| 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Green card holders actually leaving the United States |
|||||||||
| DHS estimate of LPR emigration, 1980 to year start |
2,690,000 | 2,860,000 | 3,040,000 | 3,230,000 | 3,420,000 | 3,590,000 | 3,820,000 | 4,010,000 | |
| Net increase during year |
170,000 | 180,000 | 190,000 | 190,000 | 170,000 | 230,000 | 190,000 | — | 1,320,000 |
| Green card holders abroad whom the IRS no longer considers U.S. Persons |
|||||||||
| USCIS: I-407 filers |
14,843 | 13,091 | 16,938 | 17,445 | 16,191 | 19,545 | 17,267 | — | 115,320 |
| Others losing U.S. Person status |
c. 15,000 per year? Fewer than four thousand Form 8833 filers Around ten thousand ex-LPR deportees |
~105,000 | |||||||
As Patrick Martin, Phil Hodgen, and others have pointed out, if you previously immigrated to the U.S. as a legal permanent resident (LPR, “green card holder”), the IRS considers you a U.S. Person for tax and asset-reporting purposes even if you’ve left the country. Per 26 USC § 7701(b)(6), the only way this changes is if you either take a treaty-based return position that you are a resident of another country, or get a determination from USCIS or a court that your LPR status is gone. You usually do the former by filing IRS Form 8833. You usually get the latter by filing USCIS Form I-407 or by being deported.
Absent that, you remain a “U.S. Person” even if your green card expires or you’ve been out of the country so long that it’s clear you’ve abandoned your residence in the United States. In other words, you are a resident of the U.S. for tax purposes, but not for residence purposes. How many people are stuck in this tax limbo? The Department of Homeland Security estimates that more than 1.3 million LPRs moved out of the U.S. from 2005 to 2012. Generously speaking, perhaps six hundred thousand took action during that period to retain their green cards by applying for re-entry permits from USCIS (whether or not they knew about the tax consequences of keeping their LPR status). Another 115,000 actually filed Form I-407 to cancel their green cards; there appear to be a similar number of Form 8833 filers and deportees.
That leaves possibly as many as half a million emigrants who no longer have any right of residence in the U.S. but remain subject to that country’s worldwide “citizenship-based taxation” net.
On Friday, November 7th, I attended the Remembrance Day ceremony at the elementary school where I live. I wore my ceremonial dress, as requested, and joined a couple of veterans who were also in attendance. During the singing of “O Canada”, for the first time in my life, I felt really conflicted. After 30+ years as a law enforcement officer in Canada, during the singing of our national anthem, it started to really hit home that the current Canadian government does not consider me to be a Canadian.