In a decision that is sure to worry many permanent residents who spend considerable time outside the United States, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that an alien can lose his green card by spending long periods of time outside the country. The case involved an Indian national who spent less than a third of his time in the US over a two and a half year period. The individual was spending time outside the country with his wife and child who were subject to waits due to not having current priority dates. The alien in this case would spend most of the year in India and work in the US during the summers. He did not maintain a residence in the US and he had permanent residence status in the United Kingdom.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Stephen Reinhardt stated that the court acted inconsistent with prior rulings and that the law does not require someone to choose between keeping his residency and being separated from his family.

The law in this area allows the INS to act on subjective determination that the alien's intended to abandon permanent residency. Individuals who may be concerned about being similarly subject to an INS determination of abandonment might want to read the article on this subject in our March 1995 issue which is archived at our web site (http://www.visalaw.com/95mar). The article discusses various steps which may be taken to reduce the chances of facing problems from the INS. Responding to revelations that more than 180,000 foreigners became citizens last year without complete background checks, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has begun the process of stripping nearly 5,000 persons of their citizenship. In these cases, the person losing their citizenship either had a criminal arrest that would have resulted in a denial of citizenship or the applicant lied about his or her criminal history. In the 2,000 cases where a person is losing citizenship because of lying on the application form on the question of prior arrests, the arrest would not make the person inelibible for citizenship.

The INS emphasized that despite the denaturalizations, more than 1,000,000 people got their citizenship last year and that the program generally works well. Nevertheless, the INS continues to be criticized for lax background checking.