How the calculator counts
- Add trips, stays or both. Add your trips outside the US, or your stays in the US with the US as the place. With trips only, every other day is a US day. Once you add a stay in the US, only the days you've added count up to today, so add them all.
- Counted back from your filing date. With a green card date, that's 90 days before you complete 5 years (3 for spouses), or today if that has passed.
- Only whole days abroad are absences. Any part of a day in the US counts toward physical presence, so the days you leave and return are US days.
- Every absence is checked for continuity. Over 180 days abroad in one go is presumed to break continuous residence; a year or more breaks it outright.
- Other requirements aren't checked. Three months in your state or district, good moral character and the English and civics tests are up to you.
The naturalization residence rules
To naturalize you need 913 days of physical presence in the 5 years before applying, and continuous residence unbroken by any single long trip. Spouses of US citizens get a shorter route — 3 years and 548 days. Both tests have to hold at once.
Keeping your green card
Long trips also put your green card at risk: more than a year abroad without a re-entry permit generally means abandoning it, and shorter absences can raise questions at the border. A re-entry permit protects the green card, not the naturalization clock.