To become a U.S. Citizen, one must file Form N-400, Application for Naturalization. When preparing Form N-400, the applicant must disclose the total number of trips (in days) they took outside of the U.S. for 24 hours or longer, during the last 5 years. Many lawfully permanent residents (“LPRs”) who want to apply for U.S. Citizenship are unsure if there is a way to check their travel history for application purposes. This confusion is caused by the fact that once a person becomes an LPR, their online Form I-94 admission record (which records their travel history) becomes useless.
Some ways LPRs can check their travel history include:
Passport – You can find your travel history information inside your official passport. Simply review the passport page for date stamps from the various trips. But, in some cases, you may not have a passport or there are missing known records.
Personal Travel Records – In the absence of “official records” it is still your duty to estimate the dates of your travel to the best of your ability. You can create your own personal records to reconstruct your travel history by checking with relatives you may have visited, reviewing credit card statements, or trying to recover old travel records from airline or transportation company frequently flyer statements.
FOIA Request – You cansubmit a FOIA Request for your records of international travel to and from the U.S., including information regarding entries and exits, from U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP). You can submit the FOIA request online here. Right now, requests are taking approximately 40 business days and are subject to change.
E-ZPass – If you have an E-ZPass and have used it to pay the tolls while entering and exiting Canada, then you can try submitting a FOIL Request, or you can contact E-ZPass directly (1-800-333-8655) for a copy of your E-ZPass records. They may provide insight into those frequent cross-border trips.
If you have any questions about acquiring your travel history, please contact us today to set up a consultation with one of our attorneys!
