Hello. I am thinking of abandoning my green card. I do not want to get US citizenship. I have lived in usa for 10+ years and have 40 credits so i should be eligible for social security payments upon retirement soon. If i abandon my green card, will i still be able to get my social security payments while in nepal because i wont be able to come to usa to claim it? Do they send check to nepal?

Give me your greencard!

I doubt it. Once you abandon your green card, you are no longer a resident and forfeit all the benefits that comes with it, including SS.

Are you at the age of retirement? Even if you have 40 plus credits and reside in the U.S., you should be at or above the retirement age to collect the benefit.

arbiter, i have read posts over the internet and i am not 100% sure what the laws are. Even the SSN website it is little confusing. This is for my father. I was wondering if anyone or their parents have been in the similar situation where they are abandoning the green card. The reason is because of the requirement of having to live in US 6+ month in a year. He is already retired and prefers to stay in Nepal.

Anybody have experience on this?

If you cannot maintain continuous residence, then your green card is over and so with the benefits that comes along with it. You could be a US citizen, collect the benefits and retire in some other country like many others do.

I read somewhere that SS can be sent to bank account in nepal because nepal has social security agreement with US and immigration status has nothing to do with the social security income.

Yeah becoming US citizen could solve but for that he has to stay in US 5 years post greencard. He has been out of USA long time after he received his green card so i am not sure if he will qualify for us citizenship

If you cannot stay in US and abandon your greencard, on what basis do you think they will give you the SS? You won't even have a valid status. US citizen does look like the only solution.

So far my uderstanding about ss withheld , if you leave US for good , you can ask federal government to give your social security. Hope IRS will not tax on it.

I also think that becoming a US citizen and then residing in Nepal seems to be the only option here. 

Ok after doing a little more research, I myself am clearer on the payment of these benefits.

Even non residents or citizens can get the benefits if they have accrued enough credits. Did your father accrue credits himself or taking the credit of someone else (e.g. spouse etc)?

Say, he accrued the credit himself. If he was a citizen of one of the listed countries in this bulletin ( Page 5 of this bulletin: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/EN-05-10137.pdf), then he would have been able to receive the benefits even if he retired in Nepal. But Nepal is not one of those countries listed, so he will not get that benefit.

Now if he decides to go back to Nepal anyway, he will receive SS benefits for 6 months, after which the payments will stop...UNLESS the person meets one of the following exceptions:
•You were eligible for monthly Social Security benefits for December 1956;
•You are in the active military or naval service of the United States;
•The worker on whose record your benefits are based had railroad work treated as covered employment by the Social Security program;
•The worker on whose record your benefits are based died while in the U.S. military service or as a result of a service-connected disability and was not dishonorably discharged; or
•You are a resident of a country with which the United States has a social security agreement (NEPAL not in the list)

So, long story short, your father won't get the benefit for more than 6 months if he retired and went back to Nepal. Of course, the SSA may always change the list of countries, at which point things could change. But Nepal being on that seems very unlikely.