The “legally resident” requirement applies only to the actual payment of benefits and only to those who applied after a certain cut-off date. (I try to flush my brain of all the fine points of SSA law when I’m not actually at work:D ) It actually does not affect eligibility to benefits. Sample situations:
Fred is a US citizen receiving retirement benefits; his new wife, Irma, is a non-citizen who is eligible for benefits on his account as of January 2002 but only recently moved to the US and is still on a temporary visa which expires May 2002. Effective June 2002 Irma would no longer be paid benefits unless she can produce INS documentation that her legally resident status has been extended or changed to permanent.
John is an illegal alien who has been working in the US and has established eligibility for retirement benefits effective January 2002. (If he can prove that he worked & paid Social Security taxes, his illegal status at the time he was working is irrelevant.) He was not legally resident until March 2002, but his wife Jean is legally resident (either as a US citizen or not) prior to January 2002 and is eligible for spouse benefits on his record as of January 2002. We would pay Jean her benefits beginning January 2002 but John would not receive benefits until March 2002.
Opal is a US citizen who has been receiving retirement benefits since May 2000. She has been married to Julius, a non-citizen, since August 1999 and they have been living in his country. (As a US citizen, Opal can receive benefits even if she’s not living in the US). Julius had once lived in the US and paid Social Security taxes, but not enough to qualify for benefits. In January 2002 they move to the US and Julius applies for spouse benefits on Opal’s record and retirement benefits on his own; under the totalization agreement between the US and his country he has sufficient credit to qualify for retirement benefits effective October 2001. Without going into the intricacies of date of entitlement based on the date he filed and his age (trust me, you don’t want to know) he could be entitled to spouse benefits on Opal’s record as early as September 2001, but could not be paid benefits on either record until the effective date of his legal residency in the US.
Entitlement to Medicare also requires legal residency, with similar restrictions.
SSA regulations are second only to the IRS in complexity; you wouldn’t believe how much space in my cubicle is taken up with procedural manuals, memos, directives, etc. (Well, maybe CK would - I take it from your parenthetical remark that you used to work for the gummint)
Darn! I hit the post reply button and left my computer to take care of something else; when I got back the screen was showing the error screen so I assumed something had gone wrong, hit the back button and hit post again. Could one of the moderator fix this?
:rolleyes: Obviously, that was a massive oversimplification of a subject that didn’t seem to merit exactitude in the context. I forgot it isn’t possible to post on one of Monty’s pet subjects without getting a snide reply like this if you don’t dot every I and cross every T. I’ll be more careful next time, okay?
Oh, and since you’re being such a pill about it, I think UCC §1481(a)(6) would apply.
What exactitude? One can either keep the citizenship or lose it. Your premise is that one can lose it for a crime perpetrated AFTER gaining said citizenship. I question you as to which law supports that assertion. You respond with a snide rollseyes and smart-aleck remark.
[qutoe]I forgot it isn’t possible to post on one of Monty’s pet subjects without getting a snide reply like this if you don’t dot every I and cross every T.
[/quote]
You are the one making the snide comments. I’m the one asking what the factual basis is for your claim.
'Twould be nice.
Would you be so kind as to post a link? All I get from the search engine is about a million sites to Canadian and Norwegian immigration message boards.
It wasn’t a “premise”, Monty. It was an offhanded, obviously oversimplified parenthetical remark that was barely even relevant to the discussion at hand, and completely unworthy of hijacking this thread over.
Here is your link (I should have referred to it as USC §1481(a)(7), btw, late night and all that). If you wish to nitpick whether that really qualifies as “doing something really really bad”, please start another thread.
Thank you, ruadh. I can see treason as being “really, really, bad.” But the rest of the stuff in there isn’t bad, it’s just not really a good idea if someone wishes to maintain their US citizenship. In any case, it’s not automatic either–the government needs to prove a few things first. No new thread needed, IMHO.
I hate loose ends, but this end is gonna be somewhat loose.
The question of non-citizens (“greencard holders” are considered citizens for these purposes) and unemployment insurance is a tricky one.
It depends on lots of conditions, and the type of visa, etc. However, broadly speaking, a Permanent Resident is eligible to receive unemployment benefits, but a non-permanent resident is not. So, anyone in the U.S. on a permanent basis (citizen, green-card, etc.) would receive unemployment insurance benefits if eligible (see my earlier post in this thread on eligibility criteria.)
However, consider someone who is in the U.S. on a termporary visa and working, but who becomes unemployed. Presumably their visa expires, so they will have to leave the country, so the question of unemployment insurance becomes irrelevant. They become an unemployment statistic in their home country, not in the U.S.
As I say, that’s a gross simplification, but it’s about all I’m gonna get unless somebody pays me for the research time.
You’re forgetting that there are various ways a person on a work visa can remain in the U.S. quite legally after leaving (or being terminated from) the position for which he/she received the work visa, and therefore remain in the U.S. to receive unemployment benefits. The three that immediately spring to mind (a non-exhaustive list):
Enroll in a degree program and change status to F-1 or J-1 student status;
If he/she is married to someone who has a work (or other mnonimmigrant) visa, change status to that of a dependent on his/her spouse’s visa; or
File a change of status request to that of B-2 visitor and thereby gain 240 days of legal status while INS gets around to approving or denying the change of status application.
is a US citizen who has been receiving retirement benefits since May 2000. She has been married to Julius, a non-citizen, since August 1999 and they have been living in his country. (As a US citizen, Opal can receive benefits even if she’s not living in the US). Julius had once lived in the US and paid Social Security taxes, but not enough to qualify for benefits. In January 2002 they move to the US and Julius applies for spouse benefits on Opal’s record and retirement benefits on his own; under the totalization agreement between the US and his country he has sufficient credit to qualify for retirement benefits effective October 2001. Without going into the intricacies of date of entitlement based on the date he filed and his age (trust me, you don’t want to know) he could be entitled to spouse benefits on Opal’s record as early as September 2001, but could not be paid benefits on either record until the effective date of his legal residency in the US.