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Is there a mistake on your green card?

Posted on in green cards

If you have gone through the process of applying for legal permanent residency, you are probably ready to take a break from dealing with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. After all, receiving a green card can take seemingly forever and requires jumping through dozens of bureaucratic hoops.

When you receive your green card in the mail, you should immediately inspect it for any errors. If you notice one or more, you must take prompt action to correct the problem.

Who owns the mistake?

Your first step is to assign responsibility for the mistake. That is, you must know whether you made the error or whether the USCIS did. To do so, you should look through your permanent residency filing to see if you made a typographic error or some other error. If you did, you likely must pay to correct the problem.

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Even after applying for a green card, it is important to stay on top of the application process the whole way through.

This gives you the best chance of catching mistakes as they happen, as well as ensuring that the application gets processed with no snags or hang-ups.

Stay engaged

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services discuss what to expect when dealing with pending green card applications. First, make sure to stay engaged throughout the process. For example, the USCIS requires an up-to-date address for the application.

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If you are currently in the United States and you are not eligible to adjust your status because of unlawful presence, there may be a faster way to begin the green card process. Unlawful presence means you entered the country without inspection, you are in violation of your temporary visa or you overstayed your original period of authorization.

The provisional waiver application, or I-601A, is available to certain visa applicants who are immediate family members of U.S. citizens.

Purpose of the provisional waiver

According to the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the purpose of the waiver is to reduce the amount of time that spouses and children are away from their families while they go through the immigrant visa process. Without the provisional waiver, the separation time is sometimes months or even years.

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Being an American citizen comes with a variety of important and valuable benefits. Still, if you are not a citizen of the U.S., it is imperative to understand the consequences of claiming to be one. Simply put, making a false claim to U.S. citizenship may make you forever ineligible to become a legal permanent resident or to obtain a nonimmigrant visa.

Falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen makes you inadmissible to the country. This means immigration officials will not allow you to enter legally. It also makes you deportable, meaning government lawyers may try to remove you from the country.

No general waiver

There are several grounds for both inadmissibility and deportability. With many of these grounds, though, a person can seek a waiver. With a waiver, government officials essentially agree to ignore your violations of U.S. immigration law.

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If you are applying for a green card, you are probably looking forward to the benefits of being a permanent resident. As a permanent resident, you can live and work anywhere in the U.S.

If you are currently living in the United States, you will need to apply for an adjustment of status with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This application process is complex, and you will want to avoid these common mistakes that could lead to delays or denial.

Failing to provide required supporting documents

There are many different documents that you will need to include with your green card application. The exact requirements will depend on your unique situation. For example, if a spouse is sponsoring you, you and your spouse may need to provide a marriage certificate, joint leases and joint bank account statements. Other commonly required supporting documents include:

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