Who Form 8854 Immigration 2023-2024

I owe back taxes and I'm wondering, can I still become a US citizen? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, an immigration attorney here in St. Louis, Missouri. We get this question from time to time. We have people who come to see us that are thinking about filing for citizenship. In fact, we had someone here just recently. The long and short of it is that if you owe back taxes, you can become a U.S. citizen. Now, it is up to the immigration officer to decide whether or not you are a person of good moral character. So, they're going to look at the totality of the circumstances in deciding whether or not your back payments owed constitute bad moral character or not. So, they really have a lot of discretion and we always want to apply and file a strong case as possible. So, to the extent that you can pay off your taxes before you file, that would always be our advice. But the law says that if you have a back payment order and even making payments on a regular basis, you can still naturalize. Here's what you have to do: you have to enter into a payment program with the IRS and you have to follow that payment program. We wouldn't want to apply right after you started the payment program. It would be much better to let some time pass to get some payments under your belt. So, for instance, the fellow we met with yesterday, he's current for his last three years of taxes and his back payment is from a franchise that went sour back about three or four years ago. He's made all of his payments and last couple years, and now he's catching up. He's actually making substantial payments every month,...