Citizenship

And speaking of milestones, Mr.

Speaker, jumping in, the Department of Citizenship and Naturalization, as we've indicated over the last few weeks, Speaker, you know I've only been in office, back in office for about four months now.

It feels much longer than that because we've been just moving so much.

Both of our customer service centers, known as intake centers, are open.

And the reason we're doing that, Mr.

Speaker, is we want to bring the ministry to the people, but we don't want the people being unnecessarily taxed for a product that costs persons in Grand Turk and Providenciales zero dollars to procure.

And so we are trying to level the playing field, but also have a dedicated district administration officer in the Department of Citizenship to just deal with those communities so that the information is streamlined fast, and persons don't have to be overly stressed about their documents.

Lastly, Mr.

and to make it simple to follow I'm going to go over a couple case studies with you and the case studies are coming right from the book so it's been easy for people to follow this so before I start asking the question Why should people be concerned about being a covered expat or a non-covered expat if they're exiting the United States? And the first case study is about a green card holder, someone who never got their U.S.

citizenship.

So what's the importance of this covered expat, non-covered expat?

In one word, taxes.

So the United States has a departure tax system for citizens that choose to renounce or for long-term permanent residents, green card holders, that choose to abandon their green cards.

For green card holders, if you've been in the U.S. tax system for decades, No more than eight years, right? You don't have to worry, right? You would not be considered a long-term permanent resident.

If you've been in the tax system for eight or more, which many, many individuals have without ever obtaining U.S. citizenship.

then they have to be careful when it comes time to abandon their green card um because of this uh because of these rules uh concerning the exit or expatriation tax right so really what we're looking for um several things uh we look to ensure that they filed complete federal income tax returns for the five years immediately preceding abandonment or renunciation.

I already warned you.

You are the official closing guest on our Summer of Citizenship.

The much beloved Summer of Citizenship.

The much beloved.

Many people, many are saying that it has been a terrific set of discussions.