Your past

Immigration is different than most other areas of law in that you past is always there, can always be used against you and there is little you can do to hide it. For example, lets assume you have lived in the United States for 20 years, all of them as a lawful permanent resident. In the past five years you have not committed any crimes, been arrested or detained by any police officer, immigration officer or anyone remotely related to law enforcement. This is of course fantastic for you. Generally, when looking at a lawful permanent residences viability for citizenship the immigration services only look at the past five years.

However, the immigration services can look at events that occurred more than 5 years ago in this case. They could look at a domestic abuse charge from 15 years ago. Or they could see that you had a criminal conviction for a small amount of marijuana (under 30 0z.) They could also look at anything you did outside the United States when determining your eligibility. This may seem harsh or unfair and to a certain extent it is. However, immigrating is a privilege, not a right. A privilege can be revoked for poor behavior or for other reasons that the immigration officer determines is appropriate.