Must the USCIS abide by the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), or is the CFR just a set of guidelines that aren&#39;t legally binding? I wonder whether the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must abide by the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) or the CFR is just a set of guidelines that aren't legally binding (i.e., the USCIS may take actions/decisions that contradict the CFR without potentially facing legal consequences). I'm mostly interested in the part of the CFR that pertains to the naturalization process, if that matters, e.g. 8 CFR 316.5(b)(5)(ii): (ii) Return to the United States. If, upon returning to the United States, an applicant returns to the State or Service district where the applicant last resided, the applicant will have complied with the continuous residence requirement specified in § 316.2(a)(5) when at least three months have elapsed, including any part of the applicant's absence, from the date on which the applicant first established that residence. If the applicant establishes residence in a State or Service district other than the one in which he or she last resided, the applicant must complete three months at that new residence to be eligible for naturalization. The naturalization applications are handled by the USCIS. Since I read on https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual: The [USCIS] Policy Manual contains the official policies of USCIS and assists immigration officers in rendering decisions. The Policy Manual is to be followed by all USCIS officers in the performance of their duties but it does not remove their discretion in making adjudicatory decisions. The Policy Manual does not create any substantive or procedural right or benefit that is legally enforceable by any party against the United States or its agencies or officers or any other person. I wonder if, unlike the USCIS Policy Manual, the CFRs are legally enforceable.
Much of the Code of Federal Regulations consists of restatements of statutory provisions found in the United States Code. In the case of Title 8, CFR, these provisions are largely to be found in Title 8, USC, which codifies the Immigration and Nationality Act. To the extent that anything in the CFR duplicates a statute, it's legally binding, because it is in fact a statutory provision. That case is not particularly interesting to your question, of course. There is another law that governs the CFR, which is the Administrative Procedure Act. In short, this law requires the executive to abide by its promulgated regulations and not to change them without following certain procedures, and it gives the courts the power to enforce this. Therefore, the answer to the question Must the USCIS abide by the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)? Is basically yes. If you believe they haven't, you can take them to court.
The police are mistaken because they don't understand immigration law. Usually, the first step to resolve this problem would be to explain the situation in a letter to or telephone call with the town attorney, elevating it from a police officer who has no training in citizenship and naturalization paperwork, to an attorney, who should either know better, or should be able to find out more easily.
As a US Citizen, you don't get a I-94 recording of entries and exits but : The FOIA site of the CBP, mentions Information Regarding Entry and Exit Note: CBP does not have records on the entry and exit of persons arriving or departing the U.S. before 1982. To be filled with CBP However, this doesn't mentions if this is only applicable to Aliens or US Citizens are included or not. But this CBP help page mentions travel records for US Citizens
Shapiro v. Thompson was overruled in part by Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974). See the Wikipedia article. In Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U.S. 441 (1973), the court notes and did not object to durational residence requirements imposed by states to qualify for the benefits of lower university tuition. In Vlandis the Court wrote: Like many other States, Connecticut requires nonresidents of the State who are enrolled in the state university system to pay tuition and other fees at higher rates than residents of the State who are so enrolled. Conn. Gen.Stat.Rev. § 1329(b) (Supp. 1969), as amended by Public Act No. 5, § 122 (June Sess.1971). The constitutional validity of that requirement is not at issue in the case before us. What is at issue here is Connecticut's statutory definition of residents and nonresidents for purposes of the above provision. ... The appellees do not challenge, nor did the District Court invalidate, the option of the State to classify students as resident and nonresident students, thereby obligating nonresident students to pay higher tuition and fees than do bona fide residents. The State's right to make such a classification is unquestioned here. Rather, the appellees attack Connecticut's irreversible and irrebuttable statutory presumption that, because a student's legal address was outside the State at the time of his application for admission or at some point during the preceding year, he remains a nonresident for as long as he is a student there. This conclusive presumption, they say, is invalid in that it allows the State to classify as "out-of-state students" those who are, in fact, bona fide residents of the State. ... It may be that most applicants to Connecticut's university system who apply from outside the State or within a year of living out of State have no real intention of becoming Connecticut residents, and will never do so. But it is clear that not all of the applicants from out of State inevitably fall in this category. Indeed, in the present case, both appellees possess many of the indicia of Connecticut residency, such as year-round Connecticut homes, Connecticut drivers' licenses, car registrations, voter registrations, etc.; and both were found by the District Court to have become bona fide residents of Connecticut before the 1972 spring semester. ... In sum, since Connecticut purports to be concerned with residency in allocating the rates for tuition and fees in its university system, it is forbidden by the Due Process Clause to deny an individual the resident rates on the basis of a permanent and irrebuttable presumption of nonresidence when that presumption is not necessarily or universally true in fact, and when the State has reasonable alternative means of making the crucial determination. ... Our holding today should in no wise be taken to mean that Connecticut must classify the students in its university system as residents for purposes of tuition and fees just because they go to school there. Nor should our decision be construed to deny a State the right to impose on a student, as one element in demonstrating bona fide residence, a reasonable durational residency requirement, which can be met while in student status. We fully recognize that a State has a legitimate interest in protecting and preserving the quality of its colleges and universities and the right of its own bona fide residents to attend such institutions on a preferential tuition basis.
It is likely that you don't owe any taxes even though you have worked for many years in Brazil. Earned income that is earned outside the U.S. by natural persons who are U.S. citizens (as oppose to entities like corporations) up to a certain amount that is indexed for inflation is excluded from taxation under Section 911 of the Internal Revenue Code. The cut off is $104,100 U.S. per year in 2018 (about 347,000 Brazilian Reals per year). Also, unearned income and any excess earned income can benefit from the standard deduction and personal exemption from U.S. income taxation unburdened by your foreign earned income up to the threshold. This can be quite substantial. Similarly, if you have children, they would benefit from the child tax credit which would reduce your income tax obligation. And, any U.S. federal income tax due on your unearned income to the extent that it exceeds the standard deduction and personal exemption from U.S. income taxation is reduced by any Brazilian taxes you paid on your Brazilian income as a result of the foreign tax credit. The bottom line is that unless you are very affluent and have significant unearned income, it is unlikely that you owe any U.S. income taxes. Even if you do owe U.S. taxes after these considerations, they wouldn't arrest you. You have to be "willfully" violating U.S. tax laws for it to be a criminal offense and this is one small corner of the law where ignorance of the law is an excuse. And, the Internal Revenue Service would first have to send you several notices by mail setting forth the amount that they think that you owe, allowing you to dispute that amount, and the declaring that you owe it, before you have a potentially criminal tax violation that is well defined enough and communicated to you well enough that you can willfully fail to file a tax return or can willfully fail to pay. So no, they will not arrest you and make you pay, at least not until they send you lots of notices which you ignore. On the other hand, if you do owe any U.S. income taxes there is no statute of limitations on collecting those taxes for years in which you were required by U.S. tax law to file a tax return but did not (basically, years in which you owed U.S. taxes). So, if you, for example, won a big lump sum payment playing the lottery when you were 20 years old and owed U.S. income taxes as a result (even though you didn't know it), those taxes could still be collected by the IRS when you are 40 years old since you did not file any U.S. tax return for the year in which you had taxable U.S. income. Finally, under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 enacted in December last year, U.S. taxation of the foreign income of U.S. persons was reformed in the most significant way in the last seventy years or so, and the taxation of U.S. persons on foreign source income is greatly curtailed for 2018 going forward. This is not retroactive, but could mean that as you come into your higher income earning years in middle age, that the taxation of U.S. citizens on their worldwide income is no longer a serious concern for you, even if it would have been under U.S. tax law before then. Enforcing laws that have since been repealed is also rarely an administrative priority for the IRS. It is also hard (to the point of being economically not worth it) to enforce U.S. tax laws against someone who has no U.S. assets. It is also possible that even though you were a dual citizen at birth, that you could have taken an act (e.g. voluntarily serving as an officer in the Brazilian military) that could cause you to lose your U.S. citizenship. So, even if you were a U.S. citizen at birth, it is not 100% certain that you are a U.S. citizen now.
Under Fed. R. Civ. P. One can be served according to the state law or: (2) doing any of the following: (A) delivering a copy of the summons and of the complaint to the individual personally; (B) leaving a copy of each at the individual’s dwelling or usual place of abode with someone of suitable age and discretion who resides there; or (C) delivering a copy of each to an agent authorized None of those would apply to your facts. Thus you would have to find some jurisdiction that would allow service of process under your fact. I dare say that none will and that due process would come into play. In NJ, due process applies and service may be made (1) Upon a competent individual of the age of 14 or over, by delivering a copy of the summons and complaint to the individual personally, or by leaving a copy thereof at the individual's dwelling place or usual place of abode with a competent member of the household of the age of 14 or over then residing therein, or by delivering a copy thereof to a person authorized by appointment or by law to receive service of process on the individual's behalf; It has to be the current place of abode.
Yes, so long as you are still a US citizen, it does not matter if you no longer maintain residence in the United States. If you no longer have any sort of residence that can be claimed as a current residence, you simply register at whatever the last residence you used was when you lived in the United States (even if someone else lives there now). You would then have an absentee ballot mailed to you overseas. However, if you don't maintain any sort of residence in the United States, you will only be eligible to vote for federal offices (president, senate, house). You won't be allowed to vote in state or local elections. The keywords you'll need for voting are: UOCAVA, which is a program that allows for easier voting overseas (in some cases the ballot can actually be emailed to you and you are only responsible for printing it out, filling it out, and mailing it back). FPCA, which is the form you fill out. It actually doubles as a registration and an absentee ballot request, so you only have to fill out one form. The absentee request is good for all elections in the calendar year it is submitted, so you only have to fill it out once for both the primary and the general.
It's not possible to marry the US citizen until the first marriage is terminated, and the F-2 status ends when the marriage is terminated. It's not the F-2 status that prevents the marriage to the US citizen; it's the continued existence of the previous marriage. It might be possible to file for change of status (to B-2 perhaps) in anticipation of the termination of the marriage, but it seems unlikely to be accepted by USCIS. It would certainly be unwise to attempt anything like that without the advice of an immigration lawyer.