The FBI has released its latest report on Active Records in the NICS Index as of 30 June 2013. NICS now contains the records of 22,610 renunciants who have been stripped of the right to purchase firearms in the United States. (None of them actually tried buying last month anyway, according to the federal denials report.) This is an increase of 413 since last month, 1,106 during the quarter, and 1,956 so far this year. Based on past trends there should be about four or five relinquishers for every six renunciants, meaning that somewhere around 750 people gave up citizenship last month in one way or another, if the FBI didn’t miss any — hard to verify, since the names on their list are not public.
Various upcoming data releases this month may provide a useful basis for comparison. South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs should be publishing not just their annual diplomatic whitebook (whose previous iteration revealed that 2,128 South Koreans gave up US passports or green cards in 2011), but also their biennial report on the status of overseas Korean populations. And of course, by the end of the month we are supposed to have the Federal Register quarterly name-and-shame list — though there is a high chance it will not be merely late but also laughably incomplete, just like last year when the FBI recorded 4,650 renunciants alone but the IRS named only 932 renunciants, relinquishers, and long-term-green-card-abandoners combined.
“Based on past trends there should be about four or five relinquishers for every six renunciants, meaning that somewhere around 750 people gave up citizenship last month in one way or another,”
My prior understanding had been that the gov’t classifies everyone who relinquishes as a “renunciant”, despite the obvious fallacy of doing it that way. Am I mistaken?
Another question – I know the list of all relinquishers/renunciants is published in the public records. Is the information as to which of them are “covered” expatriates also made public? I should probably know better than to think the gov’t would honor any right of privacy for expatriates, but it seems to me like a pretty egregious thing if they publish that information. Talk about a high-value marketing list for some snake oil salesman to exploit!
@Eric, did you save the pdf files for older FBI NICS counts?
@PoliticalXpat: “My prior understanding had been that the gov’t classifies everyone who relinquishes as a “renunciant”, despite the obvious fallacy of doing it that way. Am I mistaken?”
In the NICS regulations they published back in 1997, the FBI says they define “renounce citizenship” to include only people who lost US citizenship under INA § 349(a)(5) or (6):
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-1997-06-27/pdf/97-16900.pdf
@Swisspinoy: I think I have some but not all. Let me go try to find the thumb drive I left them on. Alternatively, head over to http://archive.org/web/web.php and try pasting in each of the old URLs — hopefully the good folks at the Internet Archive captured those files too. I really should update the older post with direct Internet Archive links.
Updated last year’s post with Internet Archive links, where available. About half of the old reports were saved, the others vanished.
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/02/09/fbi-statistics-say-three-thousand-renounced-u-s-citizenship-in-september-and-october-2012/
@PoliticalXPat, you said “I know the list of all relinquishers/renunciants is published in the public records..”
But that is not so. The quarterly list published in the Federal Register, commonly referred to as the “name and shame list”, is, as Eric said, known to be very incomplete. The State Department, which is responsible for approving all Certificates of Loss of Nationality issued by its consulates and embassies, has so far refused to make public the numbers of CLNs it has been issuing each month, quarter, or year. Several attempts have been made to obtain those numbers from them, but so far without success. That is why we have to rely on indirect evidence such as the FBI list that Eric monitors.
I just found out that USCIS processed my FOIA request yesterday! I had asked for the number of people who filed form I-407 (abandonment of green card) each year since 2000. The request was completed in only three weeks, much less than I expected. I should receive a letter in the mail in a few days. Unless they refused to disclose the data, I’ll post the numbers here when I get the letter.
I also made a FOIA request to the Department of State asking for the number of CLNs, but I think they will take at least another month to respond.
@Eric, thanks. The 31 October 2012 report is actually the missing September report. If you or anyone is interested, I’ve uploaded all the files here
I called the FBI and they said that we can request the missing data via a FOIA. I’ll get around to doing that eventually, unless someone else wants to have the fun of it.
Thanks for the clarifications.
I never thought to check the “name & shame list” to see if I was on it – I thought it was automatic so I just assumed I must be.
Is there anyplace online to find the full name & shame list? I relinquished in 09, and would like to know whether my name was actually published or not.
Thanks to all here who seem extremely knowledgeable about this.
@PoliticalXpat:
Try this link:
https://www.federalregister.gov/quarterly-publication-of-individuals-who-have-chosen-to-expatriate
@Eric, I don’t know if you have seen this document before. Look at page 20, and compare with the total number reported by the IRS for those years. It seems unlikely that Hong Kong would have such a high proportion of renunciations.
Irrefutable proof that the lists of names in the Federal Registar are grossly incomplete:
The Department of State wrote in the Federal Register in 2010 that 1,188 people renounced US citizenship in fiscal year 2009 (October 2008 to September 2009). The total number of names listed by the IRS in the Federal Register for the same period was 295. The discrepacy is even worse considering that the first number only includes those who renounced, while the second number is supposed to include those who renounced or relinquished.
The question remains: Is this negligence or disinformation?
The US consulate in Hong Kong says that 132 people renounced US citizenship in fiscal year 2009, while the Department of State says that the total worldwide was 1,188. So the proportion of renunciants in Hong Kong was about 11% of the total, while they represent 1-2% of the population of Americans abroad. It seems disproportional to me, but maybe it’s a combination of factors: the Hong Kong consulate also serves part of China, China doesn’t allow dual nationality, taxes in Hong Kong are much lower than in the US, and many very wealthy people live there. Or maybe it’s just that the numbers aren’t large enough to allow a statistical analysis.
@Shadow Reader: I’d never seen those, thanks for digging them up. Hong Kong allows “outgoing dual nationality”, roughly the same as Estonia or Taiwan: their own natives can keep their citizenship even when they naturalise elsewhere. The only people who would have to renounce are the ones applying for naturalisation. Here’s the legal basis.
For those who don’t want to read through the whole PDF that Shadow Raider posted, the HK audit claims that “Renunciation of citizenship is the major new growth area with 132 of these complex and time-consuming cases in FY2009 and nearly 150 such cases in the first 8 months of FY2010.” For what it’s worth, in 2009 and 2010 I counted 57 and 150 Cantonese names respectively in the Federal Register, and at least some of those are likely to be Singaporeans or Canadians instead of Hong Kongers instead. About a quarter show up in the usual HK public databases (Law Society, listed company officers, Securities & Futures Commission license-holders, government officials).
The audit also states, “Most cases involve dual citizens who appear to want to avoid paying US taxes”, to which I respond to CG Stephen Young with a giant “SCREW YOU and all your single fresh-out-of-college-employees living in taxpayer-provided 3-bedroom apartments in swanky parts of Mid Levels”.
I would like to thank Eric and Shadow Raider for their fine work in identifying discrepancies in US citizenship renunciation and relinquishment data. The data in the Federal Register and Inspector General’s report on Hong Kong, identified by Shadow Raider, are finds.
Attached is a link to DOS Inspector General reports. Click on Report Categories to drill-down for reports by region:
http://oig.state.gov/lbry/isprpts/index.htm
The Department of State now estimates that there are 7.6 million US citizens living abroad. The previous estimate, in January, was 6.8 million.
The Federal Register document “Schedule of Fees for Consular Services, Department of State and Overseas Embassies and Consulates” from 2010, cited by Shadow Raider above, contains the reasoning for imposing the US$450 fee for renunciations by the State Department. It states that this fee covers less than 25% of the actual cost. What the below argument does not mention is the amount of money raised by the “exit tax”, but, of course, that money goes to Treasury.
“Documentation for Renunciation of Citizenship
The CoSS demonstrated that documenting a U.S. citizen’s renunciation of citizenship is extremely costly, requiring American consular officers overseas to spend substantial amounts of time to accept, process, and adjudicate cases. A new fee of $450 will be established to help defray a portion of the total cost to the U.S. Government of documenting the renunciation of citizenship. While the Department decided to set the fee at $450, this fee represents less than 25 percent of the cost to the U.S. Government. The Department has determined that it must recoup at least a portion of its costs of providing this very costly service but set the fee lower than the cost of service in order to lessen the impact on those who need this service and not discourage the utilization of the service, a development the Department feels would be detrimental to national interests. See 31 U.S.C. 9701(b)(2).”
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/06/28/2010-15622/schedule-of-fees-for-consular-services-department-of-state-and-overseas-embassies-and-consulates
Further to Shadow Raider’s post and link yesterday to the latest US Bureau of Consular Affairs (BCA) image brochure dated May 2013, below is an updated evolution of the number of US citizens living abroad per the Department of State (DOS) and BCA:
May 2013: 7’600’000 (DOS/ BCA)
http://travel.state.gov/pdf/ca_fact_sheet.pdf
Jan 2013: 6’800’000 (DOS/ BCA)
(Link to Jan 2013 DOS/ BCA fact sheet is no longer available. Link is now for May 2013.)
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)
Since Obama took office in 2009, the number of overseas USCs has increased by 2.3 million, a 44% increase in about 4 1/2 years. The American diaspora population of 7.6 million would rank it between Virginia and Washington state, the 11th and 12th most populous states.
The causes for this rapid increase in the number of Americans reported as residing abroad should likely be further reviewed. I would speculate that it is related to continuing poor economic prospects in the US, i.e., increase in economic migrants, and possibly changes in methods used to count Americans abroad. Perhaps the growth of the US police state is causing Americans to leave for more freedom and other political reasons but I suspect that this is a minor factor.
@PoliticalXpat, you asked for it, so I created it. Here’s the full list:
Federal Register
It has 10791 entries from 1998-2013. I did a cut & past and the data is a bit confusing, so there will be some mistakes, but feel free to let me know what needs to be corrected. Each entry shows the quarter and document number. My favorite entry of an individual who renounced/relinquished US citizenship is this one:
I just realized that I created a bit more confusion with the Federal Register while trying to reduce the confusion. While copying and pasting the data into a spread sheet, I sometimes used the document number from the publication and at other times used the document number listed in the document. Such is necessary since many publications are different in structure with data overlapping. This became more clear when validating:
Weldon (a.k.a. Flash Qfiasco)
In my list, I listed Weldon twice for two quarters in document 04-23599. Yet, when opening that document, Weldon only appeared once for quarter 30.9.2004. So, where did the other data come from? After linking document numbers with publication dates, I found that Weldon was also listed twice in document 04-23600 (under 04-23599) for 30.9.2004 and 31.12.2003.
So, I’ll have to reexamine the document numbers and include published dates to reduce the confusion a bit more, but I’ll refrain from listing Weldon 3 times (i think). Twice is already redundant enough.
USCIS responded to my FOIA request! In less than a month! They released the information I asked, the number of forms I-407 (abandonment of lawful permanent resident status) filed each year since 2000. I scanned the letter and put it here. You may redistribute it if you want.
Since I just found out that USCIS also receives a copy of all CLNs issued, I’m going to make another FOIA request asking for the number of CLNs, instead of waiting for the Department of State to respond.
@Eric, have fun with the numbers. I don’t see any trend, but these numbers are much higher than the number of people who renounced US citizenship. Note that these include all people who abandoned green cards, while the lists on the Federal Register are only supposed to include those who had a green card for at least 8 years.
@Shadow Raider
Apparently they are using a fiscal year that ends in May. That seems to mean that 2013 is complete. If so, 2013 is significantly lower than all years going back to, and including, 2004. It seems odd (or my interpretation is).
@Shadow Raider: Great! Thanks so much for this! I have a post pending about green card abandonments & US citizenship renunciations by South Koreans (I’m waiting for their Ministry of Foreign Affairs to release the 2012 data), so this fits right in. At first glance, this I-407 data looks pretty sensible in comparison to the South Korean numbers (unlike the Federal Register numbers).
Next, the interesting thing will be to see whether the State and USCIS numbers on CLNs actually match 🙂
tdott, I would have assumed the numbers were from the period Dec – May 31, ie 5/12 of a year. June would not have yet been compiled.
@Mark Twain
You’re most likely correct. The use of the term “fiscal year” and the fact that there was no indication that 2013 was only partially accounted for are what threw me off.