Have you ever heard of anyone becoming a "Sovereign Citizen"?

How much did it cost you to become a US citizen?

• I have tried looking up figures for the cost of becoming a citizen in the United States and the numbers seem to vary pretty widely. I know that the application carries a price and that sometimes there are other costs as well. I would love to hear from anyone who has become a citizen, is becoming a citizen, or knows someone who went through the process. Any specifics on how much each part of the process costs would be really helpful. I am asking because I teach classes that require research projects and the subject of immigration comes up every semester. I suspect that this is an important part of the conversation that is being overlooked and would like to learn more. Thank you!

• Answer:

  The main reason you have probably found either not much information or wildly varying figures is because the situations of most people are not very similar and when you account for things like opportunity costs of loss of earnings in US or elsewhere, varying lengths of waiting lists, whether they or their company had to pay legal fees, medical fees, their nationality, etc. Additionally say the cost to file for Permanent Residency or Citizenship might be $X thousand dollars today but after 10 years waiting to get to that point, it has risen a lot meaning to even calculate future cost becomes very difficult. Also if you think that foreigners have to pay things like Social Security and Medicare and have Payroll taxes paid on their behalf yet have no access to these programs social support that also becomes part of the cost. Foreigners also when studying at US universities tend to have to do SAT equivalency exams, always pay full tuition and have little to no access to loans or scholarships. If people are medical professionals for example in their home country they have to do the long process and cost of US certification to be able to practice here. As for that opportunity cost I mentioned above imagine you are foreign professional sponsored on a visa like the H-1B visa and your company agrees to sponsor you for a Green Card. Currently the way the system works is that sponsorship is tied to the company and role/pay level you are currently at. Therefore throughout the duration of your application processing and wait list that cannot change so you can't accept promotions within the company or better offers elsewhere otherwise in almost all cases your Green Card application is abandoned. Now for Indians and Chinese for most professionals we are talking about waits of 10 years or more. That means regardless of how good a job they do they just have to accept their current lot in life and wait. It is for this reason it becomes very hard to give you a number that is "typical" but really for many people it is $100,000 or much much more and that is not including what they had to give up back home.