Comment by swampert543
Comment by swampert543 2 days ago
Hi Peter, I’m currently on year 3 of H1B, and my company filed this march for the 3 year extension (with premium processing), which got approved.
Concurrently, they also filed form i539 for my wife on H4 to extend her status (her current visa stamp and status expire in July this year). She has no EAD as I don’t have an approved i140.
Her request is still pending, and given current processing times it likely still will be when her status expire.
To complicate things, we travelled outside the US for 10 days while her request was pending (after receiving the green light from my company lawyers saying it wouldn’t impact the i539).
Reading online we got mixed results, so we’re not sure if she can stay in the US until her i539 is approved, or if having left the country for a short period might cause USCIS to consider her application abandoned.
We could have her travel and to make arrangements for a consulate appointment before July, but we’d like to avoid that if possible.
My understanding is that is a bit of a legal gray area, so I wanted to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for the help!
If USCIS is paying attention, it will treat her departure as abandonment of her H-4 extension application. So it's important that she check her I-94 admission record to see when her current H-4 status expires and make sure that she departs before it expires or that she files a new I-539 before it expires.