chesterton_fan

Hello,

I am about to file an N-400 under the 5-year rule (I posted about doing so last year under the 3-year rule but life got in the way).

I wanted to check something. A few weeks ago I boarded a direct flight to London from my home city in the US. The flight took off, but developed mechanical problems and made an unscheduled landing at JFK. Although the airline offered an onward flight to London, this would have involved a day's waiting at JFK. Under the circumstances, it made more sense for me to return to my home city and get a refund, so that's what I did.

So I spent zero time out of the US. But my question is, do USCIS's records (which they presumably get from the airline) now incorrectly show me as out of the country? And if so, should I attempt to fix this (goodness knows how) in advance of filing the N-400, or should I go ahead and file the N-400 anyway and ask any questions if and when they arise? I have retained boarding passes of both the original flight that landed at JFK, and the flight from JFK to my home city. And of course I can easily prove that I'm in the US in several different ways (credit cards, photos, employment, etc).

Many thanks as ever to this great forum!

tht

If you did not leave the US don’t put it. If I recall even a day trip to Canada does not count. Not sure if you can still download your travel history from the USCIS site, I recall it had changed since I did mine in 2019. Either way you get to update everything at the interview, so take your boarding passes if you are worried / they ask about it.

S Folinsky

Out of idle curiosity, why do you think CIS is involved?

neill

Count only whole 24 hour periods outside the U.S.

LegalEagleTX

There is a body of case law on what it means for a person to leave the U.S., some of it quite interesting. One I recall is a person who boarded a train in the Great Lakes region in the U.S. to another destination in the U.S. but the train went through Canada. The U.S. Govt argued he had left the country. Court found he had not. It's one of the precedents for the concept that a day trip across the border and back again is not strictly leaving the U.S. If I recall intention was important. In your case you had the intention of leaving, the person on the train didn't. You might need legal advice on this one.

newacct

Don't worry about what the "records" show. (By the way, it would be the CBP that has records on entries and exits, not USCIS.) You are not responsible for the correctness of the CBP "records". You are responsible for truthfully answering the questions on the form you file. Always give the most truthful answer, even if it might disagree with the records in some system.

The facts are that your flight went from some city in the US to New York. That was obviously a domestic flight. Maybe that was not what it was intended to be, but that is what it actually was. (And the flight path almost certainly didn't go into any other country's airspace, so that strengthens the case that it was a domestic flight.)

LegalEagleTX

I'm not sure about this. The FAA's definition of 'Domestic Operation' involves 'scheduled domestic operation'. By extension it may be the 'scheduling' of the flight that dictates whether it is domestic or international, not where it ends up because of diversion. For example, using your analysis if it was a BA flight that was diverted such that BA carried out a domestic flight would BA then become a domestic flight operator within the U.S.?. Also does the flight need to go over another country's or simply leave the U.S.'s airspace? The U.S. airspace ends 12 miles out. OP didn't say when flight got diverted back, so perhaps the plane didn't go outside of U.S. airspace. All interesting facts for legal geeks to drool over.

newacct

What kind of flight it was for the FAA doesn't matter. The question is did the OP leave the US. Even if it did go through a foreign country's airspace, I would still argue that the OP didn't leave the US, because someone on a flight from Alaska to the contiguous states that flies over Canada is not considered to have left the US. Someone on a flight from Hawaii to the contiguous states goes into international airspace is also not considered to have left the US.

LegalEagleTX

Fair enough, but those individuals were also not 'intending' to leave the U.S. That's why I say intention may make a difference and hence legal advice may be required.

MidAtlantic

It seems to me that people are being far too pedantic about this. The N-400 requirement is:

Total Number of Days (24 hours or longer) spent outside the US - clearly the OPs non-flight was less than 24 hours so it is irrelevant whether technically it left the US or not

Total Number of Trips (24 hours or longer) taken outside the US - for the same reason this does not count as a trip

When I applied for citizenship I could not accurately recount every single trip I had made. I simply answered to the best of my knowledge and there was absolutely no issue with it.

To the OP, good luck, there is nothing that needs fixing. Unless you have some unusual situation it is a very simple process and, for me at least, the "interview" was a simple friendly chat mainly checking the paperwork.

S Folinsky

Name of that case is Di Pasquale. The subject is interesting. Take a look at Delgadillo (ship torpedoed by a German U-Boat) and ultimately the Fleuti case. Curiously, use of Fleuti expanded beyond entry. I mean everybody did that - including former INS and the Board of Immigration Appeals. Then a particularly poor set of facts hit the Supreme Court in Phinpathya. The question was did a three month absence to Asia plus visa fraud to come back fit within the rubric of “brief, innocent and casual?” The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision found that the question need not be addressed- an absence was an absence. It should be noted that the dissent concurred in the judgement. IOW, Mrs. Phinpathya lost 9-zip.

The statutory definition of “entry” was eliminated in the 1996 legislation. An interesting case is Telez v Lynch which discussed the term “reentry.” I think that case was wrongfully decided.