Married With Children

Thanks for the responses. I was hoping there was something I had missed as it's not going to be easy to explain to her that she doesn't meet the 3-year requirement after being married 4 years.

Hi, my wife came over to the U.S. on a K-1 visa, we were married within the 90 days and, about a year and a half ago she got her green card. She wants to apply for citizenship, but it's not clear to me when her permanent residence "officially" began. We just recently had our 4-year anniversary, I'm a U.S. Citizen and we've been living in the U.S. since we were married. So it seems like we should easily meet the 3-year requirement, and I have a copy of the receipt letter for her application for permanent residence dated Feb 2003. However, the date listed on her green card shows resident since Feb 2005. (Yes, it took them two years to process her application -- she never had a 2-year "conditional" green card.)

So, my question is exactly when did her permanent resident status begin for purposes of satisfying the 3 year requirement for naturalization? From what I've seen on the UCIS website, it begins from the date on her green card which means we'll pass our 5th anniversary before she's even elligible to apply! It doesn't seem right that she's forced to wait for another year because they were so slow in processing her application. Is there any hope or are we basically just stuck?