fj | Worrying

Anybody any experience with international moving and shipping? I guess my personal items -- pictures, vases, Christmas ornaments, all fragile, and my few books and most of my clothes -- I will want to send to my Dad to store in the basement until I have settled somewhere. I think that's not just a Take It To FedEx job, because some of these things are big paintings and will be bulky when protected and there is no need for speed at all. I would like to do that before I leave, now tentatively the end of January.

Then there's the furniture, of which I will not want to take much. I'd rather sell most of it with the house because really, how likely is it that I will need 12 feet of table in London or Amsterdam? The small tables, the desk, that is all IKEA and West Elm, almost disposable after the sale. But I doubt I would get what I want for the couches and the console table, so those will need to come over on the slow boat too. It would be better if those stayed until The Loft has sold, even if I have left, in case they could become part of the sale.But if they are not, I need a company that my broker can call, will pick it up, put it on a slow boat, and end up somewhere in storage until I decide which country I will live in. You know, for just a set of couches, that could be more money than what I would want for them. Sigh. Who do I call?

As for my tools, cookware, impressive collection of cables and peripherals (among which one will find a PCMCIA to SCSI card for example), linnens, stereo, loudspeakers, TV, TiVo with lifetime service, everything else? I am not attached to any of it and it is not required for staging, so I guess I will just have an open house and hope my friends go through my space like locusts.

Freecycle the rest? I don't know. But it is the shipping that is keeping me up at nights. But the hard disks go with the travelling clothes. Oh yes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If it's just a matter of owning some real estate, one could buy some bit of worthless property for cheap – something like a junky mobile home on an ugly patch of land in a town where local industry collapsed. In a discussion of "how much does a house cost where you live?" discussion I read, someone linked a tiny (but actually decent-looking) house in some agricultural ghost town in Texas with an asking price of $8000. (The same would probably go for $300k in a not-too-distant Seattle suburb.) Unless you're a farmer or have an all-telecommute job, you wouldn't want to live there, but if it's just a matter of owning the property it would satisfy the requirement pretty cheaply. On the other hand, if you didn't actually live there at more than at any other address, it probably wouldn't satisfy a residency requirement, and might be treated as fraud if you tried to pass it off that way.

But to keep a green card alive, I think you need to visit every three years, although maybe they've tightened that since I last looked (early 1990s).

I still occasionally hint to my wife that she should try to naturalize, if they'll allow her dual citizenship, so she doesn't catch grief from some crazy anti-immigrant regulation. Way back when, the only way a person could be dual-citizen was to have family claim to both countries and be under 18; at 18 one had choose which to keep. But some time since she immigrated (1991) that rule was relaxed, so she could probably go dual if she applied. After the appropriate wait through the underfunded paperwork nonsense, of course.

In order to be admitted with permanent resident status once you are at immigration control at the airport you must have not been outside of the country for more than a year. If you have you need a reentry permit, which you must have got before you left the country last time. They start frowning at stays abroad of longer than six months.

Visiting one week a year will probably not work either. This is really not an objective matter, and even when it's written in the law that you start needed a reentry permit after a year, it's all up to interpretation of the immigration officer to let you in. If he thinks you've abandoned your permanent residence status he can quite easily deny you entry as such.

Admission into the country is probably what one has to worry the most if planing to stay abroad for a long time and if one wants to keep his/her greencard. Owning some real state, like the kind you mention, will help for naturalization, but the biggest problem there is that you have to reside continuously 30 months in the US before applying for naturalization. I am not sure how they can check this, if they actually check your entry and departure records, which I highly doubt they do given the pathetic status of US customs and the USCIS in general. If they are not checking factually that you have resided in the US for those 30 months then it should be quite easy to come up with a valid application.

I see. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that things have tightened up, given an administration that doesn't seem to understand anything except intimidation and tax cuts for the rich.

At immigration control, discrimination is probably another factor to consider. If you have pale skin, speak native English, and have a passport from a rich country, the crossing should be low-hassle, unless the immigration officer checking your papers is having a bad day, doesn't like you for some reason, or you're unlucky get one of the extra inspections they do so they can claim they treat everyone equally. If you have brown skin and are carrying an Iranian passport, count on a really crappy day, unless the fascists on the staff are taking the day off. At southern border crossings, make sure no one thinks they hear a Spanish-influenced accent. Those hassles are nothing new; the only thing that's changed since Ellis Island is the nationalities that get the worst grief.

It looks to me like fj is at fairly low risk for hassles from immigration officers, except for the ever-present risk that they cause trouble because they're having a bad day.

If the rules are that tight today, best plan might be to leave the country by a tourist bus across the Canadian border when the lines are really long. Then immigration would probably not even be aware you ever left, particularly if you maintained a token financial presence somewhere. Continuing to file US tax returns would probably be a good idea too, even if they show no US income and pay no US taxes because of the foreign tax credit.

Still, it might be worthwhile to investigate dual citizenship. I'd guess that regaining a green card after letting it lapse is probably as difficult as getting it in the first place. Waiting for a less anti-immigrant administration would also be a possibility.

US Immigration officers are incredibly rude and tactless. Last time that my parents came to visit from Spain, they took them aside because they couldn't communicate with them, put them in the room and asked them why they didn't speak english, to proceed with the interview in spanish. My parents are 65 and 75.

I think there is no real harm in trying to get your wife naturalized. Worst thing that can happen is that they deny your application and you can keep trying.

Also, it sort of seems that they can't reliably track people coming out of the country even if you do it by airplane. I-94 forms are entered into their computer systems by hand when checkin in into the country. The ratio of those forms being handed out must be relatively low. Some must get lost from their respective passports, some are forgotten by airport employees.. In my case where I'm a greencard holder it gets worse, most of the time the people at the counter forget to ask my greencard when leaving, and usually my last names on the passport don't match the ones I use on the ticket so I don't see how the USCIS could possibly match that departure info with my immigration record in a reliable manner without human intervention.

All the above would indicate that being sloppy when filling out the immigration forms about your coming and goings should be quite safe.

Worrying

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