The INS confirmed in a letter, dated December 18, 2001, that Conditional Permanent Residents are not required to wait until approval of their Petition to Remove the Conditions on Residency (I-751) before applying for U.S. citizenship. Rather, once they meet the required period of residency to qualify for citizenship, they can apply for citizenship by filing the Application for Naturalization, even if the I-751 is still pending. The availability of this procedure is not clearly addressed in the law.

Conditional permanent residence is issued in marriage-based green card cases when the applicant has been married less than two years at the time of the approval of the green card application. Marriage-based cases are those initiated by the petition of a U.S. citizen for his/her foreign spouse. This term does not refer to the derivative green card cases filed by dependent spouses in employment-based cases.

Conditional permanent residence is valid for two years. Individuals who receive conditional permanent residence must file the I-751 within the 90-day window preceding the expiration of the conditional status. The I-751 requirement is a measure to deter marriage fraud by allowing INS to take a "second look" at marriages that were of short duration at the time of the INS initial case decision. If the conditions are removed, the individual has unconditional permanent residency, valid from the date of the original case approval, rather than the date the conditions were removed.

In some locations I-751 filings take a substantial amount of time to
process, sometimes close to two years. Permanent reside