Hi,
Your site is just what I need, I hope you can help,
unfortunately, it looks like I need a Divorce,
I have been married to a us citizen for 9 1/2 yrs, and have been a permanent resident for 3.5 yrs.
I love my life here and don,t really want to give it up,
however,closure would be a good thing .
I worry tho, as my whole immigration case was based on my marriage. what should I do ,where do I stand , will I have to return to the U.K.
I would really appreciate your help with this matter,

Hello paul,

Sorry to hear about your situation.
However,it might not be as bad as it looks, at least on the immigration part.

It all depends where you are at in your permanent resident status and how you feel about your life here in the USA.

Now you have been married for 9 years + and have been a resident for 3 years and half. So I am assuming that your status was permanent from the beginning.This is a good thing because in other cases(like mine) you could have had a "provisionary" status.

I am afraid that I am not specialized in this area so I will strongly advise you to talk about it with a lawyer (which you probably would have to do sooner or later considering the situation).

But what I can tell you is that in my opinion I would think that your status being permanent should stay the same until renewal of your card (When is it up for renewal? I would say that you have at least a couple years).
The other thing as well is that you are fully eligible to apply for US citizenship right now if you married an american citizen.
If you really like your life here, I think this might be the wise choice.It will free you from any problem regarding living in the USA and also give you the option to leave for a while and come back without any problems(whereas you would lose you residency card right now if you were to leave more than 6 months).

My personal choice would be to start an US citizenship application asap,making sure that it will be ok with your divorce.A good thing to start with would be the Uscis website and see what the application exactly entices.
I hope this helps a little and wish you the best of luck. Let us know how things turn out, it could be useful for other people!

Marion