Risk and compliance
Abandonment of residence
Also called green card abandonment, abandonment of permanent resident status, losing permanent residence.
Abandonment of residence is the loss of lawful permanent resident status that follows from conduct showing the holder no longer intends to make the United States a permanent home, most often moving abroad for good, staying out on what is no longer a temporary visit, or claiming nonresident status on a US tax return.
What it decides
8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(13)(C) is the hinge. A returning permanent resident is not regarded as seeking admission at all unless one of six things is true, among them that the resident has abandoned or relinquished the status, or has been absent for a continuous period in excess of 180 days. Crossing 180 days is not itself abandonment; it only opens the question at the border. USCIS names three ways the status goes: moving to another country intending to live there permanently, declaring yourself a nonimmigrant on your US tax returns, and remaining outside the United States for an extended period that was not a temporary absence, judged by the reason for the trip, how long the absence was planned to be, the other circumstances, and anything that prolonged it. The documents follow the same line. Under 8 CFR 211.1(a) a valid Form I-551 readmits a resident after a temporary absence of less than one year; past that the resident needs a reentry permit, which 8 CFR 223.3(a)(1) makes valid for two years, or, for a conditional resident, only to the date removal of conditions falls due, whichever comes first. Once permit and card are gone the way back is the SB-1 returning resident visa under 22 CFR 42.22, where the applicant, not the government, must satisfy a consular officer that the stay abroad was temporary. Separately 8 CFR 316.5(c)(2), a naturalization rule, makes a claim of nonresident alien status a rebuttable presumption that the privileges of permanent residence were relinquished.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into abandonment of residence rather than mentioning it.
Related terms
- Conditional permanent residenceConditional permanent residence is the status an EB-5 investor and their spouse and children hold for the first two years: full lawful permanent residence, evidenced by a Green Card valid for two years, whose conditional basis must be removed on Form I-829 or the status ends.
- Lawful permanent residentA lawful permanent resident is a person lawfully accorded the privilege of residing permanently in the United States as an immigrant under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(20), and it is the status an EB-5 case delivers: conditional for the first two years, then unconditional once Form I-829 is approved.
- Reentry permitA reentry permit is the travel document, applied for on Form I-131 and issued as Form I-327, that lets a permanent or conditional permanent resident spend up to two years outside the United States and apply for admission on return without a returning resident visa.
- SB-1 returning resident visaAn SB-1 is the returning resident special immigrant visa a consulate issues under 22 CFR 42.22 to a permanent resident who has stayed outside the United States too long to be readmitted on a green card or a reentry permit but who never abandoned the intention to return.
- Continuous residence and physical presenceContinuous residence and physical presence are the two separate naturalization tests in 8 U.S.C. 1427(a): an unbroken five year residence in the United States after admission as a permanent resident, and at least 30 months, or 913 days, actually spent inside the country during those five years.
Checked against primary sources on . Back to the glossary