The Q1 2016 Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen to Expatriate, as Required by Section 6039G has been placed on public inspection for printing in Thursday’s Federal Register, five days later than required by law. By my count, it has 1,159 names (41 names per full page and 27 full pages, plus 22 names on the first page and 30 on the last page, with no entries taking up two lines this time). Let me know if you get a different count. Correction: As Andrew Mitchel and Haydon Perryman both point out, the actual count is 1,158; there’s an entry on page 7 of the the pre-publication PDF which takes up two lines.
In contrast, the number of renunciant records held by the FBI in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database increased by 1,281 during the same period, from 32,666 at last year’s end to 33,947 as of 31 March (and they added another 860 in April). The NICS renunciant figures have outstripped the Federal Register count of “published expatriates” every year since 2012, with the gap last year growing to more than a thousand — even though NICS only covers 8 USC § 1481(a)(5) renunciants while the Federal Register is supposed to include all relinquishers under any paragraph of 8 USC § 1481(a), as well as some of the estimated five to seven thousand people who file Form I-407 to abandon their green cards each quarter.
All of the people added to NICS definitely paid the US$2,350 State Department fee — twenty times that in other developed countries — which has been in effect for renunciants since September 2014, meaning that Washington D.C. collected at least US$3 million from people seeking to exercise their human right to change their nationality last quarter. The State Department claimed this obscene fee “protects” the right to change nationality — well, that’s one mighty profitable protection racket they’ve got going on there! (And it could have been even more profitable if some consulates weren’t restricting renunciation appointments to an hour a week, leading to ten-month backlogs in Dublin and Toronto.)
Media reports on individual ex-citizens
Here’s a table of nineteen people mentioned by name in media reports as having given up U.S. citizenship since the beginning of 2014; seven of their names are missing from the Federal Register (three out of eleven from 2014 and four out of six from 2015), while for two more — the ones from this year — it’s too early to say whether they’ll show up or not. I’ve also included one person who posted his own CLN on Twitter and later showed up in the list (I haven’t included people who tweeted their own CLNs but didn’t show up in the list).
Names of public figures included in this quarter’s list: South Korean pop singer Alex Kim, who renounced nearly two years ago; and Jonathan Tepper, who said in a New York Times op-ed in December 2014 that his big appointment at the U.S. consulate was scheduled for early the following year. No public figure who spoke to the media about their renunciation in 2016 has yet been included, though this quarter’s list does have one name matching that of a Hong Kong government official who took office recently: Sandra Leung Shuk-bo.
| Name | Occupation | Other citizenship |
Giving up US citizenship | Appeared in Federal Register? |
Source | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reason | Date | |||||
| Lu Shu-hao | Military | Taiwan | Service in Republic of China Army | January 2014 or earlier | No | Taipei Times |
| Sandy Opravil | Housewife | Switzerland | Save her mortgage | February 2014 | Q3 2014 | Newsweek |
| Roger Ver | Bitcoin investor | St. Kitts & Nevis | Libertarian political opinions | February 2014 | No | Bloomberg |
| Sophia Martelly | Politician | Haiti | Run for Senate of Haiti | March 2014 | Q3 2015 | Haiti Press Network |
| Ya’aqov Ben-Yehudah | Writer | Israel | Complicated; see source | March 2014 | Q2 2014 | Times of Israel |
| Sean Cavanaugh | Technology | Canada | FATCA | April 2014 | Q1 2015 | Tweeted own CLN in August 2014 |
| Mona Quartey | Politician | Ghana | Become Deputy Finance Minister of Ghana | July 2014 | No | Graphic News (Ghana) |
| Alex Kim | Singer | South Korea | Obtain South Korean citizenship & serve in military | August 2014 | Q1 2016 | Herald Business (South Korea) |
| Nicole Beaudoin | Unknown | Canada | FATCA | September 2014 | Q3 2014 | La Presse (Canada) |
| Kim Sungkyum | Military | South Korea | Be commissioned an officer in the Republic of Korea Army | December 2014 | Q1 2015 | Kookbang Ilbo (South Korea) |
| Lin Jou-min | Architect | Taiwan | Take position in Taipei city government | December 2014 | Q3 2015 | Central News Agency (Taiwan) |
| Rachel Azaria | Politician | Israel | Members of Knesset cannot hold foreign citizenships | January 2015 | No | Times of Israel |
| Jonathan Tepper | Macroeconomic analyst | United Kingdom | FATCA & other U.S. tax reporting requirements | January 2015 | Q1 2016 | The New York Times |
| David Alward | Politician | Canada | Become Canadian consul-general in Boston | April 2015 or earlier | Q3 2015 | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation |
| Alfred Oko Vanderpuije | Politician | Ghana | Stand for election to Parliament | August 2015 | No | Starr FM (Ghana) |
| Philip Ryu | Singer | South Korea | Serve in South Korean army | September 2015 or earlier | No | Money Today (South Korea) |
| Rachel Heller | Writer | Netherlands | FATCA & other U.S. tax reporting requirements even when no U.S. tax is owed | November 2015 | No | Blog (will be included in TV news programme at a later date) |
| Neil Llamanzares | Businessman | Philippines | Public opinion (his wife is running for President) | April 2015 | No | Rappler (Philippines) |
| Lee Chih-kung | Physicist | Taiwan | Appointed Minister of Economic Affairs by President-elect Tsai Ing-wen | May 2015 | No | Apple Daily (Taiwan) |
Congratulations to all those who made the expat honour roll this term!
Yes, it is precisely 1,158.
I converted the pdf into Excel – takes seconds.
Anyway – you’re right.
@Haydon Perryman
Indeed, the correct word is “precisely” (and not the word “accurately”).
The exodus continues, not surprisingly.
@Eric, thanks again. Your posts are always so comprehensive and informative. So very interesting that the press continues to only be interested in the surface of this story (if interested at all) despite the analysis that you’ve made publicly available.
Isn’t this newsworthy?
“.. All of the people added to NICS definitely paid the US$2,350 State Department fee — twenty times that in other developed countries — which has been in effect for renunciants since September 2013, meaning that Washington D.C. collected at least US$3 million from people seeking to exercise their human right to change their nationality last quarter. …….”
@Bubblebustin,
And that is not counting those who have expatriated/liberated themselves without notifying the US.
@ Eric…where do you find the Q1 2016? Does this refer to the February 2016 or is this a newer one? I am trying to find my name. I know I don’t appear on the February. I renounced December 1, 2015. I have my CLN.
@Haydon Perryman: Thanks. Good thing I didn’t put the number in the URL this time =)
@Ann #1: Here’s the PDF of the list. This is the list that will officially get published tomorrow, covering people whose CLNs the IRS received from January to March 2016.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2016-10578.pdf
@Eric…Thanks! I have been through the list and I am missing.
Where do I go to complain?
@Ann#1
I know it’s of no consolation, but some people have never shown up on the “Liberty List”.
@Ann #1
To find out anything, their stock answer is to “Go to H*ll”.
The FBI NICS running renunciation count is available as of 30 April 2016. For the month of April, 860 renunciations were recorded by the FBI. For the first four months of 2016, a total of 2,141 renunciations were recorded, or an average of 535 per month.
As always, the FBI NICS count includes US citizenship renunciations only and not relinquishments.
@Eric, Yesterday I received a response from USCIS on my FOIA request for the number of forms I-407 from 2013 to 2015. It lists “domestic” and “international” receipts. It looks like the previous data I had received from 2000 to 2012 was only for “domestic”, and the total per year is actually around 30,000.
Also, I attended a hearing in January where an IRS person confirmed that people who abandon green cards are not listed in the Federal Register.
@Ann #1: Where do I go to complain?
Mike Gogulski actually did call up the IRS to complain back a few years ago, and his name showed up in the next quarter’s list. Here’s his blog post about how he did it:
http://www.nostate.com/4089/at-long-last/
@Innocente: thanks, I updated the post
@Shadow Raider: many thanks for the new data. I wonder why USCIS didn’t start asking for SSNs when they redesigned I-407, since the IRS pointed out quite a long time ago that it was pointless to send them data on green cards abandonments without including the SSN.
@Eric,
Legally the USCIS may NOT be able to ask for SSN’s.
I see Haydon Perryman has appeared back on our IBS pages again. I had not seen or heard anything from him in a long time. I always enjoyed his earlier discussions and understanding of this issue.
I am however not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. Was not the last I heard of him that he became a FATCA compliance officer somewhere, like for a large EU financial institution, ie, not necessarily our friend? (unless he’s working from the inside to throw sand in those gears)
Oh well, the IBS pages are an open forum, and that’s what makes them beautiful.
Haydon Perryman is very active on Twitter. I saw a video once from him that made fun of the ludicrousness of FATCA.
@Shadow Raider 30,000 per year I-407, abandonment of Lawful Permanent Residence Status. This sounds like people moving overseas from the US. Is there another form or way to figure the number of people coming back to the US and therefore regaining LPR? The net may be an indication of the net flow of US persons overseas.
As usual there is at least one duplicate entry:
GFELLER-HESS MARTINA ELISABETH
GFELLER-HESS MARTINA ELISABETH
Or maybe two people with that name? 🙂
I’m not on it (relinquished in October), nor is a friend who renounced about a year ago.
I have never been on the list. Renounced years ago.
A friend of mine who just renounced is on the list.
Schrodinger’s cat. You renounced and didn’t renounce at same time, depending on which part of the govt you ask.
Is there a means of finding out (Freedom of Information Act) how much the State Department has received in renunciation fees? If so, we could divide the sum by $235 and have a better picture of the number of people who have relinquished.
I think that that the State Department would be required to honestly report how much they have received in fees. Of course, that would be in an honest world. In a dishonest corrupt world, they could just be putting the $2350 in their pockets or have wild sex parties at work.
As for anyone thinking that my suggestion of sex parties is over the top:
“Seven of the 10 DEA agents alleged to have participated in the gatherings — most of which took place at an agent’s “quarters” leased by the U.S. government — admitted to having attended the parties, the report found. The agents, some of whom had top-secret security clearances, received suspensions of two to 10 days.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/report-dea-agents-had-sex-parties-with-prostitutes-hired-by-drug-cartels/2015/03/26/adb2d53e-d3bd-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html
Another duplicate entry is
PRETRE MONICA HEIDI
PRETRE MONICA HEIDI
To extend @Socrates’ observation: “Schrodinger’s cat. You renounced and didn’t renounce at same time, depending on which part of the govt you ask.” And sometimes you renounced twice.