QUESTION
Can we regain our lost residence status? (At the time of losing the status we were minors and had no control over the situation)
Asked on Feb 29th, 2012 on Immigration - Virginia
More details to this question:
My late father (1942-2006) served for US Embassy for about 35 years. As a reward, he was given Special Immigration Visa (SIV). In 1996, we all (whole family) went to settle in the USA. However, 2 months after arriving USA we had to return to Bangladesh due to my grandfather''s serious illness and to solve the disputed property problems. Afterwards, later, my father went to USA again with my elder brother (for treatment of my brother''s retina problem) in 1997 & 2000. But on each occasions, they lived in USA not more than 3 months due to unavoidable problems at home. Later,he was ill and unable to go to USA. At that time we were all minors. In 2003, my father attempted to reenter US and submitted an application to US Embassy of Dhaka for extension of permit. But the US Embassy took our five resident alien cards and two permit
to re-enter cards.
1 ANSWER
Hello,
One of the requirements of having legal permanent residency status (or green cards) in the U.S. is that you are expected to live here permanently. Since the U.S. embassy took the resident alien cards away, the only way to get legal resident status is to apply once again. Your father can contact the embassy and see if they will re-issue a Special Immigrant Visa to him. Otherwise you will have to see if you personally meet the requirements to apply for legal permanent resident status, and then start the process again.
Answered on Feb 29th, 2012 at 8:15 PM