Looks like I’m losing my edge — AnonAnon wins the prize for being the first to notice the Q1 2013 Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who have Chosen to Expatriate, which has been placed on public inspection for printing in tomorrow’s Federal Register. Grammar and spelling aficionados will note that the list’s title no longer contains the awkwardly-placed relative clause “As Required by Section 6039G”; unfortunately, the misspelling of HIPAA as “HIPPA” has now entered its eighteenth year.
This quarter’s list appears a mere eight days later than required by law, and with about 680 names — a far larger number than most of us would have expected, though well short of the 850 people renouncing under INA § 349(5) whom the FBI entered into their NICS gun control database during the same quarter. And that’s not even mentioning the people who relinquished citizenship under INA § 349(1)–(4), who are not subject to gun control and so don’t show up in NICS but do belong in the Federal Register — or the backlog of thousands of others who renounced last year and also showed up in NICS but never had their names added to Treasury’s list.
Analysis
The first thing that’s noticeable about the list: there are quite a few more Arab names than in previous quarters, probably meaning that Kuwait’s push to enforce their laws against dual citizenship has resulted in many people choosing the Gulf over the United States.
My usual voyeuristic habit of running the Cantonese names against Hong Kong public databases finds that an increasing proportion are lawyers rather than financiers or company directors (they show up not in Securities and Futures Commission filings but in the Government Gazette list of legal practitioners), and some don’t show up at all. This suggests that by the middle of last year, the trend of turning in blue passports had gone well beyond the rentier class and began reaching down into the salaried class — people who owe little U.S. tax but are sick of the dozens of pages of red tape, threatened life-altering fines, and other restrictions which only the U.S. and no other country places on its citizens abroad.
Late and missing names
I say “middle of last year” because that seems to be the rough time frame of the renunciations and relinquishments which show up in this quarter’s list. (This is also when the news about Kuwait came out.) Unfortunately we have only a single concrete name on which we can base that guess: Kenneth R. Fox of Fox v. Clinton fame, an olim whose acquisition of Israeli citizenship was ruled after a court battle to be a valid relinquishment — his name appears at page 6. At page 9 there’s also Mahmood Karzai, who actually renounced in January 2013, precisely the period allegedly covered by this list — but then politicians tend to get rushed through, when they are important enough to appear at all.
However, not a single other political candidate who has given up citizenship since February 2012 appears in this quarter’s list: Yolanda Schakron (Belize, February 2012), Nicholas Yang and Erica Yuen (Hong Kong, May 2012), Victor Okaikoi (Ghana, August 2012), Akierra Missick (Turks & Caicos, October 2012), Corine Mauch (Switzerland, late 2012 or early 2013), Naftali Bennett and Dov Lipman (Israel, January 2013), Bernard Chan (Hong Kong, February 2013), Sharon Roulstone (Cayman Islands, March 2013), and Fauzia Kasuri (Pakistan, March 2013) are all missing. Japan scholar Donald Keene, who is also known to have relinquished — in his case, by naturalising in Japan in March 2012 — fails to appear either. In other words, that’s twelve out of fourteen public figures during the period in question.
Not on it, renounced in first quarter 2013. Will be very interesting to see when I show up.
Not on this one either.
Colleague of mine who renounced in the first half of last year also isn’t there.
But now that we know for sure that Karzai has renounced, I guess he no longer has to wrestle with the thorny question of whether those bags of CIA cash that keep coming in (mostly for his brother, but no doubt some for him as well) are “earned income” or “unearned income”!
I’m not on it either!
I’m another no show, though I guess with renouncing at the beginning of March the approval by Washington might not have happened until April.
One of the two Americans featured in the Oct 2012 WSJ article “Wary Swiss Banks Shun Yanks” made the Federal Register Expatriate list. He also was featured in a Sep 2012 USA Today article.
Including his name in the list fits with the theory that the “name and shame” list will normally include those who are publicly known to have expatriated.
Renounced Q3 / 2012, still not on the list…
An offspring of one of the ACA founders has the same first and last name as a name on the “name and shame” list. Given that this is a relatively uncommon last name, I would guess it is the same person.
@Eric, re “But now that we know for sure that Karzai has renounced, I guess he no longer has to wrestle with the thorny question of whether those bags of CIA cash that keep coming in (mostly for his brother, but no doubt some for him as well) are “earned income” or “unearned income”!”
What section of the IRM covers that? Is there a special IRS or Treasury financial reporting form? Will they introduce a special amendment to the Ex-Patriot Act? Are bags of US cash delivered by the CIA US-tax exempt?
Is it better to be on the list or not? I can that it finalizes everything to see one’s name on there though it could also be used as a black list.
My CLN was approved before the end of March so am definitely not on it…would suggest that at least I haven’t been red-flagged…on the other hand, wasn’t Petros on the list last year even though he only relinquished??? The whole thing is bizarre.
I suspect that there are a lot more out there renouncing than they’re admitting to.
Has anyone tried to make a FOIA request to the Department of State, asking for the number of CLNs issued each year for the last few years? A request can be made here, and it doesn’t require a US address.
I renounced in Sep 2012, I am still not on the list.
Shadow Raider, thanks for the link for making an FOIA request to the State Department. I may try that, hoping it could be faster than the request through DATA.GOV: https://explore.data.gov/nominate/2412
Renounced March 2012, have not shown up yet.
@Eric You are not losing your edge, but you are raising the bar and pushing some of us to be more diligent and analytical. Thanks for this post and the updated analysis…
@AnonAnon, I just submitted a FOIA request. Let’s see how long they will take to respond.
Renounced Jan 20 2012 and not on the list
I’m on the list and renounced 1Q 2012.
Renounced on Nov 1st, 2012 and not on the list either.
Renounced early April 2012 and still not on the list.
To determine what kind of people renounced or relinquished their US citizenship or abandoned their green cards, I searched on approx. 100 “Germanic sounding” names on Q1 2013’s list. As somewhat expected, first and last name matched on people mostly resident in Switzerland with a few matches on people in Austria and Germany.
The Swiss residents, who are likely Swiss, were generally “un-interesting”. The slightly interesting included a scientific researcher, a chiropractor, an attorney, a dermatologist, an investment manager, a jazz musician and an aspiring actress. The majority, however, were people who worked in areas such as real estate, for a car dealership, etc. or their occupation could not be readily identified. The commonality is that they had the misfortune to acquire US citizenship or a green card at some point in their life. A conclusion I would draw from these roughly 100 name searches is that normal dual Swiss-US citizens resident in Switzerland gave up their US citizenship probably so that they could lead a normal and less encumbered life.
Matches on several people with Germanic names resident elsewhere in Europe were more interesting:
1) The son of a prominent and wealthy industrialist and right-wing Austrian politician.
2) A member of a prominent New York publishing family who is married to British noble.
3) A German noble.
I’m on it. 2 Q’s late, but better late than never.
Renounced Q4 2012, not on list.
I’m on it! Renounced in Q1/12.
Thanks, broken man on a Halifax pier. That indicates that many of us (me, my husband and my daughter in Q4 of 2012) may belatedly show up.