An American-born Campbell River senior [Paul] – a Canadian citizen for 40 years – fears he and other ex-patriots are about to become the victims of a mean-spirited money grab by Uncle Sam.
Paul said, ““Once I showed my Canadian passport at the border and the U.S. border guard told me ‘you are a U.S. citizen until we tell you you’re not.’”
That border guard should read our blog–he will end up sounding less like an idiot if he did:
Forget about form 8854: US law establishes a right to unilateral expatriation
The border guard’s comments definitely have the same “tone” as the renunciation scripts I was read at the consulate: “WE OWN YOU!”
I think that’s why they make it so difficult to renounce: they loath the idea of losing control over someone. Control freaks!
I think one reason it can be difficult to renounce is because lots of Americans think it is such a wonderful place that everybody else in the whole world wants to live there. They can’t imagine why anyone would want to live elsewhere, so anybody who could live in the US and chooses not to, must be hiding something.
Well, at least one well known argues that the U.S. is in danger of becoming a “third world country”.
http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-America-Politicians-Abandoning/dp/0307719960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325786162&sr=1-1
“Third World America” by A. Huffington
From Amazon:
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player. That the United States of America is in danger of becoming a third world nation.
The evidence is all around us:
Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed the backbone of our economy for more than a century; our education system is in shambles, making it harder for tomorrow’s workforce to acquire the information and training it needs to land good twenty-first century jobs; our infrastructure—our roads, our bridges, our sewage and water, our transportation and electrical systems—is crumbling; our economic system has been reduced to recurring episodes of Corporations Gone Wild; our political system is broken, in thrall to a small financial elite using the power of the checkbook to control both parties.”
Terrifying. I asked Canadian
Passport offi e
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