The Department of the Treasury has finally placed the latest Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who have Chosen to Expatriate on public inspection for printing in tomorrow’s Federal Register, ten days late. Congratulations to Innocente for being the first to post the news at 9 AM right on the dot. There’s about 1,130 names of people who have permanently cut off their legal ties to the U.S. government, making this a record-breaking quarter; more names have appeared in the first half of this year than in all of the previous record high year of 2011.
The number of names in Treasury’s list roughly matches the 1,106 entries the FBI added to NICS in the same quarter. However, this still doesn’t mean their list is complete: the FBI only records people who renounced U.S. citizenship under 8 USC § 1481(a)(5), whereas Treasury is supposed to record renunciants, relinquishers (8 USC § 1481(a)(1)–(4)), and theoretically even some of the nearly twenty thousand people who give up green cards each year (though in fact there’s evidence that they do not include the latter). Projecting from the FBI’s data, the total number of people who gave up U.S. citizenship last quarter in one way or another is probably two thousand; I’d guess during the same period there’s a similar number of people giving up green cards they’ve held for at least eight of the past fifteen years (the alleged standard for inclusion in Treasury’s list), though this is harder to estimate. And while some famous ex-citizens appear in Treasury’s list, others do not.
Public figures in this quarter’s list include Hong Kong Commerce & Economic Development Bureau official Bernard Chan who renounced in February, businesswoman & political candidate Erica Yuen (a bit late, as she renounced last summer), and Israeli legislators Naftali Bennett and Dov Lipman who both gave up U.S. citizenship in January after they were elected. A colleague of mine who renounced over a year ago also finally showed up in the list. Congratulations to all friends of Isaac Brock who made the expat honour roll!
However, famous ex-citizens of recent vintage who are included find themselves outnumbered by ex-citizens who turned in their blue passports in the past four quarters but are not included: legislators & legislative candidates Fauzia Kasuri of Pakistan, Sharon Roulstone of the Cayman Islands, Akierra Missick of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Victor Okaikoi of Ghana, as well as Zurich mayor Corine Mauch. That’s not including the dozens more who gave up citizenship between 2006 and early 2012 and aren’t included either.
And unsurprisingly, neither State nor Treasury worked fast enough this time to print the names of any of the public figures known to have renounced citizenship during the last quarter, among them Hong Kong banker Marshall Nicholson, Cuban spy René González, and Taiwanese basketball player Quincy Davis. Also I don’t think Tina Turner appears, though I’m not really sure under what name she’d appear, or whether she has even started the procedures for relinquishment after naturalising as a Swiss citizen earlier this year. I guess they and the rest of us ordinary folks are not as important as Afghan leader Hamid Karzai’s brother, who was rushed through the system to show up in the list in record time, making him one of the few to receive the honour of showing up during the same quarter in which he renounced.
Shadow Raider (to whom we owe thanks for getting the above-mentioned data on green card abandonments) has another FOIA request pending with United States Citizenship & Immigration Services asking for the number of Certificates of Loss of Nationality they receive from the State Department each year. It’ll be interesting to see if their figures match up either with the FBI’s or with Treasury’s; perhaps all these missing names are due to State not forwarding some CLNs, for whatever reason?
Renounced first quarter 2013, CLN dated in second quarter 2013, not on it.
Does anyone know of a single-point source for the name & shame list in aggregate? In other words, the full list of names for the last X number of years all in one place?
I realize the data (or the subset the government chose to publish anyway) is all out there on a by-quarter basis, but I would think by now someone would be maintaining an aggregated list?
Thanks!
@PoliticalXpat, I pasted all of the names here:
http://sharepoint.glasscoin.ch/renounce/usa/Lists/federalregister/AllItems.aspx
With this list, one can sort or do a simple filter. I need to double-check some of the entries around 1999, but otherwise it should be pretty accurate. Give me a few days to update it with the latest list.
I really expected to see my name in this latest list, but it’s not there either.
Well I don’t see three names that relinquished in early May, my wife, myself and a daughter. Perhaps they are running behind, but in the age of computers one would think it’s no big deal to keep up.
Thanks, Innocente and AnonAnon. And, thanks, Eric for another solid post on this subject.
Success — my name, my husband’s name and my daughter’s name are listed, expatriations of the third and fourth quarter of 2012.
PS — None of the above are “Covered Expatriates.”
I’m there too so really odd that you haven’t shown up yet SwissPinoy.
Thank you Innocent, AnonAnon and Eric for your analysis. It would be interesting to know if this record number is due to an improvement in recording them. With all the government cut backs, I doubt it. I wonder if the government would become so lean that it would develop a system where they would send extra personnel to specific departments when they have log jams, like a triage team.
@Medea Fleecestealer, a possible explanation is that they haven’t seen my 8854 yet to file to the attorney general, since they are maybe still so busy processing the tax returns of others. When I do a “refund status” check, it returns:
https://sa1.www4.irs.gov/irfof/lang/en/irfofgetstatus.jsp
In the past, I e-filed and it was always approved within a week. Yet, this time I had to snail mailed the forms in, so I guess that the IRS has more work to do.
My name is on there, renounced March 2013…
I am on the list.
My renunciation date was September of last year. CLN received Nov of last year.
I am NOT a covered expatriate
@SwissPinoy, it shouldn’t make a difference because I haven’t even filed my 8854 yet. I won’t do that until next year, but my name is on the 2nd quarter list. Maybe going Streamline makes a difference.
And now we wait for Andrew Mitchel’s International Tax Blog posting offering his Quarterly Theory of Why Names Appear or Not in the Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen To Expatriate. 🙂
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Since no one seems to know for sure who has renounced US citizenship, perhaps some wise philanthropist turned entrepreneur will start a ‘counterfeit CLN’ business for those wishing to have a CLN but not wishing to deal with the USG to get one.
I am just kidding, of course.
Is anyone else having problems accessing “isaacbrocksociety.ca” through the main URL? I’m running into a webnames.ca page every time I try to access the link through “isaacbrocksociety.ca” that says website under development. Does anyone else have this problem? So far I’ve only been able to access this place by a. running a Google Search, then b. hitting the archive and seeing what the most recent post has been. I wonder if anyone can look into this.
Damn. I have been denied my Johnson, Navin R. moment this quarter. I didn’t make the phonebook.
@The_Animal, that happens to me every now and then again. Sometimes it helps clear the browser cache Sometimes, it might help to flush the dns by entering the following in the commandline: ipconfig /flushdns
Flushed the DNS, it’s still resolving the DNS to webnames.ca as being “under development”. Win 8 SUCKS!
Thanks, did it. SwissPinoy. 🙂 I hate computers so much right now. 🙂 But can’t live without one in this digital age.
I posted on another thread, but it’s appropriate here too. I renounced on June 11, received the CLN a month later (on my birthday, that was nice), am not a covered expat, but am not on the list. Pity. I thought London was doing so well, being more efficient than other places. I wait to see if I ever show up on a list.
I am delighted to see that I am on the list. Not covered. Renounced Jan 2012, CLN in Sept 2012.
Is there any way to measure or estimate how many of the expatriates on the list are “covered” vs not?
Thanks!
I’m on the list. Renounced in July of 2012 and received my CLN the following December.
@PoliticalXat, @SwissPinoy,
Last year I compiled a combined list of all the quarterly Federal Register lists from 2009 through the third quarter of 2012, but I didn’t have a good place to post it. What I did find was about 64 duplicate and near-duplicate names, plus the following very strange entry in the list for the 3rd quarter of 2010: Vice Consul Marc J. Young
Apparently the name of a Vice Consul was erroneously entered in the list with surname shown as “Vice Consul”! SwissPinoy, you should find that entry in your combined list, too.
I won’t list all of the duplicate entries I found, but here are the first few to give you an idea of them:
2012 Q2 BENTLEY JOHN JOSEPH
2012 Q2 BENTLEY JOHN J.
2011 Q3 BERG SHANE DAVID
2011 Q4 BERG SHANE DAVID
2011 Q1 CATTAUI MICHAEL TAREK
2011 Q2 CATTAUI MICHAEL
2011 Q1 CHAN GLADYS LO
2012 Q1 CHAN GLADYS LO
2011 Q1 CHAN VINCE CHI YAN
2011 Q2 CHAN VINCE CHI YAN
2010 Q3 Chow Theresa Lynn
2010 Q4 CHOW THERESA LYNN
2009 Q3 Chu-Yip Pancy Siu Ling
2010 Q1 CHU-YIP PANCY SIU LING
2009 Q4 CHUN RICHARD KILWHAN
2010 Q4 CHUN RICHARD KILWHAN
2011 Q2 COLLIER NICHOLAS JOHN
2011 Q2 COLLIER NICHOLAS JOHAN
2009 Q4 DAVID CARY RICHARD
2010 Q4 DAVID CARY RICHARD
2011 Q1 DE MESTRAL DARCY AYMON
2011 Q2 de MESTRAL DARCY AYMON
2010 Q2 Driscoll John T.
2010 Q3 Driscoll John Timothy
2009 Q4 ENNS KIMBERLEY D
2010 Q1 ENNS KIMBERLEY D
2009 Q3 Firmenich Frederic Alexandre
2010 Q4 FIRMENICH FREDERIC ALEXANDRE
2011 Q1 FOSTER III ROBERT PORTER
2011 Q4 FOSTER III ROBERT PORTER
@Ladybug
I just want to thank you for providing that July 25th,1980 letter as it contained information that contradicted the statements issued to me recently by the Calgary US Consulate while confirming my own contentions, and I will use it as a “time-stamped” evidence should they cause me any grief…
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/02/23/letter-from-consulate-general-july-25-1980/