Citizenship question

[Copper]

A friend of mine have had her green card for over a decade now but her family used to come and go I suppose in order to maintain the status of their green card, now for the last 3 years she has been in United States permanently attending University.
My question is that is there a requirement that you have to be physically in the country for some period of time or you can just apply for citizenship 5 years after you received your green card regardless of any time spent in United States?

Would appreciate your responses.


Thanks,

Copper

[Copper]

A friend of mine have had her green card for over a decade now but her family used to come and go I suppose in order to maintain the status of their green card, now for the last 3 years she has been in United States permanently attending University.
My question is that is there a requirement that you have to be physically in the country for some period of time or you can just apply for citizenship 5 years after you received your green card regardless of any time spent in United States?

Would appreciate your responses.


Thanks,

Copper

[lawgal]

To apply for citizenship, you need both permanent resident status, and physical presence in the U.S.

If you have five years of LPR status, but have spent most of that time abroad, you will not be eligible to naturalize. You need at least 2 1/2 years of physical presence in the U.S. in the five years immediately prior to filing to naturalize. (For persons who obtained LPR status through marriage to a USC, they need 18 months of physical presence in the three years prior to filing.)

If your friend has been in the U.S. for most of the past three years, she should meet the physical presence element for naturalization.

[Tak]

She will also need to provide record of income tax returns either filed by her or her guidian with her name of the returns as dependents. Without this requirement, citizenship application will be denied.

[Copper]

Thank you both Lawgirl and Tak

Copper

[Evo]

If I got LPR thru my wife but later on the marriage filed and end up in divorce, will I still be eligible for citizenship?

[Yoly&Wayne]

Evo:
If all you got was the Conditional then you will have to do something else (I suggest you read some other posts with those cases).

If you got your PR without the conditions already then you may apply for citizenship anytime, of course if you met the other requirements (such as physical presence, good moral, etc).