Canadian Repatriation

July 18, 2008 10:37 AM

If I move back to Canada does my American wife and kid get Canadian citizenship?

I'm a Canadian with dual citizenship, living in the U.S. now for nearly 30 years. I just had my first kid with my American wife and, with that event, am now thinking of moving back to Canada.

If I did choose to repatriate what's the procedure? Would I pay taxes to both countries? Would my wife and child become Canadians? Are there informative web sites that address these issues?

posted by tangyraspberry to law & government (12 comments total)

As an American citizen you are supposed to pay taxes to the US for the rest of your life, regardless where you live. Not sure how they are about following that up, though. As for your wife and child, they will be able to apply for citizenship in Canada, but they will probably have to live there for a year or two before they can apply. Check out the following sites:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/
http://www.usexpatriate.blogspot.com/
posted by Grither at 10:41 AM on July 18

If I could edit my posts, I would have made those links click-able, sorry!

http://www.cic.gc.ca/
http://www.usexpatriate.blogspot.com/
posted by Grither at 10:57 AM on July 18

Immigrants (your wife), even by marriage, need to have resident status in Canada and live in Canada for at least 3 years before applying for citizenship. Your sponsorship will of course be helpful in getting the first step taken care of.
posted by thewalrus at 11:00 AM on July 18

You should check and see if your kid is already a Canadian citizen or not. I would bet you nice lunch that (s)he is already Canadian as the child of a Canadian, and that all you need to do is file some "I had a kid abroad" paperwork to get him/her a Canuckian passport.

Your wife would be an immigrant permanent resident who would be eligible for citizenship eventually. You would want to get that cleared away ahead of time.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:06 AM on July 18

As an American citizen you are supposed to pay taxes to the US for the rest of your life, regardless where you live.

Not pay US taxes. File a US tax return.

Big, huge, yawning chasm of a difference.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:08 AM on July 18

Downloadable CIC forms to sponsor your wife and child To do this right and for your wife and child to become citizens, you would have to sponsor them as members of the family class. The forms are downloadable above. You would have to be approved as a sponsor. Take a couple months. Timelines are here. You can sponsor from inside or outside Canada. Each has different merits, and that link is the timeline for approving you as sponsor. These timelines are for the approval of your wife as applicant, and child as dependent. Costs about $1000 to apply. After she resides here 3 years, she can apply for citizenship, which is another small fee.
posted by Listener at 11:10 AM on July 18

Not pay US taxes. File a US tax return.

More specifically, the IRS has a exemption on foreign income on something to the tune of $75-80k. If you made less than that, your return basically consists of you saying you don't owe anything. I'm an ex-pat American that's been in Canada for the last 3 years and filing my US taxes has never been a problem or cost me anything. If you make more than the exemption amount, I think there's some clever accounting that can be done to have other portions of your foreign income deducted.

It's annoying, but the idea is this keeps multimillionaire Americans from dodging taxes by living on a tropical island all year. How well that works in practice is less clear.
posted by Nelsormensch at 11:39 AM on July 18

Your children are automatically Canadian citizens by right of your Canadian citizenship. You do need to get some paperwork done to be able to take advantage of that fact, but it's a formality if you are definitely a Canadian citizen.

So your children don't need any kind of sponsorship or visa to live in Canada; they will enter it as citizens. You can get them Canadian citizenship cards and passports easily.

Your wife will need a permanent resident visa. You will need to "sponsor" her as an immigrant to Canada. This is largely a formality - family cases are straightforward - but it isn't a particularly fast or cheap application process. It will get complicated if your wife has a criminal record.

I'm in the same situation as your wife here - I'm married to a Canadian. We lived outside of Canada for years and had children who are dual citizens. When we moved to Canada, the children entered as Canadian citizens and only I needed a visa.
posted by standbythree at 12:13 PM on July 18

Oh, and your wife can become a Canadian citizen after being a legal resident here for three years, plus another year or so of paperwork ;)
posted by standbythree at 12:13 PM on July 18

You don't need to file U.S. taxes your whole life. I think it's ten or so years. You can check this out with a tax lawyer. Finding someone to do cross border taxes is pretty easy.

Your wife should apply before you come because there are all sorts of hoops to jump through. For example she is legally obliged to get health insurance until she is covered by the province you move to.

I think he may need to register your kids with the nearest consulate in order to get them citizenship.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 3:18 PM on July 18

You don't need to file U.S. taxes your whole life. I think it's ten or so years.

This is true only if you renounce your U.S. citizenship. If you're still a U.S. citizen, you keep filing, regardless of where you live (unless you don't meet the filing requirements).

Your children are automatically Canadian citizens by right of your Canadian citizenship.

This is true for the poster, but (for the benefit of future readers of this question) is not necessarily true if the children were born in 1976 or earlier. Canadians could not have multiple citizenships prior to 1977.
posted by oaf at 7:56 PM on July 18

I don't know any US citizens in Canada who've taken Canadian citizenship (they're dual, in other words) who still file US taxes. My former boss hasn't done it since 1980. Even if you haven't renounced, if you never intend to live in the US again, the consequences for not filing appear to be nonexistent.

If you've renounced then of course this doesn't matter to you but FWIW I know many Americans who just stopped filing and none have had any adverse consequences.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 10:34 PM on July 18