7 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Citizenship Application | Eatontown, NJ

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7 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Citizenship Application

Tip of the Week #16

In this today’s Tip of the Week, I’d like to share with you SEVEN mistakes people make when they are applying to become a US citizen. I want you to have the quickest route to citizenship possible and using these tips to help you in your immigration journey will help with that.

How We Can Help Your Immigration Journey

I’m Andres Mejer. I am an immigrant and immigration attorney. I came to the US as a child and learned English by watching Sesame Street. My family paid an immigration attorney $5,000 and they did nothing for us.

We lived in the US without a legal status for almost 10 years. I experienced the fear, stress, and worry that many of my clients now go through during that time. I was lucky enough to get a green card through amnesty and then I almost lost it because I didn’t understand all the rules.

I put myself through law school, and opened my own firm, to help immigrants like me.

I run a successful law firm with four locations in New Jersey. We have clients in over 17 states. I’ve helped over 3,500 people with their immigration issues and I’ve reached over 1,000,000 people with my immigration videos on YouTube.

I have two children and live in New Jersey with my wife. My parents live near me and although we can now live without fear of deportation or ICE knocking on our door, I do what I can every day to help free others from those feelings.

If you need help in your immigration journey, call our New Jersey immigration attorney at Andres Mejer Law. If we can’t help you we won’t take your money.

What to Avoid in Citizenship Applications

These are common seven mistakes to avoid when trying to get your citizenship.  

 

1 | Don’t rush through the application.  

We’ve seen many people who rush through the application. When they do this, they don’t answer the questions fully or completely because they think they know what is being asked without fully reading the questions.  

USCIS put a policy in place almost two years ago that if there is a problem with your application they can deny the application.

Before that policy they used to send it back or send you an RFE or NOID. Now, they can accept your application and then DENY it due to the issues on it.

This causes you to not only lose the time for that to process but also lose your money because they take your fee.

USCIS does not need to return your money because they deny your case, so now you have to start again and pay for the full fee again. 

2 | Don’t hope that USCIS has all your documentation on file so you don’t need to submit it to them again.

Yes, I’ve said this before USCIS and all government agencies share information. USCIS probably does have a file with all your information in it.  

However, USCIS requires you to submit all the information again and will compare the documents that you submitted previously to those you are submitting currently.  

 To help with this, I recommend you start a file at the beginning of your immigration journey. Keep copies of everything you submit including all applications.  

When you start to fill out the N-400 it will be much easier to refer to the documents in this file then it will be to try to gather them all together again.

3 | Don’t send in a messy application.  

This one may seem silly but make your application as neat as possible. If you can, type it up on the computer. This helps USCIS to process it faster because they can read it and you clearly show why you deserve to be a US citizen.

4 | Don’t forget to keep a copy of the N-400 that you send in 

Any time you send anything to USCIS you should keep a copy. Mark that with the date you sent it and then keep any follow-ups from USCIS including the receipt notice(s) for that application.

This will help you at your interview and make it so you can prove to USCIS that you sent in the required documentation if they lose it. Unfortunately they do sometimes lose things.

5 | Don’t send your application in via regular mail.

If our office sends anything to the government, we always do so via trackable mail. If you are submitting your own application, I recommend the same thing.

Again, USCIS has been known to lose things. If you use trackable mail like Fed Ex or even USPS that must be signed for, you will have a receipt that it was and when it was received.

6 | Don’t file too early

There are time requirements for when you can apply to become a citizen. This is based on the status you had for the underlying green card application.

If you send it in too early, it will be denied. We’ve even heard for people who sent it in too early and they were denied and then had to wait longer to apply then if they had applied at the correct time.

I know you’re excited to become a citizen, so you can file 90 days before the end of the 3 or 5 year time period that you’re subject to.

USCIS has an “early filing calculator” on their website that I’ll link to here. Look at your green card and find the date you became a permanent resident. Go to that link and enter your permanent resident anniversary date. They will show you the earliest date you can apply that they will accept.

If you apply before this time, they will deny your application.

7 | Don’t forget to tell USCIS about any issues with law enforcement  

Many people think that if they get a traffic ticket they don’t need to tell USCIS. They figure it’s no big deal, a small thing.

That isn’t true for immigration. Any interaction with law enforcement (including traffic tickets) must be disclosed to USCIS.

Be sure if you have any traffic tickets, you have submitted all the information about that to USCIS and to bring to your interview. Otherwise, your case could be delayed.

Contact Our New Jersey Immigration Attorney!

If you’ve decided that the stress of doing this alone is too much and want someone else to take it on for you, call us. We can’t work with everyone who calls us but if we can’t help you, we won’t take your money. Give us a call today at 888-695-6169 to schedule a consultation.

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