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Comment by 8f2ab37a-ed6c | Hacker News Reader

Are people with GCs screwed too? I've been postponing getting a citizenship, for no particular reason, but I'm now wondering if I should get on that just so that I don't somehow get bounced out of the country or get locked outside when I travel.

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As a Canadian (in the Bay Area) today, getting bounced out of the U.S is always at the back of my mind.

There have been rumors that even naturalized citizens can have their citizenship revoked (but I'm not sure how that'll happen, since it's not easy to get the citizenship of a country that one left).

Not sure why one would not get citizenship when they have GC.

A friend of mine tells me that one of his biggest regrets from the past handful of years is not having applied for and received citizenship when President Obama was president. He has a misdemeanor (for something that almost every US citizen would consider trivial) from when he was a teenager but because of when it happened and what it is, naturalizing would require a waiver from USCIS in order to proceed (and to not be deported). President Obama's USCIS granted waivers for conduct so many years back almost as a matter of course. President Trump's USCIS--according to the two immigration lawyers my friend has consulted--has not only stopped granting the waivers, they refer applicants for the waivers instead to deportation proceedings. There's no one to advocate for people like him to be able to remain because he is a convicted criminal, even just of a minor offence, so he's been told to keep his head down and hope nobody investigates the dusty files.

But, assuming you are "clean," there are people to advocate for you so applying for citizenship should be a safe bet and would get you the guarantee of remaining in and traveling to and from the US for the rest of your life. If you intend to live here for the foreseeable future, I'd recommend giving it a go lest this administration decide to start trying to arbitrarily yank GCs.

Are there any downsides to getting one, outside of perhaps having to let go of one's other citizenships for countries that don't allow it?

That's it so far as I know. If you are, for example, a Japanese or German national then naturalizing as a US citizen may be an issue for your current citizenship. (Germany will likely grant you permission to naturalize; Japan will not.)

If you are already a green card holder, you are already subject to the tax and other reporting requirements like a US citizen so the only real difference from the US perspective is you can't vote and aren't guaranteed to be able to cross the US border. It's that last bit that most people really want.

The US has tax on all income regardless of residency.

One downside of getting US citizenship is that if you later move to another country (your original country or a third country), you will obligated to continue to file US income tax returns, and potentially pay US income taxes. Depending on your circumstances, your tax filing might be trivial or it might be complicated, and you may or may not actually owe taxes to the US. So this might be a minor annual hassle, or it might be a painful, time consuming and expensive process. It is possible to later give up your US citizenship, but it takes time and costs money.

If you move to another country and you still hold a Green Card, you must file US income tax returns as well - it's not just for citizens.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/freq...

"if you are a U.S. citizen or a resident alien living outside the United States, your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you live"

Yes, but terminating your GC status is much more easier than relinquishing your citizenship. After all, the visa is designed for that (to be something that you hold on to while in the US and give up when not maintaining permanent residency status anymore).

For sure - my comment was just referring to the often mistaken belief that a GC holder doesn't need to pay tax on income earned outside of the US.

It also increases the reporting regulations for most international banks. So it's very possible that you'll be prevented from being able to bank in the country you move to.

Green Card has a risk of deportation that citizenship does not. But the current administration is working to make citizenship revocable.

They have a unit for stripping people's citizenship now.

Lying on immigration applications has always been grounds for revocation of citizenship.

It's not always lying, that's why they created a unit to look into things when they decide to target someone. The trick is asking a lot of information on the forms (to increase the risk of mistakes), and then arguing that any discrepancy found does not have to be material to strip the citizenship.

And also stripping the citizenship of all the babies that one doctor or nurse has delivered over their career because they have lied at least once on a form.

Gotta give some context or a source for a claim like that. Is the revocation related to people found guilty of terrorism/treason, or is it a lower bar? Or is it if they found you lied in order to get citizenship, as was the case historically with Nazis?

There's been some recent cases around not wanting to accept certificates of home births in southern texas from 20+ years ago.

But the current administration is working to make citizenship revocable.

I firmly believe that the current administration would love to change the rules on citizenship. However the 14th amendment is extremely clear on this, and the courts have consistently ruled for decades that Congress and the President do not have the right to change the laws to strip citizenship from people. (This was extensively litigated over laws against dual citizenship.)

Therefore it is no more reasonable to fear the current administration making citizenship revocable than to fear the previous administration taking all the guns away.

I would say that it heavily depends on the current justices in the supreme court. With the current court composition I wouldn't say that both of those issues have equal risk of being revoked.

The current court makes this one pretty safe.

The most recent decision relevant to this topic was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslenjak_v._United_States in 2017. It was a 9-0 decision that a naturalized citizen who had made minor errors of fact in their citizenship declaration couldn't have their citizenship stripped because of that.

Between stare decisis and how solidly the court has been in protecting citizenship, this principle is not in any sort of trouble any time soon.

The US has a history of stripping people of their citizenship when things get bad, regardless of what the law says. It has happened before with Mexicans, it is happening again right now [1].

[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/8/30/17800410/trump-passport-birth-...

That is not "regardless of the law". That is "when it can be argued that the law does not apply".

The law itself is solid. Whether a particular person with paperwork issues will be given the presumption of the facts being in their favor is another story.

My point is the law is not nearly as clear cut and black and white as you make it out to be. It provides a lot of room for judgement and interpretation by those carrying it out in most cases. And unless a particular matter comes up before a court, "when it can be argued that the law does not apply" does not happen either - the immigration officer makes a decision and 99% of immigrants do not have the resources to fight it in a court. Believe me, neither your average CBP officer nor your average immigrant is very well versed in the minutiae of the law.

The end result is people can and do lose their citizenship status pretty often. Debating whether it is strictly unlawful is really besides the point.

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