How long can I stay outside the US with a green card?

Community answers

The answers below are translated from the original Russian - the language of the community chats.

• Everywhere it is written that living in the USA with a green card requires at least 180 days, and being absent from the USA for 180 days is also undesirable: later you will have to explain why you were absent for so long, and a prolonged absence can lead to the revocation of the green card. If you need to leave for an extended period, you must submit a special application and obtain permission for a long absence - a reentry permit. This permission is valid for 2 years.

• There are two sets of rules: one for obtaining citizenship and another for maintaining a green card. Nowhere is the total of 180 days mentioned; the rules are more complex there. For me, it is a mystery where the rules for maintaining a green card are - everything I found a year ago has somehow been removed from the websites.

• For example, the text about continuous residence shows that you can leave for 170 days, stay in the USA for 25 days, and leave again for 170. So, you can make not too many trips if you want citizenship, but it is possible - in total, 170 plus 170 plus 25 equals 365.

The answers are anonymized community experience from the public chats, not legal advice. Officers may decide similar cases differently.

Sources

• USCIS: maintaining permanent residence

  What counts as abandoning status and how long absences affect it.

• Form I-131 - re-entry permit

  The document that covers a planned long absence in advance.

Related on this site

• Re-entry permit (I-131): leaving the US for up to 2 years
• Port of entry
• Port of entry explained

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