If you lose your Green Card or reentry permit or it is stolen or destroyed while you are abroad, you may need to file a Form I-131A, Application for Travel Document (Carrier Documentation).
To travel, you usually need your permanent resident card, a valid passport, and whatever visas are required by the country you intend to visit. While the US does not require permanent residents to have a valid passport to re-enter the US, foreign countries and airlines require you to have a passport.
Canadian permanent residents may need a non-immigrant visa to enter the United States. You must obtain this visa from the U.S. authorities before entering the country. You must also have a valid passport from your country of citizenship.
As the list indicates, the TSA accepts a variety of forms of documentation for domestic flights. Notably for many foreign nationals, permanent resident cards and employment authorization cards are both acceptable forms of documentation for domestic flights.
ESTA is an automated system that determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). Authorization via ESTA does not determine whether a traveler is admissible to the United States.
If you are a permanent or conditional permanent resident who has been outside the U.S. for one year or longer, apply for a re-entry permit before you travel. Use Form I-131 - Application for Travel Document. For permanent residents, the re-entry permit is valid for two years from the date of issue.
If you have a green card, it's not necessary to carry a passport with you for domestic travel within the United States. That said, it's never a bad idea to have plenty of documentation, and if you have a passport, you may wish to keep that with you throughout your domestic travel as well.
The travel document usually arrives within 150 days (sometimes longer) after submitting your application. You can't leave the country until you have your approved travel document in hand, so you should expect to spend the 3–5 months after submitting your green card application in the United States.
Certain non-citizens may file the I-131 application to request various travel documents like a reentry permit, refugee travel document, or advance parole document. The I-131A is strictly for use by permanent residents who require temporary documentation in order to return to the U.S.
If we approve Form I-131 for a CNMI long-term resident, USCIS will issue an Advance Parole Document as evidence of advance permission to travel for CNMI long-term residents, which allows them to travel to any other part of the United States for temporary and legitimate purposes without automatically terminating their ...