The Officiant asked:
Petros, will you take [future Mrs. Petros] to be your wife?
Will you love her, comfort her, honour and protect her,
and, forsaking all others,
be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?Petros answered:
I will. …
I, Petros, take you, [future Mrs. Petros],
to be my wife, to have and to hold
from this day foward;
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love, cherish, and worship,
till death us do part,
according to God’s holy law;
and this is my solemn vow.
I relinquished my US citizenship on February 28, 2011. But in my heart, I really relinquished my US citizenship over 20 years earlier in a Vancouver church. The United States requires ultimate allegiance and total loyalty. It is not willing to take second place. But I was unfaithful to this birth obligation and aspired to another calling, that of husband. So I took this solemn pledge and agreed to forsake all others and to marry my wife.
I admit being a relic of the traditional past. In today’s post-Christian culture, the American government begrudges other loyalties. A man or woman born an American citizen is first and foremost a taxpayer, and all other loyalties and ties be damned. As governments grow in power they demand more and more of the citizen’s allegiance to the point of first choking and then destroying all other institutions, especially its main rivals, family and religion. The United States has become a jealous god. Only two generations ago, a woman who married a foreign national and lived abroad lost her US citizenship–as is the case of Mrs. Petros’ grandmother, who lived out her retirement years as a Green Card holder in the USA despite having been born a US citizen in US territory. Her marriage to a British national and her residence in Canada disqualified her as a loyal citizen until 1986, but she did not seek to regain her US citizenship and was content to pass away a Green Card holder. Twenty-two years ago I too agreed to forsake other allegiances and married a Canadian and took up permanent residence in Canada seven years later.
People say often that they could never give up their US citizenship. But for me it was an easy thing to do. The basis of the Judeo-Christian ethic and of much law, historically, in the Western world, is the Decalogue, which is silent regarding loyalty towards the state. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. Ultimate allegiance belongs to God not the state. “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.” The family has the next call to obedience in the Decalogue. The Torah also requires the succession of a man’s loyalty to his wife from his parents as a foundation of the Creation (Gen 2.24): “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” The authority of the state has no foundation in the Ten Commandments. Rather, the tyrannical power of the state rests in its ability to terrorize its citizens.
On the American Expatriates group on Facebook, one contributor said that if he were the Canadian and his wife the American, and she insisted upon reporting their bank accounts to the IRS, he would divorce her. In effect he is interpreting FBAR as a violation of the marriage vows, or at least the concept of marriage as an institution of faithfulness. To report a spouse’s private bank accounts in Canada to a foreign and hostile government is not consistent with the institution of marriage in which ultimate loyalty is to one another. I have said the following many times to the media: The IRS has no right to my Canadian spouse’s account information. The FBAR requirement and FATCA put me in a Catch-22. Either I remain loyal to my birth country that I hadn’t lived in for 25 years, or I remain faithful to my spouse. Thus, I relinquished my US citizenship for love. And I do not give a damn about all the self-righteous American Homelanders who think I am a traitor to the USA. In my opinion, such people are idolators, worshiping their god, these United States of America.
Glad to see that it is expressed as “I will” (it is an act of the will)…
NOT the Hollywooded version of “I do”.
Welcome back, Petros.
“On the American Expatriates group on Facebook, one contributor said that if he were the Canadian and his wife the American, and she insisted upon reporting their bank accounts to the IRS, he would divorce her.” Sad to see…
I, on the other hand, am going to fight tooth and nail for my marriage. …and I am the Canadian in the family.
In my opinion, FATCA affects the PIGS in life. Your relationship with People, Institutions (Financial), Government and your Security.
If someone else can come up with a better acronym please post it.
There you have it, FATCA affects the PIGS in life.
@Shovel, thanks for the welcome.
@Animal, I understand.
@ Don, Well, I am not about to call my wife one of the pigs in my life. LOL.
Great post Petros. With the addition of (at least some) of the members of the “American Expatriates” group I think that this situation is reaching the boiling point.
There is NO DOUBT that the laws of U.S. citizenship are in direct conflict with the obligations of marriage. Google the posts on “FBAR Marriage”
I speak of the “laws of U.S. citizenship”. There is no correlation between U.S. law and any kind of morality. Law after law is imposed on Americans without their consent or without their understanding of what these laws are. U.S. citizens have fewer freedoms than the citizens of many many other countries. To keep it in perspective though, Americans can take comfort in the fact that they have more freedoms than citizens of some other countries. But, the freedoms of Americans are eroding every day.
As Americans abroad we can see this. Homelanders cannot.
The relationships that governments can have with its “citizens” are defined on a continuum that is somewhere between “freedom” at one end and “slavery” at the other end.
It’s clearly reaching the point where U.S. citizenship is closer to slavery than it is to freedom.
This is evident to all but the most “Patriotic Homelanders Abroad” (who regard these laws as the price they pay for the “privilege of living abroad”).
At the end of the day, all a person or a country has is his “moral capital”. In 1946 the USA was given the privilege of allowing the U.S. dollar to be the world reserve currency. FATCA is nothing but a betrayal of that trust. FATCA (and other “extra-territorial” initiatives) have seriously and permanently eroded the “moral capital” that the United States has left.
At present, the U.S. is nothing more than a “debt ridden thug” that is consuming it’s remaining moral and monetary capital. All in the name of who knows what.
What the U.S. government can’t seem to understand is that the best investment it could make in the future of the United States would be to be liked and respected by the rest of the world. But that’s not going to happen. At present the USA has some allies but no real friends.
Much of this is the result of President “Change You Can Believe In” and his FATCA Party.
But, yes to turn the information of a Canadian spouse over to the IRS is an absolute violation of the assumptions of marriage. As FATCA and FBAR become better known in Canada this will be a bigger and bigger problem.
@ Petros
So good to read you here today. I hope you’re feeling well now. You are our father founder and Brock’s always better when you’re around. When we thought Mr. E’s USness was a threat to me he gallantly offered me a paper divorce and I truly appreciated his desire to save me from IRS harm but then the tables turned and now I’m a threat to him. I’m afraid I haven’t been as gallant as he was though and as yet I have not offered him a paper divorce. I think The_Animal would be better at coming up with the words to express how I feel about this menace to US/nonUS marriages.
@USCitizenAbroad, It is especially nice to read your comments to my posts. You always have something good to add.
There are some (small-l) libertarians in the US who see the problem–and there are some Americans abroad who don’t. I have begun to call these folks, “Homelanders Abroad”.
@The_Animal:
There are many husbands who think as you do.
Many who are the Canadian in the family and refuse any notion that a foreign country is entitled to ANY information about his finances.
Nor are they willing to entertain any kind of severance of relationship of man and wife, EVER! Rather these men are staunch supporters of their wives and adamant that the US be told to F**k O*f and seething anger at the Canadian wimps who capitulated so quickly and easily.
Which is why it surprises me that we do not have more support for our lawsuit.
Of course knowing what the NWO plan for all the individuals in countries around the world it is important to pick our battles and the ADCS is one we cannot ,nor should, ignore!
And that brings me to the question of just what is Bopp and the US litigation up to anyway? Been pretty quiet from that quarter, has it not?
It’s no way to get the baby’s shoes!
@EmBee, thanks. I can’t sit, but I can walk. So doing better.
And here is a cheesy song from my teen years, dedicated to Mr. and Mrs EmBee:
Well, if she’s going to put her country over the marriage, let alone my rights under Canadian law, then it’s good riddance to bad rubbish.
I’m sorry, but if she’s not willing to stand by my side, and if she’s willing to place me as second best, for anything OTHER than her kids, then it’s not a marriage worth saving. I’ve been there before. It doesn’t work. Never again.
Good new term, *Homelanders Abroad*. Theirs is a different story than those of us who have CHOSEN to move from the USA and CHOSEN to be members of those societies. Some of us grew up in the US, have good memories of those years and may still have family in the US, with that family and our memories the only connection. We live in, work in, marry in, raise families in, pay taxes in, for the many benefits our CHOSEN countries give us,those countries outside the USA. We believed that slavery had been abolished but we have learned differently.
And, who knew, FATCA/FBAR as grounds for divorce?
Petros, I’m so glad you are doing better and today again a part of this baby you breathed life into and gave all of us the platform we have.
@ Petros
Aaaaah … I love the Captain and Tennille. Glad you’re improving — walking’s good but I would really miss sitting. I was exhausted from gardening today and enjoying a sit at the computer but now with that music I could almost think about getting up to bop around maybe just a little bit. 🙂
Citizenship and loyalty is not the problem. Citizenship-based Taxation is.
How did we get to this point? How many tax cheats took advantage of the loopholes to evade obligations and thereby shifting a higher burden to those who followed the rules – thus leading to tighter rules for all? Even Canada and the UK put citizen expats through the litmus test of residential ties to determine if foreign income is taxed or not. There has to be a reason for it.
The US ignores the first $100K or so of foreign income and then expects a share of the rest (starting at 28%). Do the expat host nations not see this as a drain on their own economies? This is earned income from work done under their authority that is being shipped to the US rather than staying in the foreign economy as stimuli for goods and services?
The need to report foreign bank accounts (FBAR) and activities has to be one way the metadata is compared to that reported by the expat host nations under FATCA. What if it is inaccurate? After all, it would be in foreign nations’ best interest to under-report which lessens the US tax share, hence keeping more for their own economies. Who has the burden of proof? Nuts to habeus corpus?
US politicians (‘law makers?’) cannot be trusted to look after our special interest group – that takes influence and access and constituency – none of which we have.
Maybe there is a precedent in the Census Bureau’s approach? In a report from September 2001 [ http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/overseas/overseas-congress-report.html ] they make the point of how difficult it would be to derive useful information from any voluntary expat census because of the USUAL RESIDENCE rule:
[quote] “2.3 What are the implications of applying the concept of usual residence to Americans living overseas?
Counting Americans living overseas for purposes of apportionment, redistricting, and federal funds allocation requires that we ensure compliance with the concept of “usual residence.” This concept is the principle underlying the stateside residence rules. “Usual residence” is the place where a person lives and sleeps most of the time. Many Americans living overseas do not satisfy this definition of stateside “usual residence,” even if they could provide a home state of record, would be eligible to vote, or expressed an intent to return to the United States.
“A change in the application of this concept to accommodate the counting of Americans overseas could have an impact on how this concept is applied stateside, for example, for people with multiple residences, people residing in group quarters, students, and people with no usual residence. A change in these rules could have dramatic effects on the allocation of population or money to the states.
“2.4 Which components of the Americans overseas population should the Census Bureau count?
Before we can count Americans overseas, the universe has to be well-defined and described. For example, would a census of Americans overseas include, singly or in combination:
â—¦Only people with a proof of U.S. citizenship?
â—¦Only U.S. citizens who can provide a home state of record?
â—¦Only U.S. citizens who intend to return to the United States?
â—¦Only U.S. citizens overseas for less than a specified time?
â—¦Only people born in the United States–some of whom may have subsequently become citizens of the country in which they currently reside?
â—¦Only U.S. citizens who pay taxes?
â—¦People holding dual citizenship–a combination of U.S and second-nation citizenship?
â—¦Naturalized U.S. citizens who may or may not return to the United States?
â—¦Children born in the United States of non-citizens, but who only lived in the United States for a short time?
“A related issue is determining which dependents living overseas we should include in the universe. Should we include, for example:
â—¦Only those spouses and children who are U.S. citizens?
â—¦All spouses and children, whatever their citizenship?
â—¦Other relatives in the household, such as parents and siblings?
“The definition of this universe has implications for data quality, coverage, data requirements, and data collection methodology.” [unquote]
This number we see of 8.5 million US nationals living abroad has to be taken with a grain of salt – “The Census 2000 apportionment counts included close to 580,000 federal employees and dependents (226,363 military personnel, 30,576 civilian employees, and 319,428 dependents of military and civilian employees).” Makes me wonder how many are true expat wage earners, excluding spouses and children, and how many more are students, or volunteers and how many are just temporarily employed by US firms outside the US and still subject to state and federal taxation? Might mean the actual number of those affected by FATCA is less than half the total estimate.
So, if we are not counted, how can we be accountable?
I was glad to renounce when I did at the bargain price of $450 (08 Feb 2012), but I fear it’s going to get worse before it gets better. “Keep your stick on the ice… we’re all in this together!” [Red Green]
Embee, trust me…my invective would be filled with so many pungent, and barnyard aromatic four, five, six and seven letter words (that would invoke hellfire and brimstone from any Catholic nun) that Barack Obama’s and his lackey senators’ and congressmen’s as well as Harper and his Conservative scumbags’ collective ears would start burning and they’d spontaneously combust.
@ The_Animal
Really? Even seven letter words? I’d love to see Harper and his flunkies spontaneously combust. My language can be quite salty when I’m muttering around the house (often happens when I get a brief glimpse of TV
newspropaganda) but I get rather subdued when my fingers are doing the talking on the keyboard.@Leonardo, thank you for that excerpt re the census report http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/overseas/overseas-congress-report.html and the very good questions posed. Very valuable. Underscores the ridiculousness of considering us ‘residents’ for tax purposes, yet we cannot be counted for any of the purposes of apportionment – or of making sure that we might somehow derive those fantastical ‘benefits’ that supposedly our taxableperson status is rationalized by ala the CBT apologists and the FATCAnatics.
@Petros;
I am very glad to read a post from you here again. Best wishes to you. Thank you for all your efforts in the inception of IBS and the support you extended. Take care.
@all, I too thought that divorce might be forced on my family as the only way to put my UStaxablecitizenship into a kind of financial quarantine and protect the assets of my Canadian-only breadwinner spouse and my Canadian-only childs birthday and educations savings. We wasted substantial hard earned savings in useless compliance costs and sacrificed family time and emotional energy trying to cope with the stress, uncertainty and fallout from this – and to secure my freedom papers. The US has a lot to answer for – and so do the callous Canadian Con MPs who laughed and jeered at our concerns and plight during the Finance Committee hearings into the FATCA portion of the OmniBill that they abused their majority to hide and pass it in https://youtu.be/slqAkW_eeUA .
Support the ADCS challenge. Keep donating. Show the US and Canadian governments that we will not let this pass and we will not lie down and surrender our rights without a fight.
As ADCS says;
Our cause is just!
@Petros – Didn’t think of the wife part of the equation with my PIGS acronym only trying to think of an easy way for people not in the know to understand FATCA. How about GIPS in life (at least according to the Scrabble word generator online?)
PIGS resonated because of the Euro bailouts with Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain or PIGS.
Petros: Wonderful post! So glad to see you back here!
USCAbroad: You are so right that this situation is at boiling point while we wait and wait and wait for decisions about the most personal aspects of our lives (our finances and our financial relationships with our spouses) to be made by other people. When are we going to hear the “verdict” from the Senate Finance Committee?
@Muzzlednomore
The report from the Senate Finance Committee will not end this. The SFC will do one of two things:
1. Recommend RBT (which I predict) – in which case the issue will move to the legislative process. In this case the legislative process will be painfully slow. If this is the option, my personal view is that the process will be helped if there were a lawsuit against CBT in the USA.
2. Not Recommend RBT – in which case the issue will probably not move to the legislative process. If this is the option, my personal view is that the process will be helped if there were a lawsuit against CBT in the USA.
Therefore, my personal view is that the process will be helped if there were a lawsuit against CBT in the USA.
Excellent post! It really made me think. I too am a relic of the traditional past, believing that the spouse comes first in one’s loyalty. You made the correct moral choice. I never thought of the US as a “jealous god” before, but I see your point.
One more thing: American homelanders and Democrats who consider us Brockers as “traitorous” are hypocritical unless they also deem George Washington and his compatriots also traitorous for cutting ties with Britain, including its right to tax them.
Thank you for the post Petros.
I suspect my life would be very different if my husband just didn’t happen to also be a US citizen. In a way it’s a relief, but it would have been much better if at least one of us had been spared.
I’d probably be ostriching, not writing letters to the SFC if things weren’t as they are. It is my “density” I suppose.
@Leonardo
You know what I worry about? The US government going from essentially ignoring its non-residents to wasting several years and millions of dollars in scant resources trying to make citizenship based taxation work. If they aren’t going to outright embrace a system like almost every other nation’s and adopt RBT, then maybe the best thing in the long-run would be to strictly enforce CBT, because…
The best way to have a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly – Abraham Lincoln.
Unfortunately, he didn’t provide a time line on how long it would take.
@Bubblebustin, I still worry that the US will somehow hey to re-impose CBT even on former citizens and greencard holders. Even with my CLN in hand, I’m not convinced that I’ll ever be completely free from the IRS. Perhaps it’s an ongoing uncertainty I’ll just have to learn to live with.
@monalisa
I relinquished but do not have a cln but have a formal us govt letter that States I relinquished
At times I would like a cln so I could go to the west coast of eire look sw and say fu
What holds me back is your thought on getting dragged back in the system
As a note I have had no problems with an Eu passport entering the us
USCAbroad: I hope you are right that the SFC will recommend RBT; and if a lawsuit in the US against CBT would help to speed up the process of change then I fervently hope that those in a position to make it happen will do so ASAP.
Jan: precisely right! The US has collectively forgotten its roots. I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing before Sept. 11, 2001 is taught in history class anymore.
Bubblebustin: did you mean “destiny”? I don’t find you “dense” at all! 🙂 I agree with you. It is our “destiny” (and/or tough luck, I suppose) to fight this tax war. I have always been passionately interested in the lives of my Revolutionary War ancestors; I never thought I would find myself standing in their boots finishing the battle they thought they had won.