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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing SB-1 Returning Resident Visas. For those who are unaware, the SB-1 Returning Resident Visa basically is exactly what it sounds like. It is basically a Visa for someone who has been outside of the United States and this someone is a person who is a resident, a lawful permanent resident of the USA. Somebody who is a Green Card holder that has traveled abroad and then remained abroad for a period of time where the rebuttable presumption has been raised, they have essentially abandoned their residence in the United States.

The SB-1 Returning Resident Visa was created specifically for these individuals. It was designed to provide a visa to allow someone to return to America and take up their residence again. Now this really is not a commonly used Visa. In fact I have talked to other Immigration Attorneys and most of them have told me "I have never done one in my life," because it is really something that is basically done abroad. When I say other Immigration Attorneys, I mean people that deal with immigration a lot. An SB-1 just isn't a very frequent occurrence. The other thing is I do operate abroad, outside the United States and I really only see a fact pattern which warrants an SB-1 maybe once or twice a year max. Some years go by and we never even deal with an SB-1. It is kind of an infrequent thing. They are very useful for the people to whom they apply. So you know if you need an SB-1, if you are a resident for whatever reason, you got stuck out of the United States for a period of presumably over a year at least but sometimes even over six months can trigger this kind of stuff, then an SB-1 may be the solution to whatever problem you have got in returning to the US. 

The question arising to me in the past couple of weeks, another practitioner asked me "have you done a lot of SB-1s since the beginning of 2021?" presumably talking about all the travel restrictions that came up in 2020. For the most part NO, I actually haven't seen a lot of these issues. We have dealt with folks that that could otherwise have needed an SB-1 but under the circumstances we managed to find a solution to their issue with other methodologies; in some cases they just got on a plane and went back to the US. Depending on the facts, we just didn't need to use the SB-1 although moving forward it wouldn't surprise me before the year closes out if we didn't see at least one more, I wouldn't be shocked to see one this year by the end of 2021 see a new SB-1 application need to be filed because of the circumstances that came up in 2020 and the ramifications associated therewith.