Guestbook Entry for Raj Murali , United States
Name
Raj Murali
Country
United States
State
NY
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Interview Experience - Extensive Travel - 800 days
I had my interview at the Dallas DO today May 14th. It went very well. I was very nervous about my extensive travel over the past 5 years. I had some 800 odd days of travel that included trips to a lot of countries in the world. But none of my trips was over 6 months, the maximum trip length was 110 days. I was working for a US company as a contractor and did have a letter from the company for the reason for the numerous visits.
Citizenship and Naturalization
Can parents of U.S. citizens travel to the U.S. on an existing B-2 visa while their GC is pending?
Question details
I got my USA citizenship this Jan, and I want to start the green card process for my parents. They are currently with me in the USA on a visitor visa, however, they would like to go back to India in March after the 6 months of allowed stay in the USA.
So I want to know when I start the green card process for my parents when they are in India, can they still travel to the USA on their existing B-2 visitor visa (valid till 2026), or should they be in India until the consular processing for their green card is complete?
FAQ Transcript
The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) people do not hassle the parents or spouses of the U.S citizens too much as long as they are not entering to adjust to green card status within the United States. But if a CBP officer is either ill-informed or particularly unnecessarily harsh they could stop you and ask you to go back (which is unlikely).
A practical solution I would recommend to people is to do an immigration pre-clearance in Abu Dhabi (if you are traveling from India) that way if they are denied entry they just return from Abu Dhabi they don't have to come all the way to the United States.
Note: Where transcribed from audio/video, this is a verbatim transcript of the referenced audio/video media delivered as oral communication, and, therefore, may not conform to written grammatical or syntactical form.
The service provided by Art Shiflet and Mathew Chacko from Mr.Khanna's office during my citizenship process was exceptional. They both provided me prompt answers to my inquiries, updated me with information as soon as they became available and were extremely knowledgeable . I would highly recommend Mr.Khanna's office for any sort of immigration cases