how do they know when you leave the country?
I understand that when you enter the USA your documents are checked and the officer always asks me how long have i been gone.
However, i dont see how they know when you leave and thus cant be certain how long you are out of the country? Nobody ever asks for the green card on leaving? The reason for my post is that i travelled back from the UK last week and the person siting beside me had been out of the USA for almost a year. Infact he was only travelling back to file taxes and was then returning to Europe. He had a full green card (for 6 years) and said he just tells thenm he has been gone 2 weeks on re-entry?
How do INS know this or do they just go from what you say? the guy i travelled with with 100% sure he wouldnt have any problems and didnt seem to either.
Thanks
Hopefully someone else can answer you better, but from what I know, to leave the country they dont really require you to show anything but the passport and plane tickets. I know that because I have some friends that had been here illegally, and they didnt show the i-94 when they were leaving, therefore when they returned, immigration never knew when my friends actually left.
Before you board the airplane - the airline has to forward your information to the DHS [and they dont do it by pigeon carrier] this is 21st century.
I had this same question and I asked an immigration officer, I went with a friend of mine that was filling as a USC for his wife, and his wife (at this time already had the green card) was doing a Masters overseas.
So we asked "How can you prove or check that my wife was out of the country for more than a year? They usually dont check or stamp the passport when leaving the country"
Here answer (and enough for me to keep quite) was - "Mr. [his last name], trust me, we know, would you like me to check when was the last time your wife left?" My friend (a smart *** that he his) "Yes!"
Without even looking back at us or anything, she punched a key on her computer and said "January 20th, she took a flight out to Pennsylvania, same day she did a connection to London, would you like me to check other dates?" - That was enough for him and said "Thank you."
She later explained that airlines do report to DHS.