Cross-posted from the Flophouse. Just can’t get over some of the strange results of U.S. citizenship law. The more I think about it neither jus soli or jus sanguinis are good fits in a globalized world. So I had some fun writing this post and pointing out two rather famous Accidental Americans: Boris Johnson and Anne Sinclair. If you have a chance go read Boris Johnson’s 2006 post – as one of the Flophouse readers said, “I didn’t know Mr Johnson’s prose could be so entertaining to read.”
The United States of America allows for two methods for acquiring U.S. citizenship at birth: jus sanguinis (through an American citizen parent) and jus soli (through being born on U.S. soil). For the latter the U.S. has one of the most open-ended and generous terms around – the mere fact of being born on U.S. soil makes someone a U.S. citizen under almost all circumstances. (The only exceptions appear to be children of diplomats.)
Now it’s very rare to see Americans grumbling about the transmission of citizenship via jus sanguinis (blood). And that’s a bit odd when you think about it because it’s a status that is conferred , not because of anything the child did, but because he had a least one parent with that status. Sounds strangely medieval, doesn’t it? A little like saying that just because your father (or mother) was a peasant (or a lord), you get to be one too. How to square that with modern notions of democracy and voluntary participation in a political community? I don’t think you can – this is citizenship as a kind of aristocracy since it has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with inherited status. Not to mention that this form of citizenship transmission leads to some very strange situations. For example, the child of an American citizen born abroad is usually granted U.S. citizenship no questions asked even if that child never sets one foot in the U.S. for his entire life while resident aliens actually living in the U.S. who (one assumes) are delighted to be there have to jump through all sorts of hoops to be naturalized and may still suffer discrimination in the U.S. on the basis of their origins.
The other method of citizenship transmission, jus soli (place of birth), is much more controversial in the U.S. The media is filled with politicians railing against those “anchor babies” whose mothers allegedly slip over the border to give birth just so their children can be U.S. citizens. There is a great deal of righteous indignation about this and a modest amount of energy expended to stop it. However, the problem (and I question whether it really is one) of the “illegals” sneaking over the border to give birth is nothing compared to the millions of tourists, legal immigrants and visa holders who come to the U.S. every year to live and work and who sometimes do a very human thing while they are in the country: have children. Many of them merrily go on their way after a few years (back to the home country or to a third country) either not knowing that their children are American citizens or thinking that this citizenship is a status that goes away if it’s not activated. Not true. U.S. citizenship laws are strictly “opt-out” – one is an American citizen until one goes down in person to the local U.S. Embassy and renounces. This involves filling out forms and paying a 450 USD fee. It may even involve filing 5 years worth of back tax returns and FBAR’s. This is true even if the person in question was born in the U.S., left with his parents as an infant, and has spent the past 30 years thinking he (or she) is exclusively French, German, Chinese, or Indonesian. Contrary to what the citizens of the “greatest nation on earth” might think, not everyone is happy to wake up one day and discover that he or she is a citizen of said nation. Some are even downright angry about it especially when the U.S. attempts to assert its sovereignty over their persons.
Welcome to the world of the “Accidental Americans.” These are people who, through no fault or action of their own (they didn’t choose their parents or where they were born) are considered to be U.S. citizens by the U.S. government and are flabbergasted when agents of said government reach out and hold them to the obligations associated with that citizenship. “But, but, but,” you may sputtering at this point, “They can’t do that! I’m French (or British or Chinese or German).” Oh yes they can, mes amis, and they do. The consequences of this “involuntary citizenship” can range from being refused entry into the U.S. (even just to make a connection to a third country) without a U.S. passport to being chased down by the American “fisc” for tax returns and reports on their local bank accounts. The first can be dealt with rather easily – just don’t travel anywhere near the U.S. The second is a little harder to avoid these days since five governments in Europe (others to follow) have agreed to turn over information about these people to the U.S. government. Yes, this means that European governments will be denouncing their own citizens (duals, mind you, who may not even be aware they are Americans). This is going to be interesting to watch.
A surprising number of people are at risk here including some very high profile Europeans. This brings us to the case of one Boris Johnson, Lord Mayor of London. Up until fairly recently Mr. Johnson was an American citizen because he was born in New York, USA, something he was vaguely aware of but didn’t really pay much attention to until this event in 2006:
“Last Sunday lunchtime we were boarding a flight to Mexico, via Houston, Texas, and we presented six valid British passports. As soon as the Continental Airlines security guy saw my passport, he shook his head. ‘Were you born in New York?’ he asked. ‘Have you ever carried an American passport?’
Yes, I said, but it had long since expired. ‘I am afraid we have a problem,’ he said. ‘The US Immigration say you have to travel on an American passport if you want to enter the United States.’ B-but I’m British, I said, and my children chorused their agreement. Had the guy stuck around a moment longer, I would have told him how jolly British I was — but luckily for him he’d gone off in search of reinforcements.
When the ranking officer arrived, the story was the same. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but you’ll have to go to the US Embassy tomorrow morning and get a new American passport.’ But I don’t want an American passport, I said, inspiration striking me. I tell you what: I renounce my American citizenship. I disclaim it. I discard it.
‘That’s not good enough, sir,’ he said. ‘I need some official document saying that you are no longer American…’
You can read the entire story here but the end result of this was, faced with this assertion of U.S. sovereignty over his person, Mr. Johnson decided that it simply wasn’t worth it and he renounced. In his words, “That’s it. Entre nous c’est terminé. After 42 happy years I am getting a divorce from America.”
Is Boris Johnson’s case really that unusual? Not at all. Look, in addition to the millions of tourists and legal residents in the U.S. some of whom will have children there during their stay, there are 6-7 million Americans abroad and many of them have children too (most of their children are also citizens of their country of residence) who are considered to be U.S. citizens by the U.S. and are supposed to be holding U.S. passports and paying U.S. taxes. Failure to do this means that these people are technically lawbreakers and tax evaders in the eyes of the U.S. government. It really is that simple.
Another example close to my heart. Would any French person in the audience like to tell me where Anne Sinclair (famous French celebrity and Dominique Straus-Kahn’s wife) was born? If you answered, “New York, USA,” you win the prize. And that makes Anne Sinclair and her children as American as apple pie and baseball. If events had gone differently and DSK had won the 2012 French presidential election, France would have had its very own Franco-American First Lady.
Alas, it was not to be. 🙂
@all- consider the situation of Egypt’s new President, Mohamed Morsi. He studied and worked in the U.S. for at least five years, which is three years short of the 8 that is required to receive the title of U.S. person. The thing though is that two of his five children were born in the States and are therefore U.S. citizens. I wonder how this will affect his ability to invest for his children’s education? Will two of his children actually be worse off than their other three sibilngs since saving for their education will be ruled by IRS regulations? Will these two U.S. children be inferior members of their own family and national society?
What an irony for your father to be President of a nation in which you don’t get to enjoy its full rights. Your father’s office can protect you from suicide bombers, poor education, poor medical care etc. but it won’t protect you from U.S. extraterritorial law. How ironic.
*@ Just Me: Yes, just imagine the noise if Boris (Mayor of London, not Lord Mayor of London) had been subject to the exit tax! Lucky Boris, indeed; maybe not so lucky for the rest of us, who need some high-profile cases to illustrate just how evil the exit tax really is.
@bubblebustin, Good question. I noticed on Wikipedia he is still listed as a dual. Anyone have more info?
@recalcitrantexpat
Well, I notice that the new President has a twitter account in English, so I tweeted him
He is @PresMorsyEgypt
https://twitter.com/FATCA_Fallout/status/219108624176386049
I sent him a link to your comment!!! 🙂
From what I know, a person born on foreign soil who received US citizenship from a parent cannot ‘transmit’ citizenship onto his/her offspring.
*I am happy to report I entered the U.S. last week on my Canadian passport, no questions asked. (I do have to admit that I was prepared for a fight!) It was a beautiful feeling to be able to use my Canadian passport in the manner I’ve been using it for travelling the rest of the world. I still want a “divorce” from the U.S., for the record–won’t happen until my taxes can be sorted out (which will be never since I can’t afford to).
*@bubblebustin, you are correct unless the US citizen born abroad relocates to live in the US for the minimum time requred to qualify to pass citizenship to children born abroad later, after leaving the US to return abroad.
*Laura Secord
This is very helpful! Did you fly? and from where?
@Roger Conklin:
On my last visit to the US (April) they almost wouldn’t let me in on my ESTA visa and threatened to send me back to Switzerland (35 year old minor drug conviction). After the good-cop bad-cop routine, they gave me a one time visa. When I checked into the airport on my return flight the check in agent tore out the taped on certificate that immigration had put in the back of my passport when they detained me when I entered 2 week before. I asked the Swiss airlines check-in agent if I could keep the certificate. He said “no”, that they had to be turned back into immigration. So the airlines are already complicit in this visa/passport blackmail-the-sheeple scheme.
@All: Yes Romney is an unknown, and the chances are not good that he would reverse the trend against Expats. But if one were so foolish as to believe his spiel, he would know that Romney considers himself a “pragmatic businessman” and would therefor realize that punishing expats serves the country no service. But the real issue is Obama, who he has in his cabinet, who his czars are, and who his soul mate is (Jarret). If hope and change were anything more than campaign lies, then this accidental American issue would be a no brainer for him in an election year. Obama, not Romney, could easily end this now. Instead what do we have? Why are all you Canuck’s screaming bloody murder now? You hollered at Bush, but not for this, you guys bought into Obama’s hope and change… Obviously something has changed, and one thing is clear, Obama and his handlers don’t give a shit about you. So what exactly is their agenda. Does Obama have a history of race baiting for political gain. Does a bear shit in the woods? Has not his regime been characterized by rewarding his supporters while punishing his detractors?
My real point is that what expats are now suffering is just pin prick compared to whats coming. Like the losses of a battalion at the outbreak of WWI, it’s not about the battalion. All the sociopaths in charge have their own agendas and a lot of innocent people are going to get stomped on. Get used to it slave.
*@ConfederateH, sounds like your last visit to the US was not very pleasant. With everything on electronic records todahy every little blot in your record since the beginning of time is now in Immigration records. Things that had been long forgotton have been resurrected. This is icreasingly true in other countries as well.
Even if you get stopped for a minor traffic violation the officer now checks his in-car computer and it is all there. The son of a friend of mine got stopped and the record revaled an outstanding warrant for arrest for having forged a check for $137 some 35 years ago.He was taken before a judge and not released until it was paid plus court costs. It was pay or go to jail.
I think the airline is required to lift and return the certificate in your passport when you leave the US. In some countries when you exit you have to be cleared by an Imigration officer, but in the US that responsibility is delegated to the airline you use to depart the country.
I am personally concerned that Romney has shown no indication of reversing any of this unreasonable treatment of expatriates. He has not commented on it at all that I am aware of.
The story of Confederate H should offer no reassurance at all to people who think their pasts – especially those “ancient” lapsed US passports – will not be showing up in their border computer profiles.
Aggressive testers may find that the beast only seems to be asleep. The passport hook seems very likely to get sharper and sharper as time goes on. Especially if/when the United States has to start dealing seriously with capital flight.
@usxcanada- It will be much too late when it finally gets to the point of the U.S. acknowledging the reality of capital flight. They may be able to impliment tools that will keep current capital bound to their country but that won’t do anything about the real disaster which will be the lack of foreign capital inflows. Just as the current Euro crisis was already outlined long before the creation of the Euro, so it is also with the negative consequences of FATCA and citizenship based taxation.
The train wreck of capital fleeing U.S. shores has already been fortold. Once the wreck actually happens there will be nothing that the smug imperialists in Washington will be able to do to right their economic ship. This looming economic conflagration, once it takes hold, will make the recession of 2008 pale in comparison. Just when America needs capital and loans the most it will find the purses of the world closed. The U.S. will then have to default on its debts. No one will be able to step in and rescue it because no country of combination of countries will be able to muster the funds.
@Recalitrantexpat: I think the question is “has the US become omnipotent”? By the “US” I mean whatever groups are calling the shots in the US because it certainly isn’t the voters, and as we have seen by the latest Supreme Court, it isn’t the constitution.
My answer to the question I posed is yes, the US government thinks that it is omnipotent.
– They control the worlds computer network
– They control the worlds electronic money transfer system (swift)
– They control the seas, the skies and space.
– They have the worlds reserve currency.
– The FED is the worlds central bank, even more than BIS
– Therefore the FED has Europe by the balls
– They are making much progress forcing their tax laws on the rest of the world.
– They have already forced their Anti-Money Laundering on the rest of the world
– They forced nearly every country on the planet to do their bidding in the war on terror.
– They have a network of drone bases spanning the entire globe and maintain a kill list of those who might threaten their power
This Obamacare judgement was a major setback in the fight for our remaining freedoms. This is far worse than December 1941 because it is the US government that just bombed Pearl Harbor.
Here is a great Financial Sense News Hour interview on Taxmegaddon.
Funnily enough, Boris Johnson was on Letterman a few weeks ago. He doesn’t mention his alleged renunciation at all. He just says he is “jointly” an American (around 3:30) and later on that he’s eligible to be president.
I see Boris Johnson announced on his own that he is ending his US citizenship but he would still be a US citizen until he goes through the normal renunciation channels. So is he filing his FBAR forms? What about Anne Sinclair? Does she file with the IRS every year?
@Liam, I wonder if he files FBAR. He could probably get in really big trouble if he doesn’t also report the accounts of the city of London on which he has signing authority. Imagine what the highest balance could be for the city. The 383% FBAR fine could actually bankrupt Johnson.
Anne Sinclair in the news today, doesn’t seem to talk about her issues of being a US expat:
http://www.leparisien.fr/actualite-people-medias/anne-sinclair-je-vais-tres-bien-merci-31-08-2012-2144524.php
Apparently one of her daughters lives in the New York. She is actively engaged in covering the US election as the editor of Huffington Post France.
News Dispatch:
Barack Obama meets Bhumibol Adulyadej, King of Thailand, an accidental American and a tax cheat:
http://englishnews.mcot.net/site/content?id=50a8d1ab150ba0c048000083
Although the purpose of Barack Obama’s trip to Thailand is not known, some have speculated that he was there to discuss the IRS’ OVDI program and how it would apply to the Thai king. Bhumibol Adulyadej, by virtue of his birth in Massachusetts, is a US citizen under US jus soli citizenship law. The Thai king is considered to be the wealthiest monarch in the world with an estimated net worth of $30 billion, according to Forbes. Although the US IRS would like to bring his majesty to justice, who is clearly a tax cheat under US citizenship-based tax laws, it has shown restraint to-date at the request of the State Department as well as the IRS’ concern for its agents to avoid violating the Thai èse majesté laws. 🙂
@innocente;
Thanks for that. I’m wondering about the effects of compiling a list of significant, noteworthy, or wealthy politicians, political figures, people in the news, who were born in the US, or inherited status from a US status parent. What would happen if we were to assert that the US has to treat the King of Thailand the same as a Canadian Grandma? Or, vice versa? If we issued one weekly, that might catch popular news media attention.
After all, the Thai King is also going to leave a ‘foreign estate’ – which should require lots of 3520/A and similar forms.
Diplomatic nightmare in waiting – so how do they explain letting him not file?
*@Innocente and @Badger, I suspect that there will always be one rule for the little man and another for the very rich and important. Otherwise, it could cause a diplomatic incident…same reason why I am sure they’ll never go after Boris.
I found this (only partial) list of US politicians born outside the US – but don’t know any practical way of doing the same for those of other countries – born IN the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign-born_United_States_politicians
@monalisa, but it would be fun to keep publicizing the list to embarass the US. Perhaps we could start a petition on the White House site :
We petition the US government to apply US citizenship-based taxation on every person abroad, including the King of Thailand, Boris Johnson Mayor of London, etc etc.
we compile the biggest list we can of the wealthy, the powerful and the politically significant, and see how many signatures we can get! I bet homelanders would go for that too.
Or what about some letters to the State Department and Obama, expressing concern that the King of Thailand has not been reporting and paying his fair share of US taxes?
Also asking if FATCA will apply to him?
*@badger
There are certain persons born in the US to foreign heads of state and some others who not US citizens.. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120720020835AA0MHNB.
This exclusion would not deprive foreign government officials of US citizenship if they were born in the US to an “ordinary” foreign citizen parent.
The statement in item 2 is, however more than a little confusing in that it would lead you to conclude that all persons born in the US to foreign citizen parents are not US citizens. If this is really true, then why is the IRS chasing down Canadians who were born in the US to Canadian citizen parents?
At least we know that one US-born person was at that meeting
I wonder if Barack bowed again. Otherwise, if you are not afraid of any Thai self-nominated hit squad, go ahead and place the information here—where the pictures were first posted————https://www.facebook.com/infodivohm