This just popped up on Google: Bill Hinchberger, an American journalist living in France, is looking for people like us. You can view the details in his post on LinkedIn, even if you don’t have an account there. Update: as pointed out below by swisspinoy, the question seems to have disappeared from LinkedIn. Instead if you want further details, please refer to this post on the American Citizens Abroad Facebook page. Update 2: Now his LinkedIn post is back again.
Mr. Hinchberger’s website hasn’t been updated in a while, so I’m not sure if the email listed there is still valid, but you can contact him through his LinkedIn page, Twitter (@hinchberger), or Facebook.
Mr. Hinchberger himself has extensive international experience:
Bill Hinchberger is a freelance writer and the principal of Hinchberger Consulting, with offices in France and Brazil. He is also the founding editor of BrazilMax.com, a travel portal about South America’s largest country, and the host of BrazilMax Radio, an online radio program. Previously he worked as a foreign correspondent for The Financial Times and Business Week, as a contributing editor for Institutional Investor, and as director of communications and external relations for the World Water Council.
He served four years as president of the São Paulo Foreign Correspondents Association and has contributed to a broad range of publications, including ARTnews, Metropolis, National Wildlife, Science, The Lancet and The Nation. Hinchberger Consulting offers services to meet the communications and editorial needs of international organizations, NGOs and companies. These include conference reporting, production of case studies of success, media strategy development and training. In 2009 assignments took Hinchberger beyond Brazil and France to Argentina, Belgium, India, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.
He holds a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in Latin American Studies, both from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a participant in National Geographic’s Destination Stewardship Survey and a member of the editorial board of Mercado Ético (Ethical Markets), a multimedia project about sustainable development in Brazil.
Hopefully his piece will bring some balance and a fresh perspective to a debate which is presently dominated by Homelanders who refuse to listen to ordinary emigrants and automatically ascribe nefarious motives to all renunciants.
And seriously, what’s with the disappearing, reappearing question? Did some overzealous Homeland moderator find the question offensive and have to be convinced to let it through?
Sounds like a person well-qualified to write on this subject.
The Wikipedia website on citzenship renunciation contains this statement: In 1996, the U.S. changed its immigration law to include a provision to “name and shame” renunciants.[25] The Department of the Treasury became obligated to publish quarterly in the Federal Register the names of those citizens who renounce their citizenship. Only the names are published, but by counting the number of names in each list, media organizations are able to infer the number of renunciants each quarter. The 1996 law included a provision to bar entry to any individual “who officially renounces United States citizenship and who is determined by the Attorney General to have renounced United States citizenship for the purpose of avoiding taxation by the United States.”[25] There is no known case of this provision, known as the Reed Amendment, having ever been enforced.”
However, there is ample evidence that the lists being published by the Treasury Department do not, by a long shot, include all of the names of US citizens who have renounced their citizenship. The suspicion is, but I cannot confirm whether it is true or not, is that the published list only contains the names of persons whose assets and/or income meet the threshhold level at which they must pay an Exit tax. It would appear, from information reported to ACA – American Citizens Abroad by middle class citizens who have renounced their US citizenship, that their names have never been included in these published lists.
I am aware that Andy Sundberg, founder of ACA who passed away in September of this year had been trying to obtain infromation fron the State Department, which of course has knowledge of all renunciations because it issues the Certificates of Loss of Natioality, on the total numbers of US citizenship renunciaitons for well over a year, but never received a reply in spite of numerous follow up attempts.
So finding the names of those who have renounced is not an easy task.
ACA posted these contacts for Mr Hinchberger on their Facebook page:
Please contact Bill directly either via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/bill.hinchberger), BrazilMax.com (a website that I own and operate: http://www.brazilmax.com/brazilmax.cfm/id/5), LinkedIn (http://fr.linkedin.com/in/brazilmax), or Twitter (@hinchberger). Many thanks.
*His post on LinkedIn, is no longer available.
I wonder if the Federal Registry reports only renouncers, and not relinquishers.
It’s very unclear what the information in the Federal Register actually is, or means. Andrew Michel has wrestled with the question, and come up more frustrated than not: see
http://intltax.typepad.com/intltax_blog/number-of-expatriates/
http://intltax.typepad.com/intltax_blog/2011/12/expatriate-graph-re-clarified.html
http://intltax.typepad.com/intltax_blog/2011/06/clarification-of-expatriate-graph.html
@CHF forever: I don’t think the method of giving up citizenship makes a difference. 26 USC § 6038G doesn’t make any distinction between renunciation and relinquishment, and in the list there’s definitely some people who relinquished not renounced, like Grenada’s ex-Prime Minister Keith Mitchell.
http://www.grenadianconnection.com/Grenada/ViewNews.asp?NID=6311&CID=15008&TC=710&EP=571&yr=2008&Cat=0000
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2002/03/13/02-6084/quarterly-publication-of-individuals-who-have-chosen-to-expatriate-as-required-by-section-6039gm