| One more hugely important thing that you may already know:
The US green card 'permanent residence' is not permanent. It can be if you REMAIN in the United States, or leave under a very detailed set of circumstances for a very brief period of time, but if you leave the United States for more than six months at a time, the burden of proving you are still 'resident' falls on you, and if you leave for more than one year, the INS agent at the border can easily deem you to have 'abandoned' residence in the US and deny your entry.
Many green card holders living in HK "top up" by travelling to the US every six months, but that is a pain.
Now, I don't know your situaiton, but the tax issue may complicate this a bit. In some circumstances, people abandon their green cards when they come to Hong Kong to avoid paying US taxes and / or because they are resettling (NOTE: Abandonment for the purpose of paying taxes is not always accepted for citizens, not sure about Green Cards). It's really really complicated, and as I mentioned in my previous post, the IRS is already after you.
Anyway, I thought I should mention this to you because you may not be aware of this problem (I know many GC holder who find out the hard way being denied entry at the US airport). There are ways around it, such as filing paperwork that says you are only leaving for a short period of time, or working for a specific American company overseas, but you should look into this further, as should you look into the IRS issue further.
In both cases, please consult the relevant government websites and/or professionals in taxation and immigration. Please don't rely on friends (who always only know part of the story), or even on postings on this site. Get the real information so you don't end up losing your GC and getting fined for back taxes.  |