Since Timothy Geithner is, as usual, breaking the law with regards to his obligation to publish the names of all persons losing U.S. citizenship within the meaning of Section 877(a) or 877A by 30 days after the end of the quarter, friends of Isaac Brock who are interested in the number of U.S. Persons abroad cutting off the Homeland’s yoke have to look to other sources of data.
As I discovered recently, the U.S.’ Federal Bureau of Investigation publishes a periodic report entitled “Active Records in the NICS Index”. It breaks down the numbers of different types of records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”) on persons who are disallowed from purchasing firearms under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. One of the types of records: persons who renounced (but not relinquished) U.S. citizenship.
Origins of the system
First, an odd aside about the Brady Act itself: Brady is not the name of the sponsor, but of a Reagan aide who was shot in the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. Who exactly is the sponsor, you might ask? A quick trip to THOMAS reveals the answer: then-Representative Chuck Schumer of Ex-PATRIOT Act infamy. Apparently his hatred of people who dare exercise their human right to emigrate and renounce citizenship has longer and deeper roots than we thought, and wasn’t just a bit of instant outrage he summoned up to get his mug in front of a television camera.
NICS was created in 1998, but for the first decade of its existence the FBI only provided reports on its number of records on an annual basis. The report for 1998/99 does not contain statistics on the number of records at all. In 2000, the first year for which statistics were given, NICS had 12,603 records of persons who had renounced citizenship; this number did not move at all for five years. It’s not quite clear how the FBI “bootstrapped” NICS’ list of renunciants. I don’t imagine State would have been too happy with the demand to sort all the Certificates of Loss of Nationality since the beginning of time into piles of relinquishers and renunciants and then hand over the latter; their legal position in forwarding pre-HIPAA CLNs to anyone is rather shaky; and the FBI probably did not start counting from zero and then get twelve thousand renunciations in those three years in the 1990s long before the U.S. started waging the FBAR war against its own diaspora.
Indeed, the lack of updates to the number of renunciants in the first seven years of NICS’ existence smells like fallout from an inter-agency turf war. And the incompleteness of the records appears to be an ongoing issue; just two weeks ago, President Obama ordered the Department of Justice to “issue guidance to agencies regarding the identification and sharing of relevant Federal records and their submission to the NICS”, and the DOJ quickly jumped to comply, producing draft guidance in less than a week.
Numbers include only renunciants, not relinquishers
Given the law’s use of the term “renounce citizenship”, just like the Reed Amendment, it is unclear whether Schumer intended it to include all persons losing U.S. citizenship, or only those who explicitly renounced under INA 349(a)(5) and (6) but not those who committed a relinquishing act under other subparagraphs of INA 349(a). However, in 1997 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms finally got around to publishing the NICS regulations, “Definitions for the Categories of Persons Prohibited From Receiving Firearms”, which clearly indicate that they interpret the law to require only the inclusion of renunciants, not of relinquishers.
Persons Who Have Renounced Their United States Citizenship
As proposed in Notice No. 839, the term “renounced U.S. citizenship” is defined as follows:
Renounced U.S. citizenship. A person has renounced his U.S. citizenship if the person, having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced citizenship either—
(a) Before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state pursuant to 8 U.S.C. 1481(a) (5) and (6); or
(b) Before an officer designated by the Attorney General when the United States is in a state of warTwo Federal agencies commented on ATF’s proposed definition, the Office of Passport Policy and Advisory Services (Department of State) and the Office of Policy Development (DOJ). The Office of Passport Policy and Advisory Services commented that the definition should be written to exclude renunciations that have been reversed on administrative or judicial appeals and renunciations by persons who subsequently regain citizenship through naturalization. ATF agrees that a reversal of a renunciation would remove the person’s Federal firearms disabilities. This is consistent with the removal of disabilities resulting from a felony conviction that has been reversed on appeal. Therefore, the definition will include an exception for reversed renunciations.
On the other hand, a person who has renounced his or her citizenship and has subsequently regained citizenship through naturalization would remain under firearms disabilities. Section 922(g)(7) of the Act makes it unlawful for any person “who has renounced his citizenship” to possess firearms and there is no exception for subsequent naturalization. A similarly worded disability was addressed by the Supreme Court in Dickerson v. New Banner, 460 U.S. 103, 116 (1983), where the Supreme Court held that a person who “has been” committed to a mental institution, but later cured and released, continues to have firearms disabilities.
That means that numbers derived from NICS are strictly smaller than the total number of people giving up U.S. citizenship, and should be (but clearly are not) smaller than the numbers of people whose names are published in the Federal Register.
Strangeness in the numbers
Even once the updates to the numbers begin, the usual caveats apply: it is almost entirely opaque how the FBI gets its information and how it interprets the law requiring inclusion in NICS. We know from the Foreign Affairs Manual that the Department of State forwards CLNs to the FBI, but we have no idea whether they provide all CLNs every and let the FBI sort them, or withhold CLNs either because the individuals are relinquishers, or for diplomatic or other reasons. This could plausibly occur, for example, in the case of accidental Americans who renounce to take a consular position in the U.S. representing a foreign country, who are allowed to purchase firearms regardless of any U.S. disqualification as long as it is part of their official duties — and it may occur for other unknown reasons as well.
These NICS numbers have some extremely odd characteristics. They are updated at different intervals than the Federal Register list, of course. They show trickles of increases followed by huge jumps. In some months, they even decrease. The frequency with which State provides CLNs to the FBI is not known either; State may be “batching” them, just like some consulates in Canada seem to do in their interactions with Washington. Overall the NICS numbers do not agree with the FR whatsoever. Quarters which show huge leaps in the NICS number show little movement at all in the FR list, and vice versa. It might make sense for the NICS number to be smaller than the FR number, but certainly not larger, given that the FR includes a wider class of persons: not just renunciants, but relinquishers and long-term permanent residents as well.
The NICS numbers used to be provided only annually. In mid-2010, they seem to have begun reporting them on a monthly basis, but I could not find the reports for two months: May 2012 and September 2012. By a strange coincidence, those reports are right in the middle of periods which show the largest increases in the total number of renunciant records. Again, I have no idea what these huge jumps mean: did State rush their way through a huge backlog, with all the inevitable errors that probably entailed? Had they been withholding CLNs deliberately but then decided to stop? Did they temporarily cease withholding of CLNs but then started it up again?
Whatever it all means, it adds up to yet another piece of evidence: someone’s numbers are wrong, whether due to incompetence or a deliberate attempt to hide the truth. So, here’s the data. The “increase” column refers to the change in the data since the issuance of the previous report; this means if the previous period’s report was missing, the “increase” number covers two or more months.
Annual/Semi-annual reports: 2000 to 2009
| Date | Total records | Increase | Federal Register | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Dec. 2000 | 12,603 | N/A | 431 | |
| 31 Dec. 2001 | No report issued | 491 | ||
| 31 Dec. 2002 | 12,603 | 0 | 503 | |
| 31 Dec. 2003 | No report issued | 571 | ||
| 31 Dec. 2004 | 12,603 | 0 | 631 | |
| 31 Dec. 2005 | 12,603 | 0 | 762 | |
| 31 Dec. 2006 | 12,651 | 48 | 278 | |
| 31 Dec. 2007 | 12,968 | 317 | 470 | |
| 31 Dec. 2008 | 13,623 | 655 | 231 | |
| 31 Dec. 2009 | 14,337 | 714 | 742 | |
Monthly reports: August through December 2010
| Date | Total records | Increase |
|---|---|---|
| 31 August 2010 | 15,037 | 700 |
| 30 September 2010 | 15,184 | 147 |
| 31 October 2010 | 15,172 | -12 |
| 30 November 2010 | Report missing | |
| 31 December 2010 | 15,346 | 174 |
| NICS total increase for 2010 | 1,009 | |
| Federal Register number for 2010 | 1,534 | |
Monthly reports: 2011
| Date | Total records | Increase |
|---|---|---|
| 31 January 2011 | Report missing | |
| 28 February 2011 | Report missing | |
| 31 March 2011 | Report missing | |
| 30 April 2011 | 15,387 | 41 |
| 31 May 2011* | 15,485 | 98 |
| 30 June 2011* | 15,616 | 129 |
| 31 July 2011* | 15,705 | 89 |
| 31 August 2011 | 15,759 | 54 |
| 30 September 2011 | 15,812 | 53 |
| 31 October 2011 | 15,930 | 118 |
| 30 November 2011* | 15,970 | 40 |
| 31 December 2011 | 16,004 | 34 |
| NICS total increase for 2011 | 658 | |
| Federal Register number for 2011 | 1,781 | |
Monthly reports: 2012
| Date | Total records | Increase | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31 January 2012* | 16,269 | 265 | |
| 29 February 2012* | 16,367 | 98 | |
| 31 March 2012 | 16,458 | 89 | |
| 30 April 2012* | 16,662 | 204 | |
| 31 May 2012 | Report missing | ||
| 30 June 2012* | 17,166 | 504 | |
| 31 July 2012 | 17,188 | 22 | |
| 31 August 2012 | 17,337 | 149 | |
| 30 September 2012 | 17,451 | 114 | |
| 31 October 2012* | 20,557 | 3,106 | |
| 30 November 2012* | 20,654 | 97 | |
| 31 December 2012 | 20,654 | 0 | |
| NICS total increase for 2012 | 4,385 | ||
| Federal Register number (Q1–3 2012 only) |
887 | ||
As mentioned above, we do not yet have the total Federal Register number for 2012 because of Treasury’s illegal delay in releasing the required report. The FBI manages to release their statistics a few days after the close of every month; you have to wonder what could possibly be taking Treasury so long that they publish their list as late as two months after the end of a given quarter. Maybe they’re struggling to include the names of those three thousand renunciants from September and October?
Also worth noting: even if we adopt the extremely conservative assumption that the whole 3,220 increase is some kind of error and remove it from the total, the number of renunciants recorded by NICS in the first eight months of 2012 is still greater than the number of renunciants, relinquishers, and former green card holders published by the Federal Register during the same period.
Monthly reports: 2013
| Date | Total records | Increase |
|---|---|---|
| 31 January 2013* | 20,830 | 176 |
One other minor figure, provided mainly for its entertainment value: out of all those 20,830 people who renounced U.S. citizenship, NICS only caught 57 of them attempting to purchase firearms from 30 November 1998 up to 31 January 2013.
Edit: The FBI has the nasty habit of deleting old reports from their website. Some have been captured by the good folks at the Internet Archive; in cases where they were, I’ve updated the links. The links that were not captured are now broken; I have marked those with an asterisk.
I dread to start the ordeal of filling my Income Tax for 2012 Even paying 1000 dollars to a CPA in NY there is a lot of work getting the data and handling the forms. All because after working 30 years in the US I decided to move back to my country of origin. I am now in a failing health and may not be able to do it. I fear for my family in case they have to get into this. I always thought that being an American I was always protected from discrimination. I was wrong.
@Thatisme, I’m also dreading having to get everything organized to file, along with the fee running at around $2500. It’s burdensome. Sen. Schumer is going to be furious about the even higher numbers actually renouncing than is officially reported; if the numbers surge even higher, it seems inevitable that they’ll try to pass harsher laws or start enforcing the Reed Amendment to deter people from taking the ‘nuclear’ option.
@Thatisme & @monalisa1776, in my view, the US government should pay me mega bucks for being granted by me the honor of filing 2012 Swiss taxes for me, given that such is none of their business and that they have better things to do with their spare time and money than to be wasting it on irrelevant matters beyond US borders.
@Eric, great find! It looks like the FBI is more reliable than the Treasury on issues beyond US borders.
I don\t understand the title of this article: “3000 in Sept and Oct” . WHereas the number of Total records in the table is 20,000.
Excellent and fascinating analysis, Eric. Well done!
So in 2012 at least nearly 4400 people renounced their US citizenship. Who knows how many people got CLNs for relinquishment, many dating back several decades? Arguably, given the latter actually made their decision to sever US ties long ago and long before FATCA and FBAR hit the news, their decisions to relinquish aren’t strictly related to the latter, although their realization that to protect themselves they’d better get the piece of paper they never knew about until now, certainly IS related to the latter. Making an heroic leap in statistical logic and extrapolating from the small and non-random sample we have on the Brock R&R data base, I’d guess that in reality at least 6500 CLNs were issued in 2012, possibly more. Way more than we’re ever likely to see on the IRS list, for whatever reasons.
Given the population of the US, for the IRS to be going after those 4400 folks, never mind relinquishers where for the most part they have dubious if any legal grounds for doing so, is a bit like swatting gnats. I can’t imagine many American homelanders getting all hot and bothered about those numbers, certainly not enough for a significant number of them to be lobbying against FATCA, FBAR or even citizen-based taxation. But then, my own approach to this situation all along has been to focus lobbying on domestic (in my case, Canadian) politicians to stand up for our sovereignty and our citizens, and to protect my wife from this mess. I have never had any faith in the value of trying to lobby ACA, Dems Abroad, Republicans Abroad, never mind US politicians — they’re not my people (and haven’t been emotionally since 1968 and legally since 1975) and I have and want nothing to do with them. But that’s me, and I know it isn’t everyone on this website. However, FWIW if anything, my advice to everyone is look to yourselves and your real country, and don’t have any faith at all in the US doing anything nice for you — it will never happen IMO. I wish I were wrong, but I’m 99.99% certain I’m not.
@Mark Twain – 20,000 is the number of records they have ever imported into NICS since they started maintaining it in 1998. So for example, the “total” at the end of 2011 was about 16,000, and the total at the end of 2012 was about 20,000, meaning the FBI received ~4,000 CLNs and added them to the system during 2012 (that’s what the “increase” column is for).
The 20,000 may be equal to “the number of people who have renounced since 1998”, but I’m not sure about that — the FBI seem to have been very lax about updating the records of renunciants during the first decade or so of NICS’ existence, so the actual number is probably more than 20,000.
The ironic part is that this report shows just how many the quarterly treasury list of shame is not reporting. Why are so many missing from it?
Whatever the numbers, it is interesting to know that once my adult children and I succeed in renouncing the millstone of US citizenship, we will be entered on the “National Instant Criminal Background Check System” where we will be considered somehow to be in a category similar to convicted felons and people admitted to mental institutions.
Even if the Federal Register number only increases to 3,000 for 2012 from the previous 1,780 or so in 2011, it will be newsworthy. People getting rid of US citizenship for whatever reason is a politically sensitive issue.
Perhaps the numbers for Q4 2012 have not yet been released because nobody has been able to figure out how to spin the announcement.
This is reminiscent of when the FED stopped publishing the numbers for M3 back in 2006. The official line was that M3 was no longer considered important. However, at least some people believe it was because M3 became so high that the FED simply wanted to avoid having to explain it.
Economist (2006): “Central banks, Running on M3 – ignore money at your peril”
http://www.economist.com/node/5661583
From the article:
“Today, America’s Federal Reserve barely glances at money. Indeed, from this week it will stop publishing M3, its broadest measure of money. The Fed claims that M3 does not convey any extra information about the economy that is not already embodied in the narrower M2 measure, so it is not worth the cost of collecting it.”
“It is true that the two Ms move in step for much of the time, but there have been big divergences. During the late 1990s equity bubble, for example, M3 grew faster; over the past year, M3 has grown nearly twice as fast as M2. So it looks odd to claim that M3 does not tell us anything different. The Fed is really saying that it doesn’t believe money matters.”
I suspect there is a timing difference in the receipt of CLNs between the State Department and the FBI; FBI probably received a lot of 2010 and 2011 CLNs late and probably a lot of 2012 CLNs early. I don’t think back dated relinquished CLNs were received, since the FBI is only interested in renunciation CLNs.
In any event, I don’t think Schumer’s babbling will accomplish a thing (the so-called Ex-PATRIOT Act went nowhere). Any attempt to put harsh limits on expatriation could give rise to constitutional, particularly the 8th and 14th amendments, and human rights issues that will become more transparent and will be discussed a lot more openly.
Essentially, the trend will continue and the ultimate result will have to be a forced reform of the US Tax Code, because there is no other option.
Germany in the early 1930s pursued a policy of ideologically and racially “purging” its academic elite (which was probably the most talented in the world before the Nazi Party came to power), with no regard or thought to the consequences it would have for the future. The result? A whole generation of scientists vanished (in 1950s and 1960s Germany, there were almost no physicists born between 1910 and 1930), pretty much all those that survived ended up benefitting other nations (US).
A whole generation of US expats will be lost and the talent will go to other nations.
@ Schubert1975
I completely agree with you. I don’t believe the USA will straighten up and fly right (at least not until its FATCA bombs have done a heckuva lot of damage at home and abroad) so I can only hope the Canadian government will come up with some defense against this latest of US incursions into our sovereign financial space. I’m keeping my anti-FATCA efforts directed at the Canadian government and the Canadian media. (Besides, Americans are just going to dismiss anything coming from a Canadian presumed to be living in an igloo.)
@ John Brown
Good comparison to the nefarious dumping of the M3 stats which had become a very inconvenient truth for the US government. Thank goodness shadowstats.com is still around to assemble the real statistics.
Eric – Thanks for an outstanding piece of digging and analysis. A massive and clumsy entity, like the bloatUS that claws away at its own entrails, must eventually disgorge the numerical quantity of runoffed citizens that it would so dearly love to retain secreted within its greedy belly. Data wants to be free. As do the people who sometimes become the data!
Schubert1975 – Always a delight to see the core three-word usx message of Sauve qui peut out there in whatever form, especially a well-stated one.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sauve_qui_peut
“sauve qui peut”
“(archaic, poetic or literary) every man for himself”
There may be several different paths and strategies to resistance that are complementary – inside and outside the US. If we do not all work together to find some way against FATCA and US extraterritorial citizenship imposed arrogance, many of those unable to renounce or relinquish will be left vulnerable. I hope that those in Canada, and elsewhere, who are or who can see their way to getting free will work to prevent the FATCA ‘devil take(ing) the hindmost’. Particularly on behalf of those who will never be allowed to renounce – due to incapacity, and those who would be ruined if they came forward.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/358400.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/every-man-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost
“The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists “Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost” as an ‘early 16th century’ proverb.”
“every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost”. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford University Press. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/every%2Bman%2Bfor%2Bhimself%2Band%2Bthe%2Bdevil%2Btake%2Bthe%2Bhindmost___2 (accessed February 09, 2013
I don’t think that Chuck Schumer was thinking about former US citizens when he introduced the Brady Act. This law creates a database of people who can’t buy a gun in the US, but it simply reflects the various categories of people already prohibited from buying a gun under other laws. The law that actually prohibits former US citizens from buying guns is the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, passed in 1986.
However, since 1998, with a few exceptions, foreigners who are not legal immigrants (green card holders) cannot buy a gun in the US. This not only prohibits illegal immigrants, but also foreigners legally in the US like tourists and students (the only exceptions are diplomats, foreign police officers, and for hunting or sporting purposes). I’m surprised that 57 people were denied a gun because of having renounced US citizenship, because they would be denied a gun for being foreigners anyway. Were they immigrants or one of the exceptions?
I can understand that the US may want to prohibit nonresident foreigners from buying guns because it has no background information about them, but I don’t really understand the reasoning for specifically prohibiting former citizens. Do they think that renouncing citizenship is some kind of moral transgression, which indicates that the person may have criminal tendencies?
Shadow Raider, former US citizens aren’t allowed to buy firearms probably because they can’t join the militias that the 2nd amendment refers to. 🙂
Correction: The law that currently prohibits former US citizens from buying guns is the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, passed in 1986. However, a similar law existed earlier, since 1968.
I just searched the entire US Code. The only provisions related to people who renounce US citizenship are the law of renunciation itself, the exit taxes, the Reed amendment, and the prohibition of buying guns, ammunition or explosives. Nothing else.
I believe former citizens who have renounced are prohibited also from obtaining a license to carry hazardous materials by truck. This is an issue for any Canadian citizen Brockers who intend to become Canadian Truck Drivers as CDN Drivers must obtain a US hazardous cargo permit if the they drive hazardous cargo shipments across the US border. This is an issue Abby Deshman and the CCLA have been working on pre FATCA for many years.(CDN Truck Drivers also need a US Criminal Records check).
Possibly a bit off topic but I have spent the last 3days with a retired CIA director. His comment on Chuck Schumer- “He will say or do anything, to get his face in front of a camera.”
@Tiger,
Too funny!
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Some of the links don’t work anymore. Here is one to the most recent NICS enumeration http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/active-records-in-the-nics-index-033113.pdf – up to March 31st, 2013
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That’s an increase of 993 since the January number!
No increase was reported December 2012 because the FBI likely didn’t have the staff to keep track of renunciations:
“In fact, the first six full weeks in 2013 are among the top 10 busiest weeks in NICS history”…
And why would that be?
Hmmm.
Any connection to the numbers renouncing?