After a lengthy (and illegal) delay, the latest Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen To Expatriate, as Required By Section 6039G will be printed in the Federal Register for Thursday, 14 February 2013.
It contains forty five names. This brings 2012’s total number of “published expatriates” to 932, or little more than half of the number seen in 2011.
Journalists who may write about this list in the next few days should be warned against misinterpreting it as a complete list of people who turned in their U.S. passports last year. The Federal Bureau of Investigation tells us that 4,385 Americans renounced citizenship in 2012, and another 167 in January 2013 alone — and that number does not even include people relinquishing citizenship or abandoning long-held green cards, both acts which should result in one’s name appearing in the Federal Register. I am aware of more than a dozen public figures who have given up U.S. citizenship in the past year, almost all for the purpose of running in non-U.S. elections, but only four of their names have been published. South Korea recorded 2,158 of their citizens giving up U.S. passports or green cards in 2011, and numerous anecdotal reports from Washington and from Seoul suggest that this “reverse migration” accelerated rather than slowed in 2012.
badger, that’s very interesting. Thanks for finding that. “To improve data quality, the methodology for collecting and tabulating the population migration data was recently changed” would probably be their explanation for the radically shorter list of names they are reporting in the Federal Register for loss of citizenship, if they were ever made to explain it. The change of methodology would likely be the much narrower interpretation of the legal requirements for the list that some of us speculated about earlier. Since there’s no indication of change in methodology in the preamble to the latest FR list itself, it must be intentional deception to hide the growing numbers of CLNs.
Let’s hope we can get Data.gov, or the State Department itself, to start reporting the real numbers of CLNs issued.
@anon, I looked for more information, but haven’t found it so far. Does however suggest that data is a sore point. If we can identify a more accurate source of renunciation/relinquishments, we have more leverage.
Thank goodness for Eric’s digging, in finding the FBI data (on those who can’t own a gun because of renouncing).
Internally I am certain that the Consulates and the State Department took the numbers seeking renunciation into account when planning for staffing levels re renunciation services. They would have to have used some real stats, and make some projections in order to budget. They also probably have to account for the revenue that is collected from the 450. renunciation fee. That could be a source of stats too, even if it would not contain relinquishers – because for now, relinquishing has no fee.
No doubt there are researchers, government statisticians, etc. who would know how to get at the data. When the renunciation fee was made permanent (apparently, according to a recent article, it was provisional before), there was probably some kind of documented rationale created.
If we had more insight into the workings of US government and civil service, we could probably figure out how to access some of these other corroborative sources.
This is a very useful resource to understand why renunciation stats and the data must be collected, stored and accessible for reporting and sharing purposes.
Foreign Affairs Manual » 7 FAM – Consular Affairs » 7 FAM 1200 LOSS AND RESTORATION OF U.S. CITIZENSHIP
7 FAM 1200 LOSS AND RESTORATION OF U.S. CITIZENSHIP
http://www.state.gov/m/a/dir/regs/fam/07fam/c22713.htm
@Arrow:
You may recall the request for comments on ways to improve the collection of expatriate data, which I believe was first posted by Eric last summer. The “Estimated Number of Respondents: 12,350” may be the number of relinquishers and renunciants that embassies and consulates were expecting to process:
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/06/13/2012-14329/proposed-collection-comment-request-for-notice-97-19-and-notice-98-34
I can’t believe that no US journalist is able to get from the State Department the numbers of CLNs that the Bureau of Consular Services has issued per year, say for the past 10 years or even just for 2012. Is no one interested but us here at Brock??
I think the real story behind the discrepancy between the FBI figures and the Treasury figures is that by reporting such a low figure, Treasury is quietly admitting that it believes that only 45 of the people granted CLNs in the last quarter did so to avoid taxes. That leaves the question of why the other thousands got CLNs. There’s a story here for some investigative journalist, if that’s not an extinct species:
“Why Are Ex-Americans Voting With Their Feet?”
I still fear that this could backfire badly. Do what you have to do quietly. Why frighten the horses??
@AnonAnon, some on the list obviously did not renounce to avoid taxes. The 45 names seem to be those that people would look for, such as wealthy individuals or those who were mentioned by the press.
My guess is that the government is working together with the press to reduce discontent through censorship, limiting the list so that Texas won’t leave the union and so that more Americans abroad or wealthy stateside Americans won’t renounce.
I gave up my green card in the last few years and I didn’t find my name on the register, either.
Prompted by Shadow Rider’s post and link yesterday to a US Bureau of Consular Affairs (BCA) image brochure from January 2013, below is an evolution of the number of US citizens living abroad per the Department of State (DOS) and BCA:
2013: 6’800’000 (DOS/ BCA)
http://travel.state.gov/pdf/ca_fact_sheet.pdf
2011: 6’320’000 (DOS)
http://aaro.org/about-aaro/6m-americans-abroad
2009: 5’256’600 (DOS)
(see below)
1999: 3’784’693 (DOS/ BCA)
https://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/files/counting%20american%20civilians%20abroad.pdf
(see p. 2 for 2009 and 1999 figures)
The American diaspora population of 6.8 million is the population size of Washington state or Massachusetts, which are the 13th and 14th largest US states, respectively. Although these figures are largely estimates, they seem to indicate that the American diaspora has been growing rapidly in the past several years.
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Badger just posted this on the renunciation thread, but good to have it here…
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/relinquishment/comment-page-24/#comment-956587
Global News,has an updated story on the rising US expatriation figures – and this is by the author Patrick Cain who compares the numbers in the Federal Register ‘name and shame’ list to the FBI numbers for those – (see specific category for ex-citizens) precluded from owning firearms.
http://globalnews.ca/news/1072303/over-3100-americans-renounced-citizenship-last-year-fbi/
January 10, 2014 9:30 am
More than 3,100 Americans renounced citizenship last year: FBI
By Patrick Cain
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