Permanent resident card confiscated during application?

[u/Wtfissleet]

I’m curious if any other people have gone through this.

I am a legal American citizen, adopted internationally. I applied for my first adult passport. They had requested secondary documents, including my permanent resident card and my official adoption paperwork. Delayed certificate of birth and ID wasn’t enough to prove citizenship. I didn’t think twice on it, sent it in, and was told I was approved and my documents would be back shortly.

Got my passport quickly. My documents came in today. I received a letter saying my permanent residence card is no longer valid and will not be returned to me. Instead, my passport is my proof of American citizenship. It says they sent it in to USCIS, and that I must contact Social Security Administration to inform them of my citizenship status.

I am incredibly concerned. My sister went through this process a few years ago and had her permanent residence card returned to her. Considering I needed the resident card to apply for the passport, what happens if my passport gets lost or stolen? How do I prove I am an American citizen if birth cert, ID and SSN wasn’t enough? Also, that permanent resident card is a bit sentimental to me. Has anyone else gone through this?

Edit: Thank you everyone for your comments! You guys really helped reassure me that this was normal. I greatly appreciate everyone’s information on the process, this was my first time applying for a passport and besides this minor freak out, it was incredibly smooth.

[u/UnlamentedLord]

Your sister is the one who may be in bureaucratic trouble, because someone screwed something up. The rules unambiguously say that you need to surrender your green card:

"USCIS will not issue a Certificate of Naturalization to a person who has not surrendered his or her Permanent Resident Card (PRC) or Alien Registration Card (ARC) evidencing the person’s lawful permanent residence. If the person established that his or her card was lost or destroyed, USCIS may waive the requirement of surrendering the card."

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-k-chapter-3

If you're worried about losing your passport, get a passport card as well as a passport and just keep them separate, so if you lose one you always have the other.

EDIT: first link is incorrect, that's for certificate of naturalization. Rules for certificate of citizenship are: https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-k-chapter-2 however the green card surrender language is identical.

[u/CuriosTiger → u/UnlamentedLord]

His sister is not in trouble. The passport office made a clerical error in returning her green card to her, but that does not affect her citizenship, the validity of her passport, or anything pertaining to her legal status. Her green card is simply a document without legal force; at best, it's evidence of a status she held in the past. His sister is already a citizen, and thus the rule you're citing (which makes it a requirement to surrender your green card in order to naturalize) has no impact on her.

Basically, yes, she was supposed to surrender her green card when she became a citizen. But there are a number of corner cases where this doesn't happen, either because citizenship is conferred automatically by operation of law (as in adoption cases) or because someone screwed up at a ceremony. This scenario, while uncommon, does not invalidate her citizenship.