US/Japanese citizen. Last summer, she decided she wanted to go back to Japan for school, for ~2 years and then come back to the US after that. After her green card renewal was complete, we filed I-131 for a re-entry permit. I-131 timeline is: 7/4/23: Fingerprint fee accepted 7/12/23: Case updated to show fingerprints were taken (biometrics re-used) Silence on the case since. Being a re-entry permit, we knew biometrics had to be completed before she could leave the US, so we waited for that. She left the US on 9/12/23 (with our son). I remained in the US. So all is well and proper up to this point. Also, she has maintained ties here while gone - still married to me, we are still filing joint tax returns with her name, she renewed her Minnesota cosmetology license online while she was over there, and she renewed her Minnesota driver's license right before she left. Her name is also on all the bills, etc. Our preferred path is for her to just remain in Japan doing her thing until she's ready to come home, obviously sometime after a re-entry permit is in hand. However, average processing time for a re-entry permit is currently 16 months, and I know she technically can only enter the US no questions asked without hassle on her green card for 12 months from the date she left. So if USCIS doesn't approve the re-entry permit before 9/12/24 (which seems unlikely), then we are in a gray area where her green card is technically not valid for entry (though she'd still be an LPR so I know CBP can't strip her actual status, only a court can etc.) but where we also don't yet have a re-entry permit. I don't have any reason to believe the re-entry permit would be denied, but if for some reason it were, then we could have some real hassles. So the question is, does she really need to plan a short trip/visit to the US before 9/12/24 just to reset that 12 month clock on her green card being valid for re-entry without hassle just to be safe until a decision is made on the re-entry permit? It seems kind of absurd that we should have to spend time and money on a short trip to the US (probably Guam since it's closest to Japan) just because USCIS can't process a re-entry permit within the 12 month period in which a green card is valid for re-entry while we wait for them to make a final decision on the re-entry permit. Finances are tight with her in school and a short trip abroad with a 2 year old is a hassle we'd prefer to avoid. So, should she take a trip back to the US before 9/12/24 to be safe or just wait out the re-entry permit decision in Japan without re-entering the US at all? All things being done correctly with the application thus far, could they deny the re-entry permit simply because by the time they get around to processing her application (say, ~16 months) she will have been outside the US for that long without returning and they'd cite that alone as a reason for denial?