Master Yoda

Hi all,

I may have finished with this process earlier this yr, but I still look in here from
time to time and wanted to ask something from you all about citizenship.

I got my permanent residency this finally back in March of this yr (not conditional -
the full card) Now I am a uk citizen and obviously married to a US spouse and we have
two young children together. My kids have dual US/Uk status which I like, and we have
talked about later in life moving to England, I am talking many yrs from now. Getting
UK residency for my wife should be no problem should we ever do that. What I want to
know is this. What is the advantages of being a citizen over a resident like I am, I
know the obvious like American passport etc however I also understand that if you
have us citizenship you have to file us tax returns for life too. That sucks if you
may live and work in the Uk later in life, so I am not sure what to do about this. I
don't see any real disadvantage to just remaining a resident for the next 20 yrs and
then should we decide to go the uk fine and dandy, and if we decide we want to come
back here make sure I have citizenship first so as not to cause problems with
residency. My point is do I really need to decide on residency now or can I say
forget it and decide 10 or 20 yrs from now If I want too. I can still get social
security when I retire even as a resident can't I? Maybe I am missing other things
here, the right to vote to me is a small thing and makes no difference to me one way
or the other. But am I missing anything else.

Thanks in advance.

Sean

Andy Platt

Pros and cons have been discussed before and a google search should show them. For
you probably the biggest pro would be that if you wanted to return to the US in the
future you wouldn't have to go through the GC process again. The con that you mention
really isn't much of a con - your wife will have to file anyway and it won't be much
harder to file jointly and have your foreign earned income excluded.

Andy.

--
I'm not really here - it's just your warped imagination. "Master Yoda"
<[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
    > Hi all,
    >
    > I may have finished with this process earlier this yr, but I still look in here
    > from time to time and wanted to ask something from you all about citizenship.
    >
    > I got my permanent residency this finally back in March of this yr (not conditional
    > - the full card) Now I am a uk citizen and obviously married to a US spouse and we
    > have two young children together. My kids have dual US/Uk status which I like, and
we
    > have talked about later in life moving to England, I am talking many yrs from now.
    > Getting UK residency for my wife should be no problem should we ever do that. What
    > I want to know is this. What is the advantages of being a citizen
over
    > a resident like I am, I know the obvious like American passport etc
however
    > I also understand that if you have us citizenship you have to file us tax returns
    > for life too. That sucks if you may live and work in the Uk later
in
    > life, so I am not sure what to do about this. I don't see any real disadvantage to
    > just remaining a resident for the
next
    > 20 yrs and then should we decide to go the uk fine and dandy, and if we decide we
    > want to come back here make sure I have citizenship first so as not to cause
    > problems with residency. My point is do I really need to
decide
    > on residency now or can I say forget it and decide 10 or 20 yrs from now
If
    > I want too. I can still get social security when I retire even as a
resident
    > can't I? Maybe I am missing other things here, the right to vote to me is a small
    > thing and makes no difference to me one way or the other. But am I missing
    > anything else.
    >
    > Thanks in advance.
    >
    > Sean