The Situation

Amarried couple came to me with what they described as a reentry permit problem. The husband held a conditional green card. The wife, a U.S. citizen, had been posted overseas by her employer, a relief agency of the United Nations, and he and their young child had followed her there, as families do.

Every time the husband tried to reenter the United States after a stint abroad, he was referred to secondary inspection at the port of entry. CBP officers questioned him about his residence abroad and made clear their view that he had abandoned his lawful permanent resident status by living outside the country.

The green card also needed an I-751 petition to become permanent, and an I-751 filed from overseas can take years to adjudicate. During his most recent protracted inspection, CBP had told the husband that a reentry permit was the answer. A reentry permit lets a permanent resident stay abroad for up to two years at a time. It is a temporary travel document, applied for from within the U.S., that keeps a long absence from being treated as abandonment. It sounded reasonable. It was not the right answer.

The Right Answer

Within minutes of learning about the wife’s employer, I saw what kind of case it actually was.

Section 319(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes expedited naturalization for LPR spouses of U.S. citizens employed abroad by qualifying organizations, including public international organizations in which the United States participates by treaty or statute. INA § 319(b); 8 C.F.R. § 319.2. Her employer was one of those organizations. That meant no reentry permit. No I-751 petition. No residency requirement. No waiting around for years while the conditional green card expired and the couple juggled international postings and USCIS filing deadlines. Under Section 319(b), the applicant can naturalize without having spent a single day in the U.S. beyond the interview and the swearing-in ceremony.

Execution and Result

I prepared the supporting documentation and filed the naturalization application under Section 319(b). An examiner from the local district USCIS office proactively contacted me by email to ask for my client’s preferred interview dates and times. Less than three months after filing, my client was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.

A citizen has no green card to abandon, no I-751 to file, no reentry permit to apply for, and nothing to explain at the border.