May 20, 2013 (AP)
In 1959, nearly 5,000 Japanese-Americans had their U.S. citizenship restored after renouncing it during World War II.
Fosters Daily Democrat
What captured my interest in this little piece of history, is the common argument that an individual who renounces U.S. citizenship may never again be a U.S. citizen and that there are only one or two rare situations where such was not the case. Not so. Of course, one who renounces US citizenship might never want to be a US citizen. However, all is relative and times change. Nothing is consistent. Currently, it is just as American-patriotic to renounce US citizenship, under the given circumstances, as it was for Japanese-Americans to do so during WWII. There is nothing wrong with it and one shouldn’t refuse to renounce due to the belief that such is irreversible. However, one should always keep in mind that Americans may not want for individuals with American heritage to live in America if they, for whatever reason, stopped playing the citizenship game for a while. But why would anyone want to be a US citizen under those circumstances?
On this issue, I find three questions to be relevant:
- Is America worthy of your citizenship?
- Does America appreciate your citizenship?
- Does America want for you to be a citizen?
If the answer to any of these three questions is “no”, then it is unnecessary or undesirable for one to be a U.S. citizen. Yet, If the answer to all three is “yes”, then a restoration might make sense. Time will tell what will become of this.
Perhaps if the climate really improves, the U.S. might one day do an about-face and offer a true apology for all the collateral damage we have suffered. Perhaps they’d offer to restore our citizenship, especially if they’ve become embarrassed by the number of surging expatriations.
On other other hand, I wouldn’t even put it past them to try and use a legal technicality to annul all the renunciations and act as though they never took place. It’s why I will probably continue to keep my investments in a U.S.-friendly portfolio. I also am keeping in mind that if anything happened to my mother that I might some day have to apply for an extended visa so I could spend time caring for her. In such a situation I might once again have to file a U.S. tax return if I wind up having a substantial presence there.
It will be intriguing to see what develops in the coming years…hopefully they will soon see the folly of their ways and try to make amends, especially with the IRS now being dissed.
I sent a FOIA request to the Department of State asking for the number of CLNs issued each year, and another one to USCIS asking for the number of forms I-407 filed each year. That way we can finally know the actual number of people renouncing or relinquishing US nationality or abandoning US permanent residence, without the need to make guesses based on inconsistent IRS or FBI numbers. I already received a confirmation of my request from the Department of State, by mail. The average time for them to complete a FOIA request is about three months.
@Shadow Rider:
It has been discussed several or more times on IBS that a FOIA request for CLN data would provide clarity on the number of expatriations. Thanks for going forward with this!
On a related topic, the Economist reported this week:
“On May 9th Barack Obama ordered that all data created or collected by America’s federal government must be made available free to the public, unless this would violate privacy, confidentiality or security. “Open and machine-readable”, the president said, is “the new default for government information.””
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21578084-making-official-data-public-could-spur-lots-innovation-new-goldmine
@Shadow Raider
Was the confirmation you received a confirmation that they would provide the information or confirmation that they received your request?
The thought that the US government can come back to me 20 years later, and say that they’re going to invalidate my CLN, (assuming I’ll have one by then) just for shits and giggles, makes my stomach curdle.
On the other hand, I have to wonder what the premise was for rescinding all of those renunciations back in 1959. Were there technicalities? Were they renouncing under duress, perhaps due to lingering post war animosity? Maybe it was a move on the part of the US to ‘make things right’?
I don’t really know what to make of this, but if I had more information, I might have at least a better understanding of the difference between the US in 1959, and the US now.
http://www.tulelake.org/
“Tule Lake was the largest and most controversial of the ten War Relocation Authority WRA camps used to carry out the government’s system of exclusion and detention of persons of Japanese descent, mandated by Executive Order 9066.
…
Perhaps the most tragic and divisive issue was created when Public Law 405 was passed by Congress and signed by President Roosevelt on July 1, 1944. This law, directed at Japanese Americans in Tule Lake, permitted an American citizen to renounce their citizenship in wartime.
…
The stampede to renounce took place in late December 1944, after it was announced detention was ending and the camps would be closing. The prison-like Segregation Center was swept up in panic, anger and confusion.
…
Motives for renouncing varied widely. Many inmates feared they would be forced into hostile American communities with no money, no promise of income and no place to live. Army personnel told them they could remain safe in Tule Lake until the war ended if they renounced their U.S. citizenship.
…
When the war ended, the tragedy of the renunciants became apparent when the Justice Department prepared for mass deportation of the thousands who renounced. The renunciants had little understanding of what they gave up, or that they would become enemy aliens who could be legally expelled. Nearly all of the renunciants eventually sought restoration of their citizenship, including those who expatriated to Japan.”
Oh yes, the internment camps. I forgot about that.
@mjh49783, a CLN won’t become invalidated involuntarily. It is more a question if one who renounced would want to become a US citizen if US policy changed dramatically. If the US government apologized to its expats, fixed many problems and attempted to undo the damage, then it is possible that some individuals might be interested.
@Swisspinoy, this is what I think may eventually happen. I don’t think they could focefully reimpose U.S. citizenship but may offer it back to expats who wanted to restore it.
I doubt if I would take up the offer though. Like marriage, life’s less complicated with ‘monogamy’. I used to prefer the option of dual citizenship ‘just in case.’ But citizenship comes with obligations as well as priveleges.
For those who are interested, here’s an interview with Tex Nakamura, the guy who worked with civil rights attorney Wayne Collins to get renunciants’ citizenship restored. It wasn’t an automatic process at all; he literally filed thousands of individual court cases.
http://www.rafu.com/2013/03/senior-moments-our-visit-with-tex-nakamura/
In 1967, the government finally gave up and promulgated regulations allowing renunciants to fill out a form to apply to get US citizenship back rather than going through the courts. But again, it was nothing automatic; there was no presumption of automatically restoring citizenship to people who failed to fill out the paperwork.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/349.1
Personally, what makes me most angry when I started reading about the history of Japanese American renunciants wasn’t the US government finding a new and unique way to screw citizens (something to which at this point I’m almost entirely inured), but that the Japanese American Citizens’ League did precisely nothing on their behalf and went on for decades after the war condemning the renunciants as traitors for using the only means they saw to assert their rights against a government gone mad.
@Edelweiss, It was a confirmation that they received my request.
@Shadow Raider
Let’s hope that in 3 months time you get the actual data and not a response claiming that the data you requested is essential to the maintenance of national security and that they are therefore denying your request.
Something rather sinister I realised … the main argument that Collins used when arguing for renunciations to be reversed was that they were made under duress. So what do we see in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 at § 349(b), just a few years after Collins started getting active with these cases?
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/STATUTE-66/STATUTE-66-Pg163/content-detail.html
Of course, people renouncing in the US to the Attorney General during time of war would be “nationals of the state in which the act was performed”; in other words, no matter what evidence you later presented about being sent to a camp and threatened by armed agents, the court would be required to conclude there was no duress. Fortunately the Supreme Court stood up to the executive & Congress and required a higher burden of proof than this BS “conclusive presumption”. So then Congress & State flipped the game around entirely and argued that the burden of proof should always be borne by the person claiming loss of nationality occurred, in order to continue to force emigrants to be citizens.
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