This has 2 questions that I felt were sufficiently related to be together in one posting. I have marked the questions in bold text.
According to the information here at uscis.gov, a person may qualify for US citizenship if:
- they have been a legal permanent resident for at least 3 years, AND
- they have been married to a US citizen for at least 3 years, AND
- during the last 3 years, they have not been out of the country for 18 months or more
Being that I have been a green card holder for about 20 years, been married to the same wonderful lady for about that time, and have lived in USA for the last 4+ years, I thought that I would go ahead and submit the N-400 application.
My question is about the fact that if I go back in time before the 4 years, I have sometimes been living abroad for more than a year. This was for work reasons (I had found work in another country) and during these times I lived abroad with my wife and we filed our US tax returns from abroad.
Although the N-400 form allows a person to select the basis for the qualification for naturalization, as shown below...
...it later asks for the residential information for the last 5 years, as shown below:
Here the question I wanted to ask is, does a person need to disclose residential information for 5 years even when applying on the basis of the 3-year rule?
The other, related, question is about this part from the "Document Checklist, Current Fees, Naturalization Eligibility Worksheet".
If I follow the workflow on the document, I eventually get to the point shown in above screen shot. That seems to give the impression that if I have ever been out of the country for more than 1 year without submitting form N-470, I would not be eligible for naturalization.
The question here is that, when a person is applying based on the 3-year rule, does the government care if a person lived 2 years abroad 15 years ago, without submitting the N-470 form?