Most of us here have little interest in going back to live in the U.S., but others who are considering giving up U.S. citizenship may be worried about whether they’ll be able to get back into the country in case their career takes them there in the future, or to care for aging relatives, or for any number of other reasons, either temporarily or permanently.

Though there are some cases which may show evidence of the USCIS trying to retaliate against renunciants when it comes to visas and treatment at the border, there are also many examples of ex-citizens both low-profile and high-profile who have managed to return to live in U.S., among them naturalised Japanese citizen Arudou Debito (the former David Aldwinckle, now an affiliate scholar at the East-West Center in Honolulu), Taiwan constitutional court judge Chen Be-yue (who renounced in 1996 and then got a green card in 2008 through her U.S.-born daughter, though she wisely cancelled it again the following year), and Fred Alger (who came back on an H-1B visa to rebuild Alger Asset Management after all its employees were killed in the WTC attacks).

A recent article in the Korea Times, a Korean diaspora newspaper published in North America, gives us many more examples of Korean Americans who gave up their U.S. citizenship to try their hand at politics in South Korea, then returned to the U.S. when things didn’t work out. I’ve translated it below.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up to date with South Korean politics, Kim Jeong-hoon is a naturalised U.S. citizen who was nominated to a position in the South Korean government in mid-February, and stated that he would relinquish his U.S. citizenship. However, there was a surprising groundswell of objections to his nomination from the opposition coalition, and then the South Korean news media, which is normally a reasonably sober source of information about giving up U.S. citizenship, started spreading all sorts of FUD. Two of the more prominent examples were YTN News, which got up in arms about the fact that, two whole days after he got his Korean citizenship back, “Nominee Kim Jeong-hoon had his nationality restored but still hasn’t given up U.S. citizenship”, and Dong-A Ilbo, which hysterically claimed that “the CIA may deny him permission to give up citizenship”.

Eventually, Kim decided that he would not be able to give up his U.S. citizenship, and then withdrew from the nomination process. The exact reason for that is another post in itself; I’m still busy translating the relevant articles. Let’s just say for now that the U.S. Homeland papers aren’t giving you the whole story.

The U.S., unlike dozens of other countries ranging from Australia to the United Kingdom to the Philippines, offers no special procedure for people who gave up citizenship to resume it, or even to easily obtain visas afterwards. This reflects the larger U.S. view that the diaspora is not a potentially valuable source of brain circulation, but simply a bunch of backpacking kids, oddballs, and disaffected losers who should be derided and ignored.

Again, in black-and-white: it is clearly possible for an ex-U.S. citizen to get a visa to return to live in the United States. The misconception that it is impossible seems to stem from misunderstandings and internet rumours about the never-enforced Reed Amendment, but even those who have a professional duty to be better-informed about the law clearly are not. One of my favourite examples is the racist San Buenaventura/Santa Barbara, California immigration lawyer who goes around on Yahoo! Answers scaring everyone who even mentions giving up U.S. citizenship with nonsense about how you will “never ever set foot on US soil again” after you “p*ss the world’s most desirable citizenship — the US one — down the toilet” and “told [Uncle Sam] to shove his citizenship where the sun don’t shine” and how you must be “mentally ill” to give up “a passport that oil sheikhs would pay $10 million for”.

Anyway, the journalist goes on to bring up the case of Chris Nam, whom we briefly discussed last September. Nam, who gave up U.S. citizenship to become the head of South Korea’s equivalent of Republicans Abroad, stepped down from his position after less than a month due to controversy over his having been a dual citizen (which was not legal under South Korean law until recently), and is now back in Los Angeles. Of course, the fact that in the first place he was willing to move halfway around the world and turn in his U.S. passport (and pay the ex-citizen/green card-holder tax) to take up a position like that should tell you that the diaspora actually enjoys some political power in South Korea, unlike in the United States.

Notice that Nam wisely did not acquire a green card, even though he could presumably afford the price tag for an EB-5 — New Star is said to be the largest Korean-run real estate company in the U.S., and Nam even mentioned in interviews that he met the $2 million asset threshold for the Form 8854 tax. Presumably he’s decided that while he might enjoy living in the U.S., he plans to retire in his native country, and having paid a high price to get rid of U.S. Person status once, he doesn’t want to pay it again when it comes time for him to leave.

In the 1990s, in contrast, successful 1st-generation Korean Americans trying to parachute back into South Korea and break the domestic elite’s monopoly on politics were not so well-informed; like some wealthy mainland Chinese people today (and the media which cluelessly apes their attitudes), they saw the U.S. passport or green card as a “status symbol” and didn’t really understand the costs of keeping it, a phenomenon which in China is only now starting to change; see for example this October 2012 South China Morning Post article, or this comment by Fred from a few days ago.

Of course, under the version of the ex-citizen tax that had just come into effect in 1996, a person like Chang living in his own or his parents’ country of birth could obtain a ruling from the IRS exempting him from payment of the tax. (Under the new system since 2004, this has been restricted to people who were born dual nationals.) And once he got his green card, he’d get a step-up in basis on any of his U.S. assets for purpose of any future capital gains tax. Chang is now a real estate agent in Beverly Hills. And as a relinquisher rather than a renunciant, he’s presumably even still eligible to buy guns without any problems from the FBI’s NICS background check system.

One other interesting thing is that Mr. Chang, like virtually every public figure who gave up citizenship prior to 2006, appeared in the Federal Register name-and-shame list, in his case for Q1 1997 — but a 2008 relinquisher mentioned in the article does not appear. This fits the pattern we observed earlier: starting in the Bush/Paulson era, the lists of ex-Americans — which purportedly showed a huge drop in people giving up citizenship — are actually quite incomplete.

If Lee indeed got a green card, then the clock is ticking for him. If he’s still holding it in 2015, then he becomes a “long-term permanent resident” for purposes of Section 877A, and if he gives up his green card — or even if he’s administratively deemed to have “abandoned” it by spending too long outside of the U.S. or taking the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion — then he’ll owe the Form 8854 tax again. Should have stayed with the E-2. In fact, there is quite a bit of evidence that investors these days prefer E-2s over EB-5s for precisely that reason, like this British family.

But of course, Homelanders can’t understand this concept at all, as seen by the tone of the linked article — the entire visa system is premised around the idea that everyone in the world wants to “immigrate” and spend all the rest of their days in the U.S. and the system must carefully screen to make sure people on “non-immigrant visas” do not have “immigrant intent”, when in reality people at all levels, ranging from unauthorised guest workers all the way up to company bosses, often just want to come in for a fixed purpose of earning some money, and move on to the next destination when they’re finished. In simpler terms: to Homelanders, every foreigner who comes to the U.S. is an “immigrant”, but every American who lives abroad is an “expat”.

As mentioned earlier, the Korea Times is a Korean diaspora newspaper, distributed in various major metropolitan areas in North America. That means, for the most part, that their readers consist of people who voluntarily uprooted themselves from South Korea and want to go on living in the United States, and have never experienced life outside of the U.S. as a U.S. citizen or green card holder, with all its attendant information reporting consequences. More recently, those who dared leave any money in South Korea rather than patriotically bringing all their capital with them to the Land of Milk and Honey are starting to understand some of those consequences. But except for the increasing number of unfortunates caught up in that problem, they think of U.S. citizenship as a valuable prize to be jealously guarded and protected.

It’s another “exceptional” quirk of the U.S. system that dual citizens living in the U.S. are unable to renounce citizenship so that they can claim the consular protection of their other country of citizenship or take up a diplomatic appointment on its behalf. Hong Kong, for example, processes such applications within 24 hours, and afterwards you retain the right of abode or the right to land in Hong Kong, as the case may be. And of course, when was the last time you heard of an American living abroad being appointed into a consular position in the country where he lives? Silly rabbit, consular appointments are for career civil servants and big political donors.