I-131 Re-entry Permits - Part 2. Real Life Cases on Abandonment of Permanent Residency
This is a follow up to my posting on July 8 on the issue of re-entry permits and being careful, even though one may have a re-entry permit, about not acting in a manner that results in one abandoning his or her permanent residency.
In that entry, I said I would follow up with specific real-life cases in which certain permanent residents engaged in behavior that caused them to lose their permanent residency or not. Here are some of those cases.
In Singh v. Reno, a 1997 case, the permanent resident obtained permanent residence in December, 1990 but then spent only about one third of his time in the U.S. before he was placed in removal proceedings in July, 1993. He spent the time overseas with his wife and daughter who were both waiting for immigrant visas, while he was in the U.S. he lived in temporary, employer provided housing and he re-entered the U.S. four times on a visitor visa rather than on his green card. The court held that his visits were not just temporary even though he was never out of the U.S. for more than one year and that he has abandoned his permanent residency.
In another case, Hana v. Gonzales, a 2005 case, the permanent resident was held not to have abandoned her permanent resident status. She was granted a green card in May, 1992 and several months later she returned to Iraq to continue with her job there with a bank and to be with her husband and four children for whom she had filed for immigrant visas. She was concerned that the government of Iraq would harm her family if she did not return and she also needed to care for her ailing mother-in-law. She did obtain a re-entry permit but when she tried to re-enter the U.S. on that re-entry permit in December, 1996, she was detained and charged with being inadmissible.
Although she had no family or property or job in the U.S., the court still held that she did not abandon her permanent residency because it said that she had a genuine concern about her family’s safety and she needed to be in Iraq to care for her mother-in-law.
In yet another case, Chavez-Ramirez v. INS, the permanent resident was held to have abandoned her permanent residency despite having left the U.S. to care for her dying mother. The green card holder was a nun who had been a permanent resident for five years but then returned to Mexico for two years to care for her mother. But then, when her mother died, she remained in Mexico, married, had a child and worked there. When she tried to re-enter the U.S. she was charged with being inadmissible. The court held that she did, in fact, abandon her permanent residency. The real problem in this case was that when the permanent resident’s mother died, she remained in Mexico rather than promptly returning to the U.S. and the court held that she did not have a continuous, uninterrupted intention to return to the U.S.
These are just three cases that show how fact specific this issue is—does the permanent resident, even though he or she may have a re-entry permit—have a continuous and uninterrupted intent to return to the U.S. Did they leave with the intent to return to the U.S. after a short stay abroad that is fixed by a certain event or by some event that is reasonably expected to occur soon.
Certainly, it is crucial that any permanent resident intending to depart the U.S. for any period of time 1) to consult with an experienced immigration attorney to first determine whether a re-entry permit is required and 2) to determine what other steps should be taken to show that he or she has no intention of abandoning their permanent residency.
