samuel5028

It is better to keep your green card safe. If you lose your green card while you carry, again there are plenty of process to get your new green card. You can use or carry your green card if needed or in case of emergency.

Manc

there is only one process to get a new card. and it involves handing over nearly $500.

and what emergency can you think of that necessitates the use of a green card?

lost in the desert trying to summon help by reflecting the sun off the mirror image on the back?

meauxna

I wonder if you could start a fire that way?

hmm, might be useful afterall.

deng890

When my first physical green card was mailed out, it was sent to a wrong address (INS fault, back when USCIS was called INS!) returned to INS and destroyed. Due to their incompetence it took me 2 years, 2 separate 8 hour long lining up at the local INS office and unnecessary verbal abuse from various INS employees before I finally got the physical card in hand.

After that experience I decided that I'd rather risk getting stopped and asked for my card (and be detained temporarily) than lose it and have to go through that atrocious nightmare again.

Turns out I DID get stopped at a border checkpoint in southern Vermont, without my greencard on me. The officer told me I need to have it on me at all times and that he'd "let me go that once" but next time I risked being detained to determine citizenship.

I became a citizen soon after, so the issue became moot. But I rarely carried it with me.

Wolfy

mamasue

I've had mine almost 4 years now....I never carry it with me, unless I'm going abroad.
Never been asked for it otherwise....who'd ask for it??

Bob

random border spot checks...if you're anywhere near a border, or farming community which might bus in illegals...

mamasue

I'm a 60 year old English woman..... not likely to be picking lettuces in California.

satigerbrit

I was stopped by camo wearing, gun toting aagents about 30 miles N of Mcallen TX and they wanted to see my Green Card, even though I had not been out of the USA. They told me they could detain me for 24hrs until someone brought the card from my home, and that I should carry it with me at all times. Nevertheless they took my DL and called someone and I was released. So if you want avoid this either carry it with you or do not go anywhere near a border.

chriswinter

Right you are! Basically the same has happened to my son while traveling in South Texas near the border...he's American-born. Luckily knowing the 'climate' down there..he had his birth certificate with him..and he had to produce it. Of course he also had his TX DL, still they wanted proof that he had the right to be in this country, the country he was born in.