What if I can't get into the United States for purposes of my immigration case?
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri.
Wanted to shoot this short video about what to do if you are outside the United States and because of circumstances like a pandemic that your travel is unfeasible. It's not something that you can pull off. You're not going to be able to get back in time.
Let's say you're a lawful permanent resident. Let's say that you were outside the United States for five and a half months and let's say you cut it too close and now the airports are closed or they're cutting down on allowing people into the United States and you're worried that you might lose your Green Card.
Now as of things are right now, Green Card holders are being allowed into the United States, but travel is tricky. President Trump has a travel ban for people from various countries, including Europe and China ... not that Europe's a country, but you know what I mean. And so we're seeing situations where people are reaching out to us and saying, "Jim, my mom has been back home in India or my dad has been stuck in Sweden or what should we do?"
I think the important thing is to document, document, document. You want to show that you had a round trip ticket. You want to show that you had every intention of coming back to the United States.
You want to show that it was because of this time period that we find ourselves in, that you weren't able to come. You needed to keep all those documents and you probably want to make sure that you had that round trip ticket. You want to make sure that you did everything right and that it was completely out of your control, because this rule about getting back to the United States is not a hard and fast rule. I mean it is a rule, but there's some analysis to it.
In other words, if you can demonstrate that you did not abandon your residency, you should be okay for purposes of applying for citizenship or maintaining your Green Card if you can show that it was outside of your control. And I think everyone will agree that these strange times we live in would be circumstances outside the immigrant's control.
So if you're stuck outside the United States and you're trying to get back in, give us a call at (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group. It's called Immigrant Home. And if you like this video, be sure to share it with your friends on social and subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos just like this one. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
