If you have a green card, then there are certain conditions that must be kept. This can include being required to inform immigration officials within 10 days about a new address when you move, and it also means being free from any criminal convictions. You do not even have to be convicted of a felony to be deported. So in order to retain your green card, it is vital to understand what regulations you have to follow.

First off, you cannot be convicted of committing a crime, not even a misdemeanor. The offense might not even require you to serve time in jail, but this can be enough for your green card to taken. This can mean anything from being convicted of drug possession, to committing fraud, theft, a sex offense, or more. It gets even trickier, because there is no outline of specific offenses that would warrant deportation.

If you face a criminal charge, then what you desperately need is both a criminal defense lawyer and an immigration attorney. A criminal defense attorney will often be clueless about immigration law, and such attorneys sometimes advise their clients to plead guilty so as to stay out of jail. They do not understand that this could still be enough to get their clients removed from the United States. An immigration lawyer can help consult you about decisions you will need to make in a criminal trial.

The thing is, you do not even have to commit a crime to be deported. Perhaps you simply failed to advise the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within 10 days of your relocation, providing them with your new address. The USCIS might find grounds to deport you for this. A green card can also be revoked if the USCIS determines that you used a fake marriage, or any other kind of fraud to get your green card.

Usually speaking, you also cannot move outside the United States and keep up your legal residency with just a visit every year. Your permanent home has to be in the U.S. to keep your green card. At the very least, you will probably have to come back into the country every six months. If you are gone from the United States for more than a year, then your status as a resident might be lost.

This is not always the case, however. Perhaps you visited another country for a holiday trip, but you experienced unavoidable delays, such as a serious injury. You should still be able to come back into the United States, but not with your green card. You would need to have a reentry permit from before you left, or you would have to apply at a U.S. consulate for an immigrant visa for a returning resident. The returning resident visa would require you to demonstrate that your trip out of the U.S. was meant to be temporary, and that you never meant to leave the U.S. for good. In this instance, this would require something like medical records showing that you were stuck in a hospital.

As for the reentry permit, you can get this before you ever leave the United States. If you know that your trip out of the country will take you longer than a year, you can apply in advance for a reentry permit. In this way, you can be gone for as much as 2 years without any problems getting back into the United States. You cannot apply for the reentry permit while you are outside of the country, however, and it cannot last you longer than 2 years. If you need to be gone longer than that, you can come back to the U.S. before the two years are up, and then apply for an another reentry permit.

You might also be able to get a commuter exception if you have to regularly cross the border for work. If you are splitting your time between the United States and either Canada or Mexico, then you may be able to get commuter status with the USCIS.

Of course, if you need to be gone for considerable stretches of time, the simplest way to avoid any of these complications would be to apply to become a citizen. You would not have to fear losing your green card. After you get a green card, you would have to wait 3 to 5 years to apply for citizenship, and an immigration lawyer can help you with this. If you have any questions about permanent residency or citizenship, contact an immigration attorney today!