Remaining In The Usa

Most visitors to the USA, whether long or short stay, will at some point consider the possibility of staying on permanently, making the USA home, if only in the medium term. You’ll need to consider:

• career implications
• family reactions
• implications for health care and retirement
• possible status – resident or citizen.

Career Implications

Only you can judge how good an idea staying on could be for your career prospects. It is possible to get locked into your US-based career structure without giving adequate consideration to moving sideways back into the UK. Who wants to get off a moving staircase if it’s going steadily upwards? But remember: career implications are only one reason for staying or returning, even if they seem the most obvious.

Family Reunions

These need careful consideration, both for the immediate family, presumably with you in the USA, and those back home such as ageing parents. Whereas the side of the family back in Britain will probably be stoical (they may have assumed you’d gone for good when you set off originally) your family in the USA will react in terms of their immediate needs, fears and expectations. Most children will have settled down quite quickly and will not want to move anywhere, certainly not back to a country they hardly remember. But remember, they would not want to move to the next town if they were still back in Britain, so you need to consider how much weight the grown-ups should give the views of the children. But do let them have their say, and explain why you intend to overrule them if necessary.

Perhaps more critically you’ll need to ask certain questions about the family staying on:

• What are their US-based career prospects?
• Will college be an affordable option in the USA?
• Will you want them to become US citizens?
• Should you give them the option to return home at, say, 18 to make up their own minds?
• What if they return to the UK and stay on?

Health Care And Retirement

You’ll probably just continue with your existing health plan, but what of retirement? The US social security system is getting very fragile, with no prospects of improvements as more and more people reach retirement age and the US budget deficit grows ever larger. The pensionable age is being gradually raised, but with economic restructuring pressure on people to retire earlier and earlier continues. The US military has helped promote the belief that after 20 years’ service, at whatever age, it’s time to retire, or at least take a pension and start another career. Ever more people are opening an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). This will allow you to supplement any government pension, but if you attempt to use the money before the agreed term you’ll lose most if not all of the tax benefits. As IRAs proliferate the information about them grows. See a trusted accountant!

Citizen Status

Though the green card no longer exists, permanent status does. If you want to change your status consult a lawyer specialising in this field. Marrying a US citizen is the most popular reason for staying on in the USA, and it’s the way that certainly makes the paperwork easiest if you arrived on a non-immigrant visa. And you won’t have to return home before applying! Failing that you’ll need to gain status as set out earlier in this book. Your employer will probably be the most important factor, emphasising skills needed for the US economy, and that the job won’t deprive an American of a job.

Should You Adopt Citizenship?

For many people publicly disavowing their country of birth is one step too far. Whereas it was presumably easy for Germans fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s, for those not in exile it’s probably a much more difficult decision. Fortunately taking US citizenship doesn’t cancel British citizenship, except as far as the USA is concerned. British law accepts dual citizenship. US law doesn’t. And if you think this is a lawyer’s quibble it’s worth recalling that the 1812 war between Britain and the USA was over just this point (Britain press-ganged US citizens on US vessels on the high-seas saying they were still British and there was a war on against France, etc).

If you do take US citizenship and lose your British passport for an American one you could still re-enter the UK and settle down back home again. Strictly speaking you don’t even need a British passport to re-enter Britain, just some means of identification (I have used an RAC card at Heathrow before!). You’ll forfeit US citizenship if you take out a British passport or run for office outside the USA (as would any US citizen).

There might still be a joker in the pack that you’ve not considered when considering permanent residency and citizenship: military service. Once legally settled into the US all men over 18 must register (see notices on how to do this at your local US Post Office). Once the Vietnam War ended, the draft (conscription) ended. The USA now has a professional, full-time army (despite a revolutionary heritage that considered anything other than a citizens’ part-time militia a start down the road to tyranny). But in times of international stress things can and do change. Even in peacetime it is an offence not to register. It is even possible that anyone liable to the draft who came back to the UK to avoid it would be liable to be handed over to the US authorities under the appropriate Visiting Forces Act. Remember that US draft dodgers went to Canada or Sweden not the UK during the 1960s!