pjplayer

My (UK Citizen, Green Card) wife (UK Citizen, Green Card) and I applied for citizenship in September 2020 (Sacramento, CA). Our estimated processing time recently changed from 2 months to 7 months.

In the meantime we had started to plan to a move back to the UK this summer. Our 2-year-old son (joint US/UK Citizen) was born in the US and I will retain my US job and work in the US occasionally, so we'd like to continue rather than abandon our N400 applications.

One option is to delay our move until our citizenship application is completed, but I wanted to check if it would be possible to continue with the N400 while living in the UK.

As long as we return to the US often enough to avoid a 6-month gap in residency, will living in the UK affect our N400 application? We likely will have sold our house but I will keep the same employer. Obviously we would travel to the US for interviews and oath ceremonies.

Any help and advice much appreciated.

Noorah101

Did you mean September 2021?

Rene

pjplayer

Hi Rene,

Our initial application was September 2020. Based on processing times at that point, we were initially expecting the decision to be around May 2022, but recently our decision estimate changed to 7 months which puts us in September 2022:

N-400 status

Noorah101

Wow. Sorry I don't have an answer for sure, but if it were me, I'd postpone moving until you become USCs. You're this close, why risk it.

Rene

sun_burn

If you were in San Francisco or San Jose, yours would not be an unusual timeline pre-pandemic, but not in Sac. That's a place from where I have two acquaintances (an Ukrainian among them) who took approximately 6 months each. A quick look at trackitt doesn't suggest that Covid has changed that to 16+ months for everyone.

However, it's not worth leaving until your process is complete. Part of the interview is a review of your travel record since you applied. There are just too many balls to juggle. While it is unfortunate that your process has taken so long, you're better off staying the course now.

pjplayer

Thanks for the advice. I think we are probably going to wait it out. Although some people seem to be having more luck that us, the USCIS site has recently changed its processing time ranges, which means we can't enquire about our applications for another 6 months:


Seems that's the highest processing time anywhere in California. Very annoying!

S Folinsky

As a matter of interest, the Immigration & Nationality Act used to include a requirement for naturalization that the petitioner/applicant intend to reside in the United States and there was a presumption that if the new citizen took up foreign residence within a year of residence they had not had the requisite intent. That provision was eliminated by the 1994 MTINA enactment.

That said, what was NOT eliminated and still exists is the requirement of US residence at time of admission to citizenship. Denaturaliztion is allowed if the person did not meet the requirements at time of admission to citizenship.

Most of the body of case law on denaturalization involves Communists, Nazis and Mafiosi.

Interesting area of the law. I was never involved in such cases, but a friend had been a DOJ attorney with OSI so he did many denaturalizations. He is intrigued with current events in Ukraine under he rubric of “who would’ve thought.” My maternal grandparents were refugees over the Ukraine/Moldova border.)

PetrifiedExPat

These processing times reminded me of my application, which was lost by USCIS, then interviews were rescheduled (even though they had already been completed), after two year of ball dropping. When the officer requested my family came in again (for the GC removal of conditions, for the second time!), luckily COVID had hit (yes... luckily), I said no, time to approve the application. After that they invited me in the next day for the ceremony. Complete mess from top to bottom, lost my patience with them in the end.

pjplayer

We got oaffed last month so now I just need to check that nothing bad has happened in the UK in the last few months... Oh.

PetrifiedExPat

My N400 took a while, however, USCIS lost my application and only when ripped into did they finally sort it all out. Terrible scenario.

Rete

What is "oaffed"??????????? I googled it and it is not a word.

S Folinsky

Ah, the perils of autocorrect. I think “oathed” was the intention.

LegalEagleTX

Right, because autocorrect takes a real word and turns it into a word that doesn't exist.

pjplayer

Oaffed was the intention, you can speculate on the meaning!

S Folinsky

I am aware of the slang acronym based word. Didn’t quite seem to fit in context. (Auto-correct sometimes expands the vocabulary).