bigz

Hi all,

Hopefully you will move this thread if we have put it in the wrong place but i was at a loss for where to put it. Here goes my longwinded question. My husband (ukc) and i (usc) were married last year in good ol USA with the intent to stay in the states , we went through all the processes and he got his permanent resident card, low and behold i the wife changed my mind and wanted to experience England with my new family and over we went.. Heres the question.. Do we have to be back in under a year or can we stay here for a while with the knowledge that in a few years we want to move back to the states.? We are prepared to come back un under the year so my husband doesnt lose his permanent resident status and then have to start the whole process all over again. Any suggestions or have i confused everyone reading this... lol

thanks,
bex and bigz

Ray

First off .make up your bleedin mind where you wanna live ..

Dependng in circumstances he may already have abandoned his status as
aa conditional PR..

Presuming you have kept property . bank account. etc in the US
you may be ok ... but if you have no re-entry permit you may have problems
(form I-131) after 12 months

Of course you still have the matter of removing the condition from his green card to attend to .. And if your not a permant resident .. ????

bigz

you have so confused me... first off.. as for making up our bleeding minds.. thats what we are trying to do.. to give me and my daughter the option of seeing which is the right place to live for us.. when we originnaly filled out the forms.. ie.. the i30 and the 485 we thought we had to do so to live in the states.. it wasnt until this was all decided that the thought to see what it was like in england came to be.. i would be all set to stay here except he is worried that he wont be allowed in if all we wanted to do was live in the uk and visit my family in america a few times a year... ..why does he have to be back in the us in less then a year? is this truly the rule? what if we had married and chosen to live in the uk straight away and a few years had passed wouldnt he automattically been given dual citizenship? see why im confused?

Ray

Simply put ..what he applied for is to be a permanent resident ...
which means of course ... he will reside there permanently

Of course not ..and why should he .. to become a citizen ..he has to live there.. pretty easy concept ....

You in the mean time ..As a US citizen can get british citizenship..if you have gone thru all the procedures properly .. and stay there for whatever the period is ...

For UK hubby to get US citizenship .. he must live in the US .and after 3 years as a Permanent resident ..he can apply for citizenship ..
once he has that ..you can both come and go as you wish ..

Any clearer!!!!!

ironporer

Don't worry- Ray's bark is worse than his bite (he's kind'a like the old farts in that movie Secondhand Lions). Your decision to experience both cultures to pick the best one makes perfect sense...from a non-visa point of view. In the worst case, all you have to do is to re-apply for the K-3 visa at the London Embassy (I believe... but am not sure), and return...as long as there is no rush to come back to the US.

Duncan Roberts

Think about it, the forms you file are for permanent residency. If you dont live in the country you are not resident and they will take it away. As far as I know, if you do nothing you will loose it after 6 months. if you file for re-entry permits then you can extend it, but not for a whole lot longer. He can only apply for citizenship after holding a greencard for 3 years, assuming that the greencard is based on the marriage to you. Also, if the greencard is based on marriage then it is conditional and only valid for 2 years, leaving the country for an extended period of time probably isnt the best idea if you want to get the conditions removed.
There is nothing stopping you from leaving for an extended period of time, but just realize you will probably have to file a complete new set of applications. If you had lived in england right away, that would have been the best idea. You wouldnt have filed for a greencard and would petition him as a spouse when you decided to move to america.
Go to www.uscis.gov and look at the terms of conditional residency and greencards in general.

Celsius

IMHO you can't experience living in a country until you've lived there at least two years.

Dan725

I know its not correct and proper, but hypothetically speaking, what would happen if he just kept nipping back to the US every three or four months or so for a week at a time?

Would that keep the greencard up and running, so to speak, or would they cotton on to that? I suppose it would be similiar to Visa waiver abusers, depends on the person on the desk?

Ray

For a week at a time ..pushing it a bit .. but for a few months at a time better ..BUT .. it could just work ...

But it would prevent him getting citizenship ... ie.. the continuous residency requirements ..

Celsius

Such a pattern of entering and leaving the US would be picked up by USCIS sooner or later and that would be of no benefit to the UKC.

Bob

yeah, much time out of the US would reset the clock on when he could apply for citizenship.

And the re-entry permit, I thought you had to file for that before you left?

Yorkieabroad

Not sure if they're looking closer at it now, but I was questioned on my last entry - I did a month in China towards the end of 04, plus a couple of other trips to the Far East, then 6 months in the UK in 05, then a fortnight in the UK earlier this year - on my way back in at IAH the guy commented that I travelled a lot, and where did I really live. Made me chuckle (inside!) cos now I only travel a fraction of what I used to when I was working...

leedsPaddy

I never understand why people go through the hassles of immigration only to give it up on a whim. You guys should have researched the consequences of leaving the states before actually doing it...........namely he will lose his PR if you guys stay out for a certain length of continuous time. What you should have done was to apply for a re-entry permit. This allows you to live outside of the country for upto a year or 2 (I think) without jeopardizing the PR. You should have bitten the bullet and gone through the whole process until he gained his US citizenship and then Bob's your uncle...........and you are free to do what you want. Get back to the US asap to protect the PR but also to start the clock towards US citizenship. I'm pretty sure his absence from the US will count against the grand total of time he needs to be present in the US in order to be eligible for US citizenship(as well as reach the 3 year mark being a PR)..............but then again I wouldn't know as I never left the US for more than a day once I submitted the application for my green card. Now after getting my citizenship, I can bugger of back to Leeds for a while and not worry..that is of course if I didn't have a life here in Vermont. Anyway, good luck with everything and this time stick it out to the bitter end so that if another whim takes your fancy, you won't have to worry.
cheers,
patrick

JAJ

Assuming you both want the freedom to live in both the UK and US:

You would have made it a lot simpler had you waited for your husband to get his U.S. citizenship before leaving.

Trying to maintain permanent residence in two different countries is not an easy task.

Do you want to get British citizenship? If so, what's your UK status - did you get a spouse entry clearance or just turn up as a tourist?

jaytee

as a PR you are supposed to come back in under 180 days. at 360, your PR status is revoked