What Can I Do With a Green Card: Rights, Limits, and Keeping It

A green card lets you live and work anywhere in the United States for as long as you want, travel abroad and return, sponsor certain family members, qualify for many federal programs, and eventually apply for citizenship. It also comes with real limits: you cannot vote in federal elections, some jobs and benefits are reserved for citizens, and certain criminal or civic missteps can cost you your status. So the honest answer to what you can do with a green card is: nearly everything a citizen can, with a short list of important exceptions.

Live and Work Anywhere in the Country

You can settle in any state, move across state lines without telling immigration authorities, and take almost any job in the private sector. Your Permanent Resident Card (Form I-551) is itself proof of work authorization for the Form I-9 that every employer must complete, so you don’t need a separate Employment Authorization Document.¹

Federal law also shields you from being fired or refused a job just because you’re not a citizen. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1324b, employers cannot discriminate against permanent residents based on immigration status. Two limits are worth knowing. If you become eligible to naturalize and don’t apply within six months, you lose that statute’s “protected individual” status. And when two candidates are equally qualified, an employer is allowed to prefer the US citizen.²

Most professional licenses (medicine, law, engineering) are open to green card holders, though rules vary by state. The main closed doors are federal jobs that require a security clearance reserved for citizens, particularly at the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies.

Travel Abroad and Return

You can leave the country and come back by presenting your valid green card to a Customs and Border Protection officer at the port of entry. Short trips for vacation, business, or family are routine as long as the card hasn’t expired and nothing has happened that would make you inadmissible.

Longer absences are where trouble starts. Stay outside the United States for more than a year without preparation and you can be found to have abandoned your permanent resident status. Before a long trip, file Form I-131 for a reentry permit. You have to be physically in the United States to file it, and you cannot renew one from abroad.³

Even with a reentry permit, an officer can question whether the United States is still your real home. USCIS weighs the length and frequency of your trips, your purpose for being abroad, and your ties here: US tax returns, property, a job or business, a driver’s license, and immediate family in the country. Filing your taxes as a “nonresident alien” to lower your bill creates a rebuttable presumption that you have abandoned residency.⁴

Sponsor Family Members

You can petition for your spouse and your unmarried children of any age by filing Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, with USCIS.⁵

The catch is timing. A US citizen’s spouse and minor children are “immediate relatives” with no annual cap. Your relatives fall into preference categories that are capped every year, which usually means a wait of months or years for a visa number before they can finalize their green cards. If you naturalize later, your spouse and unmarried children under 21 move into the immediate-relative category, and the wait can drop sharply.

One boundary here: if you got your own green card through a marriage that was less than two years old on the day your status was granted, you have a two-year conditional card and must file Form I-751 during the 90 days before it expires to remove those conditions.⁶ That deadline is easy to miss and hard to fix.

Access Federal Benefits

Green card holders qualify for many federal programs, but not always right away. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1613, most permanent residents who entered on or after August 22, 1996, cannot receive federal means-tested benefits (Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, TANF) for five years after getting qualified immigrant status. Refugees, asylees, veterans and their families, and some other categories are exempt from the wait.⁷

Programs that aren’t means-tested work differently. Social Security retirement and disability benefits are available to anyone who has earned enough work credits. Medicare Part A is premium-free after 40 quarters (about 10 years) of Medicare-taxed work. Emergency medical care, school lunch programs, and certain child nutrition benefits are specifically outside the five-year bar.⁷

What You Cannot Do

A green card does not let you vote in federal elections. Under 18 U.S.C. § 611, a non-citizen who votes for President, Vice President, or a member of Congress faces up to a year in prison, a fine, or both.⁸ Separately, immigration law makes any non-citizen who has voted in violation of federal, state, or local election law deportable. Even registering to vote can create serious immigration problems. There is one narrow escape hatch: if both of your parents (natural or adoptive) are or were US citizens, you lived permanently in the United States before age 16, and you reasonably believed you were a citizen when you voted, that violation won’t make you deportable.⁹

You also cannot serve on a federal jury, and certain federal positions requiring citizenship-only security clearances are off-limits.

Apply for US Citizenship

The green card is the step before naturalization. You apply on Form N-400, and the filing fee is $710 online or $760 on paper; members of the US armed forces pay nothing.¹⁰

Most applicants must hold a green card for at least five years. If you’re married to and living with a US citizen, the wait drops to three years.¹¹ You can file up to 90 days before you hit the required period. You also need physical presence in the country for at least half the statutory period: 30 months out of five years, or 18 months out of three.¹² USCIS will look at your criminal record, tax compliance, and Selective Service registration when it evaluates good moral character, and you’ll take an English test and a civics test. Naturalizing gives you the vote, a US passport, and the ability to sponsor immediate relatives without the annual caps.

What Can Take Your Green Card Away

Permanent residence isn’t beyond reach of removal, even after decades in the country. The main triggers are criminal convictions, listed in 8 U.S.C. § 1227.⁹

An aggravated felony conviction at any time after admission. The category is broader than the name suggests and includes theft with a one-year sentence, some fraud offenses, and drug trafficking.
A crime involving moral turpitude within five years of admission (where a sentence of a year or more could be imposed), or two such crimes at any time.
Any controlled-substance conviction, including possession. The one exception is simple possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana.
Firearm offenses: buying, selling, possessing, or carrying a firearm in violation of any law.
Convictions for domestic violence, stalking, child abuse, or violating a protective order.

Drug conduct carries a second cost. Marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law, so marijuana-related activity that violates federal law can bar you from establishing good moral character and block naturalization, even where your state has legalized it. Again, the only carve-out is a single simple-possession offense of 30 grams or less.¹³

What You Have to Do to Keep It

File your taxes. As a US resident for tax purposes, you owe federal income tax (and state, where it applies) on your worldwide income, wherever earned.¹⁴ Not filing, or filing as a nonresident alien, can be treated as evidence you’ve abandoned your residency.⁴

Report every move. Within 10 days of changing address you must file Form AR-11 with USCIS, online or by mail.¹⁵ Missing this can bring fines and, in serious cases, removal proceedings.

Register with Selective Service if you’re male and between 18 and 25. The deadline is 30 days after your 18th birthday, or 30 days after entering the country if you arrive between those ages.¹⁶ A knowing and willful failure to register can block naturalization for applicants under 26; those between 26 and 31 can try to show it wasn’t willful; after 31 it falls outside the statutory period.¹⁷

Renew the card itself. A standard green card is valid for 10 years. Your status doesn’t expire when the card does, but an expired card creates real problems proving work authorization and reentering the country. File Form I-90 once the card will expire within six months, or after it already has.¹⁸ The fee is $415 online or $465 on paper.¹⁹ If you’ll be abroad when the card expires, apply before you leave; USCIS won’t send the replacement to a foreign address.

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Employment Authorization Document
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 U.S. Code 1324b – Unfair Immigration-Related Employment Practices
3
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Instructions for Form I-131, Application for Travel Documents
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Lawful Permanent Resident Admission for Naturalization
5
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-130, Petition for Alien Relative
6
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Removing Conditions on Permanent Residence Based on Marriage
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 U.S. Code 1613 – Five-Year Limited Eligibility of Qualified Aliens for Federal Means-Tested Public Benefit
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 611 – Voting by Aliens
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1227 – Deportable Aliens
10
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Fact Sheet – Form N-400, Application for Naturalization Filing Fees
11
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. N-400, Application for Naturalization
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1427 – Requirements of Naturalization
13
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Conditional Bars for Acts in Statutory Period
14
Internal Revenue Service. Tax Information and Responsibilities for New Immigrants to the United States
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1305 – Notices of Change of Address
16
Selective Service System. Who Needs to Register
17
Selective Service System. USCIS Policy Manual – Selective Service Registration
18
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Instructions for Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card
19
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. G-1055 Fee Schedule