Advance Parole

I had not been home since 2004 and was out of status by 2008. I got married in June 2016 to an awesome girl from Texas. She was fascinated by the stories I told her about Africa and she couldn't wait to go visit and meet my family. We decided to start the process of adjusting my status by obtaining a green card through marriage. As we were doing research on the matter, we ran upon Advance Parole which was great news that we could go to Africa sooner rather than later, so we decided to include the paperwork for advance parole in the process. We received the document in about 4 weeks.

Then we started looking online on how safe it was to travel with advance parole and potential risk of being banned from entering the country up to 10 years. All we saw was negative things and people saying how risky it was to use advance parole to leave the country. We started being very skeptical about it and almost decided not to go to Africa and wait until I had received my green card.

Then we did more research and realized that since 2012, people who travel abroad using advance parole are not subject to the three or ten year ban unless they have a criminal background or are in the removal proceedings. That was such a relief.

We went to Africa on November 15th and arrived back to the states on November 30th. I was nervous during the flight back to America. When we arrived at the airport, I did the immigration clearance and was sent to a different room which was full of people. It took about an hour and half for my name to be called and the lady was looking into my files on a computer for about 5 minutes and she stamped "Paroled" on my passport and handed it back to me and I was free to go.

That was my experience and good luck to all of you.