Re-entry for 1 year

[mylovely]

Hi, I have a question. I have a re-entry permit for 1 year. This is my second re-entry permit, but it was issued for 1 year only. The first one was for 2 years. Anyway.

My concern is this. I applied for the second re-entry permit in the fall of 2020 (end of October), decided I would not stay for biometrics, but rather return for them later, because I knew at that point that appointment for biometrics were taking months or the USCIS was taking older biometrics. So I traveled outside the USA in November 2020 and started waiting. On March 2021 I received a notice from USCIS that they used my previous biometrics. Then in August 2021 I received the re-entry permit. Now I want to return to the USA, but I am not sure if they would have a problem with the fact that I was out of the country for a year and almost 7 months. I have a valid re-entry permit. But it is valid from August 2021 to August 2022. Would this mean I would have to explain my absence for the period before the permit was issued? I am confused.

[newacct]

Your Re-entry Permit is enough by itself to return to the US any time during the permit's validity period. Of course there can always be questions about whether you maintained residence, even if you left and returned during the validity period of a Re-entry Permit. I don't think the fact that you left while it was pending and before the beginning of the validity period matters.

[mylovely]

Thank you very much for your reply. I really hope CBP is not going to ask questions about the period before the re-entry permit, because it was a long period of it pending while I was outside of USA (around 8 months). I also have a concern about the fact that when I entered USA in October 2020 the officer only stamped my previous reentry and did not stamp my passport. I returned that reentry to USCIS and now I only have a copy of that stamp. I also can't find my travel history on CBP we page - tried several times and it says -no history for this traveler. That made me a little nervous, I don't know why that is. I don't know why CBP officer decided not to stamp my passport, but I guess it was because he stamped the reentry permit. USCIS though wants those documents to be returned when applying for a new one, so I did.