How to Complete Form I-407 (I-91) and Surrender Your Green Card

To surrender a green card, file Form I-407, Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status, and turn in your Permanent Resident Card along with any other USCIS-issued travel documents. You can mail the form to a USCIS facility in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, hand it to a Customs and Border Protection officer at a U.S. port of entry, or in rare cases submit it at a U.S. embassy or consulate. There is no Form I-91 in the current USCIS forms inventory; older references to that number are incorrect, and I-407 is the form to use.¹²

The decision is irrevocable, triggers IRS obligations, and permanently changes how you enter the United States. Read the tax and Social Security sections below before you file.

Filling Out Form I-407

Form I-407 is a free PDF download from the USCIS website. It is short, but USCIS will reject it if a required field is blank or the signature is missing, and the agency will not give you a chance to fix the signature after the fact.¹

Type or print in black ink. Put your nine-digit Alien Registration Number (A-Number) in the upper right corner of every page. If your A-Number has fewer than nine digits, add leading zeros. The A-Number is printed on the front of your Permanent Resident Card.³⁴

The form asks for:

Your name as it appears on your green card, copied exactly even if misspelled. If you no longer have the card, write “N/A.”
Your current legal name, reflecting any marriage, divorce, or court-ordered change.
Date of birth in mm/dd/yyyy format.
Country of birth and country of citizenship or nationality.
Date of your last departure from the United States, if known.
A mailing address outside the United States.
An email address (optional but useful for follow-up).
Your USCIS Online Account Number, if you have one. It is not the same as your A-Number.
Checkboxes for every USCIS-issued document you are surrendering, and the location where you are submitting.

Write “N/A” for any question that does not apply, and “None” where the answer is a numeric zero. Sign and date the certification section.³

Documents to Return With the Form

Submit every USCIS-issued document you hold: your Permanent Resident Card (Form I-551), any reentry permits, and any refugee travel documents. Do not include your state driver’s license, Social Security card, or anything else that was not issued by USCIS.¹

If your green card was lost or stolen, check the appropriate box on the form. You do not need a separate police report, but you must note the card’s absence on the form itself.³

Filing for a Child or Incapacitated Adult

If the person giving up status is 14 or younger, a parent, custodial parent, or legal guardian must sign the form and consent to the filing. A parent must submit evidence of the parental relationship; a legal guardian must submit proof of guardianship. The same guardianship requirement applies when filing for an incapacitated adult.¹

Where to Send Form I-407

The default filing method is mail. Send the completed form and all surrendered documents to:

USCIS
Attn: I-407
7 Product Way
Lee’s Summit, MO 64002

This address works for USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL, whether you are mailing from inside the United States or from abroad.¹

The State Department instructs consular offices not to schedule appointments solely for accepting Form I-407, so if you live overseas, mail your form directly to USCIS. In-person filing at a U.S. embassy or consulate is allowed only in rare circumstances where you need immediate proof of abandonment, most commonly when applying for an A or G diplomatic visa, and the consulate may need approval from the State Department’s Visa Office before accepting the form.⁵

Surrendering at a U.S. Port of Entry

You can also give up your status in person by telling a CBP officer when you arrive at a U.S. port of entry.⁶ The officer will have you complete and sign Form I-407 on the spot, turn in your green card and any USCIS travel documents, and complete Form I-193, Application for Waiver of Passport and/or Visa, which lets you enter that same day without a nonimmigrant visa.

The Form I-193 fee is $695, payable to the CBP officer, and the officer has discretion to waive it case by case.⁷ This route makes sense if you are already flying to the U.S. for a visit and want to finalize your abandonment during that trip.

The Decision Cannot Be Reversed

Once USCIS processes your Form I-407, there is no way to undo it. You cannot call USCIS later and ask for your green card back. If you decide again that you want to live in the United States permanently, you must start the immigration process from scratch, including sponsorship, petition, and visa processing. Prior LPR status gives you no priority or shortcut.⁸

Tax Consequences

USCIS is required to report your name and the date of your I-407 filing to the Internal Revenue Service.¹ From that point, the IRS knows you have expatriated.

As a green card holder, you were taxed on worldwide income the same way a U.S. citizen is.⁹ That obligation ends going forward once you satisfy all filing requirements for the year you expatriate and any prior years.

Form 8854 and “Long-Term Resident” Status

If you held lawful permanent resident status in at least 8 of the last 15 tax years, the IRS treats you as a long-term resident, and you must file Form 8854 with your final U.S. tax return for the year you expatriate. The form notifies the IRS that your tax residency has ended, and it determines whether you are a “covered expatriate” subject to the exit tax.¹⁰

You are a covered expatriate if any one of the following is true:¹¹

Your net worth is $2 million or more on the date of expatriation.
Your average annual net income tax liability for the five years before expatriation exceeds the inflation-adjusted threshold published by the IRS.
You cannot certify under penalty of perjury that you complied with all federal tax obligations for the five preceding years.

The Mark-to-Market Exit Tax

Covered expatriates face a mark-to-market regime under IRC 877A. All your property is treated as if you sold it at fair market value on the day before your expatriation date, and any gain from that deemed sale is included in your gross income for the year, reduced by an annually indexed exclusion amount. The base statutory exclusion is $600,000, indexed from 2008; for 2025 it was $890,000.¹¹ You can elect to defer the tax, but the obligation does not disappear.¹²

If you own a home that has appreciated, hold retirement accounts, or have investments with large unrealized gains, the exit tax can be a substantial financial event. Talk to a tax professional before you file Form I-407. The immigration filing and the tax clock are linked, and the immigration decision cannot be reversed once it starts the tax consequences running.

Social Security After You Leave

Giving up your green card does not automatically end Social Security benefits you already earned. You generally need 40 quarters (about ten years) of U.S. work with Social Security taxes deducted from your pay to be eligible, and once you have met that threshold and reached the minimum age, the benefit is yours regardless of immigration status.

Payment rules change once you are a nonresident alien living abroad. If you are not a U.S. citizen and do not meet an exception to the alien nonpayment provisions, Social Security stops payments after you have been outside the United States for six full calendar months. To restart them you would need to return and stay in the U.S. for an entire calendar month, from the first minute of the first day through the last minute of the last day.¹³

The U.S. has totalization agreements with about 30 countries that can help avoid this suspension. Payments to anyone residing in Cuba or North Korea are prohibited by the Treasury Department, and payments to several Central Asian countries are restricted.¹³

There is also a tax hit on the benefit itself. As a nonresident alien, 85 percent of your U.S. Social Security benefit is subject to a flat 30 percent withholding tax, unless a tax treaty between the U.S. and your country of residence provides a lower rate. Check the SSA’s nonresident alien tax screening tool before you file to see what your net benefit would actually be.

Visiting the United States Later

The moment your abandonment is processed, you lose the right to live and work in the United States. Any future visit requires a visa or travel authorization, the same as for any other foreign national. For most former residents, that means applying for a B-1 (business) or B-2 (tourism) visitor visa at a U.S. embassy or consulate.¹⁴

If you are a citizen of a Visa Waiver Program country, you can instead apply for authorization through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) for trips of 90 days or less.¹⁵ A clean record of formal abandonment actually helps at this stage, because it shows consular officers and border agents that you followed the legal process to end residency rather than simply overstaying or letting your card lapse.

If you surrender at a port of entry, the Form I-193 waiver lets you enter that same day. For every trip after that, you will need either a visa or ESTA approval in hand before you board your flight.⁶

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-407, Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. All Forms
3
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Instructions for Form I-407
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A-Number/Alien Registration Number
5
U.S. Department of State. 9 FAM 202.2 Lawful Permanent Residents
6
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Can I Still Enter the United States if I Give Up My Lawful Permanent Resident Status?
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Application for Waiver of Passport and/or Visa
8
U.S. Embassy and Consulate General in the Netherlands. Abandoning Your Green Card
9
Internal Revenue Service. Tax Information and Responsibilities for New Immigrants
10
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8854
11
Internal Revenue Service. Expatriation Tax
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 877A
13
Social Security Administration. Your Payments While You Are Outside the United States
14
U.S. Department of State. Visitor Visa
15
USAGov. Visa Waiver Program and ESTA