If you apply your wife for green card in US can you wait in your home country until she gets her green card?

Question

if you are applying your wife a green card while u have a green card yourself, i know itll take 4 5 years, but how can i live together with your wife?

you can't live with her in US because she has to wait in her country of origin, while u cant go home because u need to spend the majority of your time in a year in the US to keep your green card.

Answer 1

Yes, you can, but by waiting 4 to 5 years outside the U.S., you will be considered an abandonment of residence case, and neither one of you would be eligible to enter the U.S. as immigrants.

An absence from the U.S. of more than one year is considered an abandonment. If you applied for a reentry permit, and the application was approved, the permit would be valid for two years so you could be gone that long.

If you applied for a second reentry permit, and it was approved, you could be gone another two years. Eventually, you would reach a point where no one would consider you a lawful permanent resident of the U.S., and once that happened, your resident status would be over, and your wife's immigrant visa would not be issued.

If you reached the point where the second reentry permit had not expired, and her immigrant visa was issued, then you could both enter as immigrants, but that's a gamble.

Answer 2

You can't..  Yes, I know that sounds awful..  I answered your previous question on this topic with the advice to wait to apply for her till you get your citizenship.. If you had been married to her before you got status, she would've been able to get status at the same time. For instance, if you got status through work, then she could've come at the same time if you would've been already married..

My husband and I lived apart for almost 2 years because of immigration..

You cannot wait in your home country or you won't qualify as a sponsor.. You have to have a job in the US to be a sponsor..

The best thing you could do is NOT marry her now.. See if she can get here on a student visa and enroll in college or a different work visa. But, if she gets over on either of those types of visas, you still shouldn't marry her till you get citizenship or she could get into trouble for fraud since she was really just coming over to stay with you.. Make sure she follows every rule, enrolls in college if that's what she gets a visa for. Make sure she doesn't overstay her visa or do anything illegal or you may not be able to immigrate her when you do get citizenship.

Unfortunately, the next several years are going to be awful for the two of you.. Maybe immigration right now isn't the best choice for your situation? You may want to talk to an immigration lawyer about possibly relinquishing your permanent residence and then reapplying once you are married.. Of course, I don't know how you got your current green card, so, you'll want to be relatively certain you can get another one..

Most of the time, when you get a green card your spouse is eligible to go with you at that point..

Probably worth a call to an immigration lawyer, as I'm not sure if there's a waiting period before you can reapply or how that all works.