silvermine

agree they are tuned to the unordinary.. +
i'd rather be outside too! but this goes back to the original question, how does the drone at us immigration 'know' what passport you got your green card on?

ie. there is nothing it seems to me that has any correspondence to a particular passport imprinted on a green card. therefore one should be able to use a uk passport in replacement of any other country.. keeping in mind the us and the uk are 'supposed' to be allies at the moment...

the only thing the green card really refers to is original nationality.

ugh this is getting out of hand .. i feel like jason bourne

Rushman

Everton?? EVERTON????? Last time Everton won anything Robin Hood nicked it on the way home!!!!

ImHere

!!!!!

I seem to remember a little victory over Man U in the FA Cup final a few years back. We have been in the wings regrouping and watching...now we are BACK! Top 4 or 5 finish this season (without Rooney) Europe next year and a top 3 finish I feel. Back room crap is sorted and David Moyes is getting on top of it all. C'Mon you blues!!! Everton through and through me through thick n thin. Im not like one of these pussy Man U supporters who will desert their team when it all goes to shit...as it will sometime.

snowbunny

Do you really think that the American beaurocrat will look more favourably upon a Brit because we are "supposed" to be allies? The immigration officials of this country are the rudest of the ones I know: Canada, Mexico, the UK, France, and the US. They look for reasons to deny entry and they will not "lose" any argument with grace.

If your green card says you are Canadian, then I would enter the US with your Canadian passport. It is far easier to enter as a Canadian anyway; far more ordinary; more border crossings; closer trade and immigration treaties. I know that if I were to come to possess a British passport I would want to proudly display it, but I also know through friends' experiences and witnessing them first hand that doing what is expected is far better than making a statement and having the immigration officials delight in taking me down a few pegs.

(Tales of encounters with immigration officials available upon request.)

ImHere

Ive heard horror stories about immigration, but to be honest our experiences have all been of politeness and courtesy. Even when we first arrived and had to go through secondary to get our visas activated they were almost appologetic about the wait. Perhaps its because we've never given them any reason to be anything but? Dealing with any official is the same....pass the initial attitude test and you will 99% of the time have a smooth passage. fail the initial attitude test (ie piss them off) then theres ever only going to be one winner. And FYI the "attitude test" is passed or failed within the first 5 seconds of the encounter.

snowbunny

I got hassled once because when asked where in the US I had been born, the border guard said he'd never heard of it and would have to look it up. This took quite a bit of time despite the fact that the same city was printed on my passport and birth certificate. Such a warm welcome back into the US. I was very polite; after all I have to survive in a state where if you are not polite, the police like to use that cannon strapped to their hip!

After a very leisurely consultation the border guard decided my hometown of 300,000 people did in fact exist and he could re-admit me to the US, but thought my hometown's name was idiotic.

Sweet.

silvermine

lemme guess were you born in Hell (Michigan)
that would probably raise some eyebrows at immigration!

snowbunny

Nah -- this was long before 9/11.

I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. It is on the Gulf of Mexico coast and occasionally is on hurricane prediction maps.

silvermine

for the life of me i cannot see how anyone would not know where corpus christi texas is....

snowbunny

Amazing how little about the country one needs to know to be hired as a civil servant. I'm sure that the UK customs officials tell returning Brits that say, Scunthorpe is a stupid name for a town, and have to look it up on a map to see that it exists.

silvermine

right off the CBP website it says

Travel from outside the Western Hemisphere (Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia)
U.S. citizens must provide:
· A valid, unexpired U.S. passport

U.S. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) must provide one of the following:
· I-551, Permanent Resident Card (Green card),
· Reentry Permit
· Machine-Readable Immigrant Visa endorsed with a CBP Admission Stamp
· Temporary Residence Stamp (ADIT stamp) contained in a passport or on Form I-94, or
· Unexpired Immigrant Visa. Passport required unless otherwise noted.


so it seems as LPR one does not even need to show a passport at all at us immigration, just the green card?

snowbunny

No, the last bullet really needs to be separated into two: unless otherwise noted, which I read to apply only *perhaps* to an ADIT stamp on an I-94. Unless there is some extenuating circumstance as to why one could not have a passport (non citizen from a country refusing to provide the emigrant a passport?) I'd believe you'd be required to produce proof of identity and country of origin.

ImHere

Actually British immigration rarely say anything to us when return. Just look at our pasports and wave us through in boredom. If we've come from an internal EU flight we are lucky to even see an immigration offical. The only time ive ever had a brit customs offical say anything to me was when we had a laugh and joke with one about something completely obscure.

Yorkieabroad

Last time I came in, I asked the immigration officer if I needed a new passport, as mine was issued at the British High Comm in Singapore, and doesn't have the machine readable coding at the bottom of the details page. He replied that the only thing I needed to get back into the US was my green card....don't know if thats gospel, and I can't ever imagine leaving the country without my passport, but thats what the bloke in the box said..

ImHere

I was lead to believe by USCIS that the green card is basically a machine readable passport as far as US customs were concerned. Its what give you your right to present yourself for entry and identification. Of course thats all fine and dandy for US Customs but no other country is gonna recognise it so you'd need your passport anyway unless you just want to sit on the plane and fly straight back to the US.