Green Card - Abandoned
Back in 2015 I applied for permanent residency in the US. My green card took a year to process. A whole effing year and in that time, Ronald went to live in Boulder while I waited it out in Sydney for my application to wind its glacial way through the US Citizen & Immigration Service. Ronald was on a contract for the National Snow & Ice Data Center and they insisted he be in country for this particular gig rather than complete the job from afar. In that time I worked at the Macquarie salt mines raking in the pesos. It was not an ideal situation but if we were going to be in the US for an extended period I had to be legit. We tried the 3 month tourist visa thing back in the early naughties and that turned into a sh*t show.
Once the card was granted, I resigned from Macquarie (for the second and last time), tidied up Rose Bay in time for our first tenant to move in, and headed back to the US of A.
It had been a while since I’d lived in the US but now I was back. We flew to Denver and a memory that stands out were the size of the Rocky Mountains to the west of the city. I thought it was a good omen to see the peaks punching up into the sky but by the time we got our luggage and then the eye-watering cost of a taxi to Boulder, I was distinctly underwhelmed. As we came over the rise on US 36 into Boulder, the city was a brown blotch upon a brown landscape. I was back but nervous.
For the next 7 years, the two of us lived in Boulder and then Austin. The quick reel of our time there: we rented, we feuded with landlords, we sold Ronald’s place in San Francisco, we bought a you-beaut house in Texas with the proceeds, we had road trips, there was betrayal, a marriage almost ended…And then came Trump, and then came Covid, and then came the deaths of my parents, of Julia, of Michael, and those are only a few of the lowlights. Did these things precipitate the relinquishing of the green card? Perhaps, but those topics are for another day.
Not to put too blunt a spin on things, it was the money, that precipitated that decision; the taxes to be precise that made it a no-brainer to relinquish the green card.
Generally, Australia’s tax treaties operate to reduce or eliminate double taxation caused by overlapping tax jurisdictions and to provide a level of security about the tax rules that will apply to particular international transactions. So sayeth the ATO.
Sounds a treat, right? Not so fast. To get the teeniest tax-y on you; the thing that wasn’t included in this little arrangement is one’s superannuation, 401Ks, ROTH IRAs etcetera. These sit outside the terms above which means both countries get to take out their share. Double dipping to put it another way.
“Generally, Australia’s tax treaties operate to reduce or eliminate double taxation caused by overlapping tax jurisdictions and to provide a level of security about the tax rules that will apply to particular international transactions”
This explanation is too simplistic. It’s like saying NASA puts instruments into space. I do not have an advanced degree in the tax codes of either Australia or the US to break it down easily. Suffice it to say, with Ronald retiring, we do not have the levels of altruism (or cash reserves) to jauntily write yearly cheques to the US & Aussie governments. There’s no logic to living this way.
I have given up my green card to save us some cash. And in the writing about this it sounds as flippant as all heck. I am fully aware that a green card is the tippy top of a very steep climb for a lot people. And here we were getting a green card one day, and letting it go the next. If I look at the decision from a systemic perspective, it’s both logical - there’s a bureaucratic process to gain and lose a green card - but also within that context, it’s also about the haves and the have-nots. I am white, I am educated, I was born in a first world country that more than measures up to the US as a place to hang out. Australians understand ‘freedom’ as much as anyone in the US. I don’t need what the US is offering. I am not your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. I am that immigrant with choice with an-accident-of-birth rocket ship. Fire that mother f*cker up when the going gets tough.
So that’s what we did. On the advice of the experts, we started our engines. I retrieved my green card from bedside table, completed I-407, and put the form in the (registered) post. A few months later, an email arrived informing me that it was now official: I was no longer a permanent resident of these United States. No more joint filings for us but I’m still processing as they say.
And as I mull the last decade over in my small brain; I find it odd that the official term for handing back the green card is record of abandonment. That’s highly emotive language totally at odds with the behemoth that is the US government. In what universe does the USCIS get to cast itself as a puppy, defenceless in this cruel and unjust world? It’s the individual who gets kicked to the curb. The government does the abandoning because what choice does the average person have if two countries feel the need to help themselves to what is essentially your pension? Who is abandoning who in this scenario?
An ambivalence will always linger about our decision. In matter-of-fact terms it was already out of date because I have not lived in the US for a number of years. The timeframe to keep it active had passed but it was not due to expire until 2026. Still. I feel strange now that the door is officially closed. I’ve no doubt my feelings about our time there will take the rest of my life to come to grips with.
Too much happened in those seven years and I have no words that can adequately parse some of the events that occurred. One of these days my brain may put it in some sort of context. But not right now. In the meantime, the relinquishing of my green card is the bureaucratic and very dry end of an era.