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Music and Art at the Ukrainian Institute of America
Posted by Tatiana Durbak on November 19, 2001 at 17:46:26:
In Reply to: Question about Travel document posted by Inna on November 15, 2001 at 17:32:59:
: Dear Tatiana Durbak,
: First of all, I want to thank you for your contributions to this forum, your answers are very valuable to all of us, foreigners in the US.
: I just wanted to follow up on the "Travel document" question. You say that normally, a non-refugee U.S. perm. res. will not need a "Travel document". I agree. But is it possible at all to obtain one, if one wants to? From INS form "Application for a travel document" I gathered that only refugees are qualified for it. Is it true?
:
: Thank you in advance,
:
: Inna.
Thanks, Inna. I used to write a column for Svoboda, but, based on the types of telephone calls that I got from some people, I came to realize that no one was actually reading what I wrote. So, I stopped writing the column. I write to this message board to try to reduce the amount of disinformation that exists in the Ukrainian community about immigration law.
In regards to travel documents -- yes, that's true. Only refugees get travel documents. Other permanent residents (LPRs) can get what is called a Re-entry Permit. The purpose of a Re-entry Permit is for a US LPR to give official notice to the INS that s/he is not planning to abandon residence in the US, when the LPR leaves the US for more than one year. Under current law, such a document is alos useful for LPRs who will be gone from the US for 6 months or more. The LPR uses the travel permit to re-enter the US w/o problems after such long absences.
However, many LPRs use the Re-entry Permit in the same way as refugees use a travel document, i.e. instead of using their own country's passport. In some cases, it works, and in others, it does not. It all depends on whether the Border Control agents in the country to which the LPR is traveling will accept the Re-entry Permit instead of a passport.