Leon

I am currently an F-1 undergrad student. Today in the mail I received
a letter from the Selective Service with the "dig you forget?" theme,
reminding me to register. I could tick the "alien" box and send a copy
of my I-94, which is what they ask for if I am one and therefore don't
need to register, but I don't know if I should.

The reasoning is that my USC girlfriend and I are planning to get
married likely within the coming two years, and since I'll be going
through the whole AOS thing, I'm pretty sure I'd have to register for
SS anyway and I will still be within the 18-25 age range. Should I
simply tick the "register me" box now and mail it off? Would it hurt,
help or not affect any future proceedings in any way at all?

Thoughts appreciated, thanks!

Rich Wales

"Leon" wrote:

> I am currently an F-1 undergrad student. Today in the mail
> I received a letter from the Selective Service with the "did
> you forget?" theme, reminding me to register. . . . my USC
> girlfriend and I are planning to get married likely within
> the coming two years . . . .

I was a graduate student at UCLA, and I imagine it'll always be
difficult for me to think of "USC" as an abbreviation for "United
States citizen", rather than a reference to the expensive private
school that was our cross-town rival. :-} But whatever . . . .

> . . . I'm pretty sure I'd have to register for SS anyway and
> I will still be within the 18-25 age range. Should I simply
> tick the "register me" box now and mail it off?

I wouldn't recommend it. I don't think it would help, and you
might just end up confusing everyone and messing things up for
yourself later on.

Foreign students, in general, are NOT required to register for
Selective Service (see http://www.sss.gov/must.htm) -- and AFAIK,
a person who is not "required" to register is also not "allowed"
to register. Thus, I think your attempt to register would be void
-- possibly retroactively void, if Selective Service found out
later on that you really weren't required/eligible to register.

If you were to send in a registration right now, I could imagine
the following worst-case scenario:

(1) Your registration is initially accepted, because no one
notices that you are in fact in a status that doesn't need
to (and thus can't) register.

(2) If you were to try to register a second time, after getting
your "green card", Selective Service would reject your
second registration on the grounds that you had already
registered (step #1 above).

(3) Some time later, Selective Service discovers their mistake
and voids your registration in step #1 retroactively. In
other words, as far as they're concerned, you never registered
-- and if this happens after your 26th birthday, you can't
remedy the problem by registering again. They probably won't
resurrect your failed second attempt to register (step #2),
since they would have completely forgotten about that after
rejecting it because (they thought) you were registered at
that time.

FWIW, I think you'd be better off waiting until your status changes
to permanent resident -- at which point you really do have to
register -- and register at that time.

Then again, I might be completely mistaken. What do others think?

Rich Wales [email protected] http://www.richw.org/dualcit/
*DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, professional immigration consultant,
or consular officer. My comments are for discussion purposes only and
are not intended to be relied upon as legal or professional advice.

crg

I'd mark the "alien" box and send in a copy of the I-94. Once you get your permanent resident status you go to the post office and register. Registration opens you up to benefits like government jobs. Claiming LPR status, or US citizenship on a selective service form could be considered fraud. Misrepresenting a material fact to gain a benefit could make you inadmissible. Granted, the immigration officer would have to be in a really bad mood to do a case on it, but it's better not to find out.