iStarting July 1, 2019, international offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will no longer accept Form I-407, Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Residence Status. On that date and going forward, all I-407 forms must be sent by mail to the address below. USCIS anticipates that processing of the form, from receipt to completion, will take 60 days or less, not including the mailing time to and from outside the United States (and please note that given the below address is a post office box, these notices cannot be sent via courier services like FedEx and UPS).
USCIS Eastern Forms Center
Attn: I-407 Unit
124 Leroy Road
PO Box 567
Williston, VT 05495
For various reasons, foreign nationals who have obtained Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR) status in the United States sometimes choose to voluntarily abandon their LPR status. When these individuals choose to live in another country and maintain residency there, it is a best practice to submit a Form I-407 so that a record of their abandonment of LPR status is filed with USCIS. Once the I-407 form has been accepted and the abandonment is recorded and acknowledged by USCIS, the former LPR-status individual no longer has to be concerned about certain tax requirements to file as a U.S. resident, and he also need not be concerned about maintaining residency in the U.S.
As EB-5 investors are aware, maintenance of their residency is of vital importance. After obtaining Conditional Permanent Resident (CPR) status, the investor must continue to maintain residency in the U.S. or else risk possible deportation or inadmissibility, as discussed in a prior blog post. EB-5 investors and dependent family members should maintain as many ties to the U.S. as possible, and when taking longer trips outside of the U.S., they should apply for and obtain reentry permits and consider carrying evidence of their U.S. ties with them when they return to the U.S. Without the maintenance of residency, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer could find the investor inadmissible for having abandoned residency, and that individual may face an uphill battle when applying to remove the conditions on the green card (filing of the I-829) or when ultimately applying for naturalization by filing the N-400 form (see our blog post here on the residency requirements for maintaining LPR status and for applying for naturalization).
Once abandonment of LPR status occurs, the foreign national no longer need worry about maintaining a residence in the U.S., filing and paying income taxes as a resident, and demonstrating ties to the U.S. to maintain LPR status. Of course, once LPR status has been abandoned, the foreign national may have to apply for entry visas for short trips to the U.S. We note that if someday the foreign national wishes to apply for a new green card, the voluntary abandonment will not be held against him.
The I-407 filing address change discussed above is in keeping with the March 2019 announcement by then-USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna that USCIS intends to shut down all international USCIS offices and shift all duties of these international offices to domestic USCIS offices and U.S. Department of State embassies and consulates. This announcement was confirmed by USCIS this week at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Annual Conference.
