Legal advice on Green card holders and travel

Can I maintain a green card while living outside the US? Yes, provided you only left the US temporarily with the intention to return. The general advice for keeping a green card in such a situation is to do as much as possible to make it look like you are maintaining ties to the US, such as keeping bank accounts in the US, filing US tax returns, maintaining US driver’s licenses, owning a house in the US (even if you rent it out), etc., and to have a good story ready about why you’re overseas and when you intend to return to the US (or at least what circumstances would trigger your return). There are people who keep their green card active for years this way. There are also special exceptions that apply to expatriate employees of certain American employers, as well as their spouses and children, provided that they have at least one year of continuous physical presence in the US before beginning their overseas assignment. A person in such a situation may need to file a Form N-470 with USCIS. Are there drawbacks to maintaining a green card while living outside the US? As long as you have a green card, you remain a US resident for tax purposes and your income from any country is taxable in the US. This may mean that you are required to file US tax returns every year (or, if you have an American spouse, include your income in a joint return with them). Due to the foreign tax credit and foreign earned income exclusion, there is typically little (if any) tax liability in the US unless you live in a low-tax jurisdiction or have locally tax-advantaged income. Should I get a re-entry permit? It is a must-have if you plan to stay outside the US for one continuous year, and also a good idea if you plan extended stays of less than a year outside the US. A re-entry permit is only good for two years, so you need to renew it every two years, and need to be physically inside the US each time you apply to renew it. If your green card or re-entry permit expires while you were outside the US due to circumstances beyond your control (which are not really specifically defined), you can apply for an SB-1 “returning resident” visa to restore your green card. This lets you skip the I-130 process but you still have to submit the visa application, do the medical examination and go to the interview again. Even if you get a re-entry permit, you are only allowed to keep your green card so long as US authorities are satisfied that you are outside the US temporarily and have the intention to return to the US. The re-entry permit basically just keeps your green card from being automatically cancelled if you leave the US for more than a year, and reduces the risk of immigration officials questioning you, but it doesn’t eliminate the residency requirements. Are there drawbacks to abandoning a green card? Will it affect my ability to return to the US later? It should have no impact on your ability to come back to the US, whether you do so on ESTA or a new visa. That said, while you have the green card, you are only supposed to leave the US temporarily with the intention to eventually return, so when abandoning the green card, or otherwise answering questions about your travel history to/from the US, you would want to keep your story straight so that nobody concludes that you were ever in the US unlawfully. The biggest practical issue is that if you ever decide to move back to the US, it can take a lot of time and money to get a new green card. CBP warned me that I have been outside the US for too long, and may need to get a re-entry permit. Most likely, the CBP officer made a note in your passport (where they stamped it) saying that they warned you about the residency requirements, which means the next time you go to the US, they may ask you more questions at the port of entry and possibly put you in removal (deportation) proceedings if they don’t like your explanation. Removal would permanently disqualify you from ESTA and add hurdles to any future visa applications, even if you just wanted to visit for a short stay. This means you need to tread carefully, and consider getting professional advice on whether and how to maintain your green card.

New Asylum Regulation Proposed The government states the proposed rule will "more effectively separate baseless claims from meritorious ones. This would better ensure groundless claims do not delay or divert resources from deserving claims." In summary, the proposed rule would: - Redefine "persecution" as "an extreme concept of a severe level of harm." This would not include "every instance of harm that arises generally out of civil, criminal, or military strife in a country," nor "any and all treatment that the United States regards as unfair, offensive, unjust, or even unlawful or unconstitutional." - Permit Immigration Judges to pretermit asylum applications without a hearing if the application does not demonstrate prima facie eligibility for relief. - Define the following as negative factors: crossing or attempting to cross the border illegally, not filing taxes, working without authorization, or using fraudulent travel documents. - Require Immigration Judges to consider adverse factors such as traveling through another country to reach the U.S., living undocumented in the country for more than a year, and having criminal convictions that were vacated or expunged. - Eliminate gender-based asylum for women who are victims of domestic violence and LGBTQ+ persons fleeing persecution. - Enable DHS officers to rule that an asylum application is "frivolous," something that only Immigration Judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals presently can do. A "frivolous" finding bars the applicant from obtaining any US immigration benefit for the rest of his or her life. - Establish that a well-founded fear of being persecuted by gangs and terrorists would no longer be a basis for granting asylum. - Deny asylum to young people who face forced conscription by terrorist groups or gangs. - Eliminate protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture to persons who were tortured, physically or mentally, by the police or members of the military who are deemed as "rogue" officials acting "not under color of law." - Make it harder for asylum-seekers in expedited removal proceedings to apply for withholding of removal when they have been barred from asylum by this Administration’s existing changes to the asylum process. These are only some of the restrictions which would be imposed if the proposed regulation were allowed to go into effect as is. Meeting the Statutory Standard of Eligibility for Asylum To meet the statutory standard of eligibility for asylum, a person must satisfy each of the following elements in the definition of a refugee created by 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A): - The person must have a "fear" of "persecution;" - The fear must be "well-founded;" - The persecution feared must be "on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion;" - The person must be unable or unwilling to return to his country of nationality or to the country in which he last habitually resided because of persecution or his well-founded fear of persecution. - The proposed rule attempts to significantly restrict the accepted interpretation of the above section of law. Greg Chen, Director of Government Relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called the proposed rule "the kitchen sink of asylum bans and will end any notion of asylum that still remains, recognizing that this administration has already issued so many previous bans." House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) who chairs a subcommittee on immigration policy and enforcement, condemned the proposal as follows: "The Trump Administration’s renewed efforts to dismantle our nation’s asylum system are abhorrent, un-American, and illegal. As we have seen time and time again over the last four years, this President is attempting to rewrite our immigration laws in direct contravention of duly enacted statutes and clear congressional intent. This latest effort continues a pattern of executive overreach, violation of the separation of powers, and continued assaults on our Constitution when it comes to rewriting our nation’s immigration laws. In this historic moment, preserving the rule of law and the nation’s long tradition of asylum-seeking is crucial. We can and must continue to be a beacon of hope and freedom across the world." If the DHS and the Justice Department attempt to implement the regulation as is, it can be expected that it will be immediately challenged in Federal Court.