Residence Requirements
Continuous five (5) year residence:
For five years prior to filing citizenship application you must have been continuously residing in United States in order to naturalize to that of United States Citizen. The Law states that any absences from the United States of less than six (6) months do not break the continuous residence requirements for naturalization. Any absence between six months and a year will presumably break the “continuous residence" requirement. If you have remained outside of the United States for a period of more than six months at a time, then you must present evidence that you did not intend to abandon your residence in United States during your absence. If you have remained outside of United States for a period of more than six months then we strongly suggest that you contact an experienced attorney to discuss your citizenship case prior to filing your application for naturalization. If you remained outside of the United States for more than one year than you are barred from using any time outside of United States as counting towards your residence requirement. For example, if you resided in the United States from 1980 to 1997, returned to your home country for a period of more than one year, and reentered the United States in 1998 then you would not be eligible to file for your naturalization until the year 2003.
There are few exceptions to the above rules. The Immigration and Nationality Act provides special rules for members of the military, lawful permanent residents who serve on U.S. ships, and certain individuals who got pre-approval from the INS for the preservation of their residence for naturalization purposes. If you fall within one of these categories, then we strongly suggest that you contact an experienced attorney to discuss your citizenship case prior to filing your application for naturalization. You may contact the Law Offices of Spar and Bernstein at 212-227-3636.
Special three (3) year residence requirements for spouses of United States Citizens:
You may apply for your U.S. citizenship through the naturalization process, if you are married to a United States Citizen, and you have remained in a bona fide marriage with your United States Citizen spouse for a period of three years after you obtained your green card. At the citizenship interview, the interviewing officer may request proof that you are maintaining a bona-fide relationship with your U.S. Citizen spouse. By bona fide, the immigration service will require that you have been residing together with your spouse for the entire three-year period. If you fall within this category, then we strongly suggest that you contact an experienced attorney to discuss your citizenship case prior to filing your application for naturalization.
State residence requirements:
You must be residing for at least three months in the state where you intend to file your naturalization application. This residence requirement must be shown at the interview and not at the time of filing of your application. Therefore, you must be residing in the state where you are interviewed 90 days before your citizenship interview. Even if you have not resided in the state where you file your naturalization application for 90 days before you file it, you should have no problem obtaining your citizenship at your interview as it will be scheduled beyond the 90 day period. For example, from the time you file your citizenship application to the time you get in interview may take 6 to 12 months or even longer. If you moved to New York from California and file your naturalization petition 30 days after your move to New York then you would have satisfied the state residence requirement at the time of interview.
Physical residence requirements:
Besides the continuous physical presence requirements as discussed above, you must physically be present in the United States for at least 2 1/2 years out of the five years proceeding the filing of your naturalization application (1 1/2 years for spouses of U.S. citizens as described above). Literally, this means that you must have been physically present in United States for a minimum of 30 months out of the preceding 60 months in order to qualify for U.S. citizenship. In some cases, we have known the naturalization interviewing officer to actually count the number of days that the applicant was present in United States by reviewing his or her entry and exit stamps in his or her passport. Just as under the continuous residence requirement the immigration nationality act provides special rules for members of the military, lawful permanent residents who serve on U.S. ships, and certain individuals who got pre-approval from the INS for the preservation of their residence for naturalization purposes.
Continuous residence after filing naturalization application:
You must reside continuously in United States from the time that you filed your naturalization application to the date in which you are sworn into that of United States Citizen. The same principles apply as described above: • Absences of less than six months are not a bar to your naturalization; absences between six months and one year presumably break your continuous residence requirement; however you are able to rebut it if you can prove that you resided primarily in United States during that period; and; absences of more than one year bar your naturalization.