DV Lottery Winner Left for 3 Years: New Spouse Filing Can Cost Your Green Card

A man who got his green card as the derivative of his wife’s diversity-visa win called the Immigration Answer Show. The family picked up the cards in 2019, went home, and stayed abroad until 2022. During those years he and the DV winner divorced, he married someone new, and now he wants to file an I-130 for the new wife. Founding attorney Jim Hacking saw the filing as the thing that lights the fuse.

A lawful permanent resident who stays outside the United States long enough can be treated as having abandoned residence. Under INA § 101(a)(13)(C), or 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(13)(C), a returning resident who has been abroad for a continuous period of more than 180 days is treated as an applicant for admission, and an absence of years without a reentry permit is strong evidence the person gave up the residence. That he and his wife never actually lived in the United States as a couple after winning the diversity visa only sharpens the question.

The marriage itself is not the danger. Filing for the new spouse is what hands USCIS a reason to reopen the whole story: a derivative who barely used the status, a three-year absence, a divorce from the person who created the eligibility, and a new marriage on top. Hacking’s read is that petitioning brings more scrutiny to the petitioner’s own status than to the beneficiary’s.

None of this makes the situation hopeless, but the sequence and the record matter enormously, and filing without weighing the abandonment exposure is risky. Anyone in this spot should also expect the country-pause overlay if they are from a listed country, because the pause attaches to the person, not the paperwork, and should understand how CBP handles a returning resident it suspects. That is the same dynamic that puts a green card in the officer’s drawer at deferred inspection.