Length of Stay in United States
Temporary Absences from the United States
Bringing Your Dependents to the United States
Receiving a U.S. student visa authorizes you to remain in the United States for as long as you are maintaining proper full-time student status. (There have been cases where individuals have stayed in the U.S. for as long as ten or more years as they moved through various levels of education. e.g., from high school to community college to university to graduate school. The key to such a long stay is maintaining proper status. Please remember that proper status includes the following:
If you think you may be out of compliance with one or more of the above regulations, you are probably out of status and need to see your international student advisor as soon as possible.
- You must be enrolled as a full-time student except during authorized vacations. On the semester system this means that you must be full-time during the Fall and Spring semesters, but it also means that you can take the summer off if you choose to do so. Full-time enrollment is defined as at least twelve semester or quarter hours.
- You must be making normal academic progress toward the completion of your academic program. If you fall behind in your studies because of academic probation or suspension, you are obviously not making normal progress.
- You must maintain a valid passport at all times while you are in the U.S.
- You must attend the originally authorized school which issued your original I-20 until you have completed all the procedures for transferring to another school or to another level of education. Failure to report to the school which issued your original I-20 is a serious matter and can result in loss of status.
- You must not accept employment for pay without obtaining approval for employment in advance. Obviously, working illegally is a violation of your student status.
- You must report your place of residence in the U.S. This means the street address where you reside. (A postal box number is not an acceptable address.) Also, you must report all address changes within ten days.
Sometimes an international student needs to visit his or her home country before completing the planned study in the U.S. Obviously family emergencies need to be dealt with and also it is quite obvious that parents and family need to see their young people at home from time to time.
You will permitted to be absent from the United States for up to five months and then return to the same school to resume your studies. There are three documents you must have in order to take advantage of the temporary absence privilege granted to F-1 visa holders:
- a valid, up-to-date passport
- the U.S. visa you previously used to enter the U.S.
- either one of the following:
- a new form I-20 issued to you prior to your departure from the U.S.; or
- an valid endorsement by your international student advisor on page 4 of your original I-20 (It is very impportant that you remember to inform your international student advisor as soon as possible when you are planning a trip out of the U.S.)
Suppose you are married and you want to bring your wife to the U.S. while you are here as a student. Or suppose you have a husband and a child who want to join you here in the U.S. Is that possible?
The simple answer is this. It is possible to add the names of dependents to page 4 of your I-20. In nearly all cases this means adding the name of a spouse and/or one or more children. If approved for entry into the U.S., your dependents will be issued F-2 visas. But let's not race ahead so swiftly.
Consider this! You are making a promise to return to your home country when your studies in the U.S. are completed. What will a visa clerk assume if you have several dependents trying to join you in the United States? Also, remember that under U.S. law, any foreign national who tries to enter the U.S. is assumed to be an intending immigrant unless that person can show proof that he or she is not intending to stay permanently in the U.S.
If you decide that you want your dependents to join you in the U.S., you must do the following things:
- You must make sure that each of your dependents has a valid passport.
- You must have an additional amount of funding for dependents indicated on the front side of your I-20 and guaranteed by financial affidavits and bank statements. (Each dependent that you bring to the U.S. will increase your estimated cost of living in the U.S. by about $1500 per year.)
- In the spaces provided on page 4 of your I-20 you must have the school official at your college list the full name, date and country of birth, and relationship of each dependent you hope to bring to the U.S.
- It is also a good idea to have your international student advisor provided a letter confirming that he has added those names to page 4 of the I-20.
