<p>I'm a legal resident, but I do have the option of becoming a citizen. Other than the cost, which is $700, quite a hefty sum, becoming a citizen wouldn't be a problem.</p>
<p>How much of an advantage is being a citizen over a resident when it comes to admission (I'd imagine this is none), financial aid, scholarship opportunities, etc.?</p>
<p>It’s my understanding that for college admissions and need based FA, residents and citizens are treated the same. But not having had this situation personally, I don’t have much experience, anyone else know differently?</p>
<p>There may very well be some scholarships that are for citizens only. For NHRP, you can be either a citizen or resident, I don’t know for the other major Hispanic scholarship organizations or for institutional merit aid.</p>
<p>I had a green card for many years (25?) and never encountered any differences with financial aid as a student. This may be changing and may affect scholarships so PLEASE check with the schools you are interested in. Talk to their financial aid office and make sure that you will not be penalized in anyway by delaying citizenship. Also, be careful to have multipl copies of your green card and, should you naturalize, make copies of your naturalization certificate and PUT THE DARN THING IN A safe deposit box! IT IS VERY diffficult to replace. </p>
<p>The one very, very odd requirement that I encountered (and I hope it is gone) was that as a female non-citizen, everytime I got a pell grant or subsidized government loan I had to sign a paper that said (this is not a joke) “If I were a man, I would sign up for the selective service”…all males now and then that recieve financial aid must swear that they have registered with the selective service. Why only non-citizen women had to sign this totally mystified me…why not have all women sign this “catch 22”-like document? If we are going to get weird why not subject al poor women not just non citizens to this absurdity!</p>
<p>Getting citizenship has become expensive and it takes a while so you may want to get the process started. My husband also waited many years befre changing his status. If you have family members who are working and are non-citizens, they should be aware of the following serious issues with waiting to get citizenship. </p>
<p>There are some very, very important implications for families of resident aliens. </p>
<p>First: if you aren’t a citizen your children born abroad are not citizens. Obvious fact, but you tend to forget when you have mainly lived in the US for 25 years…</p>
<p>I woke up to this at age 28, expecting child #2 abroad with green card holding husband. Hey, baby will have no rights to enter the United States if born abroad! It could take years to get the tyke a green card of his/her own! Luckily, this was before 9/11, and I was visiting states, went to local INS office and explained my predicament, paid $25 application fee and was sworn in 3 days later. Baby born abroad 6 months later got a birth certificate from US embassy…she can’t ever be President but no immigration issues. It was a snap and cheap but those days of INS “understanding” are long gone…</p>
<p>SECOND and (talk to your parents about this) More importantly are the financial implications to remaining a resident alien. These seem far off and silly issues when you are young but many green card holders live here for 20 or 30 years without realizing how this can affect their spouses and children. Even if your parents aren’t rich, they can end up losing a substantial portion of thei their home/savings/insurance/social security that they have worked hard to provide to their families in case of their death. If a spouse (resident/non resident or citizen) dies and the surviving spouse is a resident or non resident alien the surviving spouse holder will be hit with EXTREMELY high estate taxes (30% or more on all inherited assets). Also, if the CHILDREN are non-citizens and are the beneficiaries of the estate THEY will pay these massive estate taxes that citizens generally can avoid with a $1 million threshold before estate taxes are applied. Either get your citizenship to avoid unfair taxes (unfair because citizens don’t have this burden) or make sure that your parents have a will the puts the assets into a trust to avoid direct inheritance by non-citizen spouse and/or children. THis is not trivial.</p>
<p>Second, if the surviving spouse and/or children are not citizens they may not collect survival social security benefits outside of the US so if surviving spouse/kids want to go back to country of origin they need to be US citizens to collect these benefits.</p>
<p>OK this goes way beyond your question but I think that there are a lot of resident aliens that delay naturalizationbecause of the cost/hassle/ and a sense of identity loss. I am completely sympathetic but delaying naturalization may also have important and unexpected financial impacts and immigrants should be sure to stay up on changing laws and rules and regulations that can affect their families. $700 can seem like a real small investment in long term financial security.</p>