Your I-94, and the four things the travel history leaves out

Visa, I-94, I-797: three documents, three jobs

For the I-797 side of the table, and the tear-off I-94 that comes attached to an I-797A on an approved change or extension of status, see reading a Form I-797 notice and what an approval notice does and does not mean.

How to get it, step by step

Two different lookups on the same site, and people conflate them constantly. One gives you the current admission record. The other gives you the list of crossings.

Four limits on the travel history

This is the part of the topic that matters most and gets written about least. Guides tell you to download the history; almost none tell you what it does not contain. All four of these come from CBP’s own material.

The practical consequence of all four together: treat the history as a starting document. For anything consequential — an N-400, a recapture claim, a tax residency position — reconcile it against passport stamps, boarding passes and your own records, and keep that reconciliation with the PDF.

D/S: no date, and why that is not good news

D/S stands for Duration of Status. Instead of a date, your I-94 says D/S. You are admitted for as long as you maintain the terms of your status rather than until a fixed day.

On the rule’s status: A proposed rule that would have replaced D/S with fixed admission periods for F, J and I classes did not take effect. D/S remains the rule. The site's student cluster carries the current status of that proposal. For students, the current position and what the proposal would have changed are in the OPT calculator and the SEVIS termination guide.

When something is wrong

Two things about deferred inspection are worth getting straight, and the denied-entry guide owns both. An inspection deferred at the port of entry means your inspection was not finished and you were paroled in so it could be completed. Walking into a Deferred Inspection Site after you have been admitted is a records-correction visit, not an unfinished inspection. They are different things with similar names, and only the second one is what you want when your class of admission is wrong.

Replacing an I-94: Form I-102

Form G-1055, USCIS fee schedule, edition 10/07/26.

Note that I-102 requests an initial I-94 as well as a replacement, which is the route if the electronic record never generated. For an electronic I-94 you have simply mislaid, you do not need it — reprint from the CBP site.

Three things the travel history is actually used for

1. The substantial presence test

You are treated as a US resident for tax purposes for a calendar year if you were physically present in the United States on at least 31 days during that year AND 183 days or more across a three-year weighted count.

26 U.S.C. 7701(b)(3)

Here is what that arithmetic looks like on an invented travel history — one with a near-full year, a year interrupted by a long trip to India, and a partial current year, which is the shape that puts a weighted total close to the line:

A day count is not a residency determination. Exempt-individual years for F and J holders, the closer-connection exception, treaty tie-breakers under the India–US treaty, and first-year and dual-status elections all change the answer and none of them is a day count. The mechanics are on the substantial presence test guide, the exempt-individual years for F and J holders are modelled in the F-1 tax calculator, and the first resident return is covered in the H-1B first tax return guide.

2. N-400 and continuous residence

Form N-400 asks about your trips outside the United States, and two thresholds in 8 CFR 316.5(c)(1) do the work: 180 days or more in a single absence, and 365 days or more.

A single absence of between six months and one year disrupts continuous residence unless you can establish otherwise to the satisfaction of USCIS.

A single absence of one year or more disrupts continuous residence. Form N-470 is the only instrument that preserves it — and it is narrow: it needs a year of unbroken prior US presence plus qualifying employment under INA 316(b), which an ordinary posting to a foreign company is not. For most people in this position there is no instrument, and the route is to file for naturalisation four years and one day after returning.

Here is the same invented history drawn the other way round, as time abroad rather than time present — because that is the measurement these thresholds use, and the two get conflated constantly:

The day counter on this page flags trips at those two thresholds. What the thresholds mean, how a presumption is rebutted, and who the narrow N-470 route is actually open to are on the green card travel rules page, which owns them.

Work through the whole eligibility picture with the citizenship checklist, and read the thresholds themselves on green card travel rules, which also covers who the narrow N-470 route is open to and its one-year filing cliff.

3. Recapturing days against a status cap

There is a third use, and it is worth money. Time spent outside the United States does not count against the H-1B six-year limit or the L-1 five- and seven-year limits, so days abroad can be recaptured to extend your status. Your I-94 travel history is the standard evidence for a recapture claim, which is a concrete reason to download and keep it after every trip rather than reconstructing a decade of travel under deadline.

Run the H-1B version in the max-out and recapture calculator, and the L-1 version — where the five- and seven-year caps count H time too — in the L-1 guide.

Four things that bite NRI travellers specifically

• The name lookup

  An Indian passport that prints the surname first, or carries a single-field name, is the commonest reason the I-94 lookup returns nothing at all. Try the name fields swapped and the full name in the given-name field before you conclude the record is missing.

• An unrecorded Canada or Mexico departure

  If your actual pattern is long trips to India and short ones to Toronto, an unrecorded land departure leaves an apparent continuous presence that your Indian trips then look like an overstay against. Carry CBSA or INM stamps and keep them with the history PDF.

• Stamping trips are not the risk the I-94 covers

  When you travel to India for visa stamping, the I-94 you left behind was closed out on departure. What governs your return is a valid visa — or a documented exception — and a valid petition. Our H-1B stamping guide covers the appointment, and the travel-to-India guide covers the planning.

• The history is your evidence, so keep it

  For a recapture claim, a tax residency position or an N-400, a decade of trips reconstructed under deadline is a weak document. Ten minutes after each landing produces a strong one, and the window closes at ten years.

For the travel questions themselves rather than the record, H-1B travel to India and stamping in India after approval are the owner pages, and denied entry at the airport covers what happens if the inspection goes badly.