This is an excerpt from a long post at RenounceUScitizenship
Many “Homelanders” simply cannot:
– conceive that, U.S. citizens find better places to live;
– conceive that the U.S. is no longer the country envisioned by the Founding Fathers;
– see that the U.S. is no longer the free country that it once was;
– believe that many Americans want to renounce, and that they are willing to pay (in the form of Exit Taxes) to do it.
Mr. Saverin’s renunciation of U.S. citizenship has activated all the silly responses from the “Homelander Elite Core”. To wit:
– Yale law professor and respected constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman writes that Mr. Saverin should never be allowed to return to America.
Once Americans renounce their membership in our national community, they should be allowed to return only under exceptional circumstances — in response to the call of a child in a hospital or a mother on her death bed.
He reiterated his position in a “follow up” article where he comments on some of the comments to his original article and approves of the Casey/Schumer (“envy specialist”) idiocy.
– Senators Casey and Schumer responded to Mr. Saverin’s renunciation by proposing the “Ex-Patriot Act“. Leaving aside the idiotic specifics, the Act would legislate a presumption that one renounces U.S. citizenship for the purpose of avoiding U.S. taxes. The renunciant is then punished in a number of ways, including not being able to return to the U.S. (Frankly, I doubt that many people who renounce are interested in access to the U.S.). The Wall Street Journal made the following comment in relation to the Casey/Schumer lunacy:
Whatever Mr. Saverin’s motivation, the more important point is that it is his decision, however misguided. America was built on millions of similar individual decisions to come to our shores. It is precisely that ability to decide for oneself that has made America such a magnet for two centuries.
The way to continue to be a magnet for the best and brightest is not to impose Soviet-style exit taxes to punish people who want to leave the country. That is what oppressive and demagogic regimes do, and it’s humiliating to see U.S. Senators posture in such fashion. The way to punish Mr. Saverin is to make the U.S. so appealing and dynamic again that he’ll be sorry he ever left.
(Thoughts on Mr. Saverin: It’s also worth noting that Mr. Saverin has bent over backward to comply with the law. He has paid all the taxes he owes. This is a state of affairs that Secretary Geithner and Chairman Rangel might aspire to. Furthermore, there are many additional reasons for Mr. Saverin to have renounced U.S. citizenship. He is a young man with a long business career ahead of him. By remaining a U.S. citizen, he would make himself ineligible to participate in non-U.S. business investments and partnerships. Remember FATCA and FBAR require reporting information on non-U.S. citizens to the IRS. For this reason, nobody would enter into a partnership with a U.S. citizen. Leaving aside the fact that FBAR and FATCA requirements impede the mobility of U. S. citizens, they also force U.S. citizens to live under a kind of supervision and probation. This is an intolerable situation. For an ambitious young person, the renunciation of U.S. citizenship may be necessary.)
Speaking of “Soviet-style” exit taxes, the simple fact is that U.S. citizens are among the least free people anywhere. Yes (for the hecklers) that is just my opinion – but I am happy to defend it based on facts and logic.
@geeze – I’m waiting for the US to call its bluff and start with its 30% withholding tax and see what the world thinks from that day onward.
For those who adore Mitt Romney, don’t forget he is a typical homelander (even if he slept abroad a few times):
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/10/07/text-of-mitt-romneys-speech-on-foreign-policy-at-the-citadel/
Some excerpts from his speech (they appear around the middle of it):
“God did not create this country to be a nation of followers. America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers. America must lead the world, or someone else will.”
“Some may ask, “Why America? Why should America be any different than scores of other countries around the globe?”
“I believe we are an exceptional country with a unique destiny and role in the world. Not exceptional, as the President has derisively said, in the way that the British think Great Britain is exceptional or the Greeks think Greece is exceptional. In Barack Obama’s profoundly mistaken view, there is nothing unique about the United States.”
The he goes on to explain we’re special because of our tradition of libertarian principles (cough). So I guess that makes the US different from everyone else: we continue to parrot and believe our own myths.
@Calgary411
https://twitter.com/#!/renounceus/status/204189244946784259
Reblogged this on Stop Unconstitutional Double Taxation and commented:
National Narcissism… if the US rests on its laurels and assumes it will always be right, it will be proven wrong.
@Jeff!
Awesome Gadsden / CH flag icon!
Wellington – oh jeez.. every time those people open their mouths, seems like only garbage comes out.
Roger – Your exactly right on hiring non-Americans. I was talking to some friends a while back that own an “agricultural products store” – I put it in quotes because I don’t know how to say that in English. Anyway, they told me that they got a visit a while back from representatives of an American company that sells fungicide. The representatives were MEXICAN nationals. I hardly ever hear of 100% Americans coming or going to any foreign countries. I guess they are too much of a hassle, maybe because most of them are monolingual, higher pay is necessary, taxes, and reciprocity issues come to mind.
@Wellington, I think you will find the Mitt Romney slept more than a few nights abroad. He was 19 years old when he went to France as a Moromon missionary and lived and worked there for 30 months, mostly dealing directly with the French-speaking public. My guess is that being only 19 years of age he learned French very rapidly and is most likely quite fluent in that language. At that age with total immersion a foreign language comes much easier than if you are older. I don’t know, but he may have also studied French in high school or the university.
In my years of living abroad and traveling the world for some 40+ years in my job of selling telephone equipment to foreign telephone companies in some 98 countries I have come in contact with several American citizen Mormon executives who live and work abroad Some I met on planes and others abroad. . One charasteric which makes Mormons attractive for the few overseas positions that US companies still fill with US citizens is the fact that they have lived abroad, are culturally prepared for this and are fluent in the languagage of the country for which they are recruited to live.
So I would not underestimate Romney’s understanding of at least some of the aspects of what it is to be a US citizen living abroad. He probably did not face any of the tax problems that US citizens living abroad face today given the fact that missionaries, So he likely has very little awareness of this specific issue. Mormon or otherwise, do not generally go aboad as missionaries for high monetary compensation reasons. Having been always very active in my own (Baptist) church abroad, I had lots of contact with missionaries.
If they have administrative functions abroad they may well have to submit FATCA reports because of having signature authority over misson accounts which likely exceed $10,000 in value at some point during the calendar year. That law existed when I was living abroad, but I had never heard of it so I never knew I was supposed to submit a FATCA report. But Americans abroad are much more aware of that requiement today.
Personally I do believe that it is an important positive qualification for a US president to have fluency in more than English and to have lived and worked outside of the United States.
@Roger
Thanks for your comment. I indeed underestimated the time he has spent abroad. Furthermore I don’t doubt that he is well travelled – especially as an ultra-wealthy person. He certainly has some qualifications in knowledge of foreign cultures such as France, no doubt about it.
I originally posted the comment above because it exemplifies the title of this post, “National narcissm and US citizenship.” Coming from a candidate for US president, his statements are especially relevant. I don’t pretend to know how he will actually act or be, if he wins, but his statements don’t give me confidence that US policy towards expats will be any different under his leadership. Because one reason the people in government make us suffer is that they cherish the notion of US exceptionalism, a notion that Romney has down pat.
@Wellington, Indeed Romney has made no pronouncements on the treatment of US citizens abroad so we don’t know what his attitude would be. But we do know that Obama made a series of commitments to “level the playing field” for us prior to the past election. His commitments unquestionably garnered massive support from expats, but he has kept none of them. With the FBAR crackdown and the enactment of FATCA he has in fact done just the opposite of what he committed he would do. What he has done is a better gauge of his policy than his pre-election promises. The result is that Pressident Obama has left little alternative for Americans abroad but to renounce their American citizenship. Some of my Democrats Abroad leadership friends have made serious attempts to follow up Obama up on this commitent he made to overseas Americans, but their letters have been totally ignored. It was pure “campaign retoric. It was an outright lie.
This is very clear in the wording of the Treasury Department official who responded to the Congressman through which our contributor Markpinetree, who lives in Brazil, was attempting to obtain guidance with the satatement, and I quote “…he can consider relinquishing his US citizenship.”
Ironic that in light of this recommendation two Senators of President Obama’s party have introduced a bill to more severely punish citizen like Sevarin who have folowed this recommendation and renounced by making sure they continue to be subject to US capital gains taxes at twice the tax rate of persons residing in the US. This is in addition to the massive Soviet-style exit tax have already paid when they renounced their citizenship.
Actions speak much louder than words.
@Roger
Again, thanks for your comment. I have learned a lot from the information in your comments (this and others) and it has been worth my while to visit these boards and try to participate.
I also appreciate what you are doing and the level of awareness you are trying to raise with the homelanders. I hope that your labors will bear fruit and reverse this long, dangerous slide into tyranny against expats.
I have a certain gut feeling about what is going on and fear that the social mood is unfortunately not helpful to the cause. But I think it is also important to keep the spirit of Isaac Brock, that is, to fight back.
About Romney, I hope he will be able or willing to roll back the tide against expats, if he wins.
Pingback: Did Obama “keep his word” to U.S. citizens living abroad? | The Isaac Brock Society