British Expatriate Network

I have a friend who is travelling back to the UK on Sunday whose visa expires a couple of days after they are coming back. They are on L1/L2 visas and their renewal is in the works. However,the company is following the INS guidelines and not processing them until 30-40 days before the due date and therefore, the visas are tending to be approved about a month after the expiration date. Would you travel if you were in their position? Especially, as the INS seem to have got their act together on immigrants in the country. Another friend went on vacation to Mexico last weekend and he was shocked when an immigration official pulled over, to tell him that the address on his driver's license and on his visa where different. Fortunately, it was accepted that it had been oversite but if the official had wanted to, he could have denied him the right to come back in.

You can send applications in to renew travel documents more than 30-40 days in advance. I was advised to renew about 90 days in advance of expiration, but given the increasing length of processing times in NY (now up to 120 days), I applied much earlier (about 5 months) to ensure that I'd be able to travel without any problems in the summer. As it turned out, I needed to travel for work about the same time as my travel document was going to expire, so I was able to take a letter from my company to request an emergency advance parole. To answer your question, as long as your friend returns to the US before her current document expires, she should be fine.