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Dutchiee

Regaining greencard after losing it

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Filed: O-1 Visa Country: Netherlands
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Hello,

My husband and I got married last year, and in May this year I received my greencard. But plans have changed, and we are now thinking of moving to Holland, where I'm from. This means I'm going to lose my greencard. Now I was wondering, if Holland wouldn't work out for us and we would like to move back to the States, can I apply for a greencard again? I did some research but couldn't really find an answer, so hopefully somebody here can tell me.

Thanks!

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Filed: Country: Monaco
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Yes you can. So long as you stay married to a USC, he can always petition for you as the beneficiary. The process you will need to go through is CR/IR which takes approximately a year.

There may another alternative. Read the information in the link below and see if might apply to your case.

http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/after-green-card-granted/international-travel-permanent-resident

Good luck!

Edited by JohnR!

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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Ireland
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Yes absolutely. You'd need to go through the waiting again, and pay the fees again, but you can apply as many times as you want.

Bye: Penguin

Me: Irish/ Swiss citizen, and now naturalised US citizen. Husband: USC; twin babies born Feb 08 in Ireland and a daughter in Feb 2010 in Arkansas who are all joint Irish/ USC. Did DCF (IR1) in 6 weeks via the Dublin, Ireland embassy and now living in Arkansas.

mod penguin.jpg

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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Australia
Timeline

If you're voluntarily leaving the country, you're surrendering your greencard, not 'losing it' (which implies having it taken away). You can always apply again, but you go back to the beginning of the line and have to do all the bureaucracy all over again. If it was me, I wouldn't want to leave before I had citizenship since I'd come that far through the process already... but that was my personal choice. You're free to surrender your greencard and reapply later.

Karen - Melbourne, Australia/John - Florida, USA

- Proposal (20 August 2000) to marriage (19 December 2004) - 4 years, 3 months, 25 days (1,578 days)

STAGE 1 - Applying for K1 (15 September 2003) to K1 Approval (13 July 2004) - 9 months, 29 days (303 days)

STAGE 2A - Arriving in US (4 Nov 2004) to AOS Application (16 April 2005) - 5 months, 13 days (164 days)

STAGE 2B - Applying for AOS to GC Approval - 9 months, 4 days (279 days)

STAGE 3 - Lifting Conditions. Filing (19 Dec 2007) to Approval (December 11 2008)

STAGE 4 - CITIZENSHIP (filing under 5-year rule - residency start date on green card Jan 11th, 2006)

*N400 filed December 15, 2011

*Interview March 12, 2012

*Oath Ceremony March 23, 2012.

ALL DONE!!!!!!!!

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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Egypt
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If you think that you may move back to the US in the near term, you may want to consider applying for a reentry permit. That way you won't lose your green card (for a limited time) but your time abroad won't count towards the time needed to become a citizen. http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/B5en.pdf

If you decide to relinquish your green card, then you should formally abandon it.

Your green card won't officially be taken from you unless you return to the US and they decide that you've been gone too long... so if you just leave without abandoning your green card, you get into the tricky situation of not being able to apply for a new one (because you already have one) but also not being sure if the one you have is still valid after a year or two abroad.

Applying for a future visa for work or education would also first require you to officially abandon your permanent resident status.

If you do formally abandon your green card, as others have said, you can start the process over and get a new one.

Here's some more information on this, but note that it's from a legal advice website and not from USCIS: http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/why-voluntarily-abandon-green-card-i-407.html

For a review of each step of my N-400 naturalization process, from application to oath ceremony, please click here.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Filed: Other Timeline

The reentry permit only prevents a Green Card holder from losing her residency automatically when being out of the country for a year or longer. Once she returns, she'll have to prove that she did not abandon her US residency. However, the US residency is automatically abandoned when a Green Card holder establishes or re-establishes residency outside the US. If Dutchiee moves back the Holland she'll establish residency there. That would be the end of it, reentry permit or not.

Dutchiee, unless you absolutley have to, I suggest you ride the train for 3 years until you can become a US citizen. At that time you can come and go as you please.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all . . . . The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic . . . . There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

President Teddy Roosevelt on Columbus Day 1915

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