80-02 Kew Gardens Rd., 4th Floor, Kew Gardens, NY 11415. Questions may be e-mailed to mae.cheng@newsday.com or faxed to 718-793-6422. Include a daytime phone number. Questions will not be answered personally but only in this column.
My daughter-in-law applied for citizenship several years ago. After she and my son married three years ago, they moved to Europe for his job. She was finally called for her citizenship interview, and she passed the test in June. After passing the test, the immigration officer asked her for proof of marriage. The interviewer also said she might have been out of the United States too long to qualify for citizenship. Can you explain what the requirements are that she has to show proof of marriage or that she might have been out of the country too long?
A person married to an American citizen for three years and who has been a U.S. permanent resident during those three years is qualified to apply for U.S. citizenship, said Yvonne Buffa, program director of the Citizenship Initiative Project at the Education & Assistance Corp., based in Hempstead, which offers free assistance to people filing naturalization applications. During those three years, if the person applying for citizenship left the United States, each stay abroad should not have been for more than six months or immigration officials may question whether the person has retained the residency requirement for citizenship.
And, according to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society's guide to citizenship, the person also must have physically resided in the United States for half of those three years.
Given the eligibility requirements for citizenship, immigration officials may want your daughter-in-law to show proof of marriage, what lengths of time she's been away from the United States, and how long she was physically in the United States, Buffa said.
My father was originally from Hungary and had traveled to Austria, where he was granted refugee status. He came to the United States in 1965 with an Austrian passport. He became a permanent resident. Aside from traveling to the Caribbean and Mexico, he has not left the United States in the past 40 years. Now he would like to go to Hungary to visit his family, but he is not sure what he would need to leave the United States and re-enter. He has his proof of permanent resident status, but his Austrian passport has expired, and he cannot renew it because he is not an Austrian citizen. Rather than wait the years it would take for him to become a U.S. citizen, is there any way he can travel to Europe and return without a passport?
Generally, people traveling internationally need a passport from their country of citizenship, said Lenni Benson, a New York Law School immigration law professor. If the person does not have citizenship anywhere, U.S. immigration officials can issue a re-entry permit to allow the person to return to the United States.
Benson pointed out that the application process to get a re-entry permit is lengthy, so it might be worthwhile for your father to apply for U.S. citizenship anyway.
Your father also should check to make sure that his green card, or proof of permanent resident status, is still valid before he travels abroad, even with the re-entry permit, Benson advised. Once he becomes a permanent resident, he remains a permanent resident, though his green card may expire.
Your father being able to enter Hungary for a visit is a different matter. Benson pointed out that the State Department Web site says a person who wants to visit Hungary will need a passport. You may want to contact the Hungarian embassy in Washington or its consulate in New York or Los Angeles to see if there is any way around it.
