Difference B/W Citizen & Permanent Residence

A permanent residence who is a green card holder gets the right to live in, re enter and leave and work in the USA. It does grant him the right to vote in the elections of the USA. Permanent residence might be deemed abandoned if the government of USA believes that the permanent resident has not been able to maintain sufficient ties to the USA to show the intent to keep it. It can even be revoked if the permanent residence is involved in committing a crime.

Citizenship includes all such rights and even the right to vote and various other rights. Citizenship is something that cannot be deemed as abandoned even if the citizen lives abroad for lengthy periods without having strong ties to US. It can even taken away but usually only a citizen who is naturalized can be said to have misrepresented something in the phase of naturalization or does something that could even result in the citizenship removal to a US born citizen like fighting against US with a foreign army.

Naturalization is referred to as a process to apply for the US citizenship. A citizen who has got the US citizenship by going through this process instead of birth in the USA is even said to be naturalized.

Having a green card for a limited period of time is needed for the naturalization of the USA citizenship. The time is three years for a person who belongs to a foreign country who has got the permanent residence on the basis of marriage to a US citizen and five years for the foreign nationals who have got the permanent residence by any other method. It is amongst one of the various requirements for naturalization. Not all the people who have a green card is eligible for the citizenship.

There are various cases in which people in some situation can acquire the citizenship without going through the process of Naturalization. Children that are born overseas to the US citizen parents then can get the citizenship just by applying for a US passport and showing their evidence of the citizenship and parentage.  This includes the birth certificate of the child and the US parents as well.

There are several situations where there are certain laws bestowed in US Citizenship on the individuals automatically by the operation of law. 

These are the major differences between permanent residency and citizenship. In permanent residence, you get all the freedom to live and do everything in that country but you do not get the right to vote in that country as you are not a citizen of that country. In the citizenship, you are a citizen with an American passport and this allows you to vote in the time of elections and take part in other such activities.