IFSS highly recommends keeping records of all travel outside the U.S. while in H-1B status.
Background: When you are outside the U.S., you do not have a U.S. immigration status. Therefore, as an H-1B employee, you are allowed to recapture days you were outside the U.S., if you can provide documentation of physical presence outside the U.S. Employers can only request to recapture full days spent outside the U.S.; therefore, travel days are not counted towards the time you can recapture since you were in the U.S. at least part of that day.
Whenever you travel outside the U.S. you should:
- Log all dates you entered and exited the U.S. on this "Time spent in H or L status in US" document.
- Keep copies the following documents for each trip (if applicable):
- I-94 record when you re-enter the U.S. (remember, the online I-94 only shows the most recent I-94, not past I-94 records; you can't recover old I-94s)
- flight itineraries
- entrance and exit stamps in the passport (if you are required to surrender your passport when renewing it, make a copy of the full passport before surrendering it; even the blank pages with nothing on them)
- frequent flier mile reports
- boarding passes
The CBP travel history online is a tool to assist you but not an official record for legal purposes. We can include it with a recapture petition, but there must be other evidence to support it.
Legal Citation: 8 CFR 214.2(h)(13)(iii)(C)