This brand-new book by Rita Shelton Deverell will be of interest to Brockers because it frames (in Introduction and Epilogue) the collection of personal stories with the author’s own account of formally terminating U.S. personhood in the 2015-2016 period.
Deverell was detained while transiting through the Miami airport early in 2015 (p. 5). On the basis of 1975 Canadian citizenship, she relinquished in August 2016 after a nine-month wait (p. 239). Far too politely, she makes no mention of the US $2350 fee. Likely this was not a big item in her budget.
The chapters gather mini-biographies under the standard headings of Canada’s treadworn exceptionalist narrative: Loyalists, Underground Railroad, McCarthyism, Vietnam War, same-sex marriage.
As a black originating from Houston Texas, and as a person familiar with Indigenous circumstances, Deverell shows some awareness of the deep cracks in the Canadian façade. Unfortunately, this manifestation of consciousness is more than offset by expressions of considerable privilege, both her own and that of most of her selected “subjects.” In the end, her attachments to Canadian statist sentiments cloud her vision, truncate her “research,” and facilitate repeated promo of how “welcoming” the essence of Canada really is.
Well-paid by Canada in many respects, Deverell pipes her tune on an unusually fancy stage. The publisher, University of Regina Press, proposes that it here provides “a voice for many peoples” in a “beautifully packaged” volume. After all, genuine criticism rarely sells well.
I guess I’ll have to get the book because I’d at least like to know more about the circumstances of her detention at the Miami airport. Thanks for alerting us to the existence of this publication.
Thanks for this. I can certainly say the whole process of renunciation made me feel like a refugee. True the Canadian government did not stand up well to the large US bully. But neither did the rest of the world. I feel much more welcome and at home here in Canada.
Muzzled, that part is in the introduction which you can read online:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2019/06/19/american-refugees-turning-to-canada-for-freedom/
Damn, let me try that again:
https://www.amazon.com/American-Refugees-Collection-Shelton-Deverell/dp/0889776253#reader_B07RM4X2WC
Her intro isn’t completely accurate, as far as the US birthplace and passport check. As it was explained to me by the infrequently pleasant folks at the border, their very occasional surveillance of and interest in US birthplaces on non-US passports was a consequence of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, a post-9/11 security measure imposed in 2007, rather than FATCA. As we know, FATCA is primarily about tracking down the hidden offshore wealth of US residents, and the IRS hasn’t really demonstrated much if any interest in finding, let alone attempting to tax, non-resident citizens like the book’s author.
In the years I knew her here in Regina, through mutual friends , I thought that she was an American immigrant and didn’t realize that she felt that she was a refugee from the US. She and her husband were members of the elite arts, CBC, journalism, university community. She never mentioned any animosity toward the US, and i believe she and Rex traveled there. probably for business. When she was here she never reached out to try to contact other American refugees ( I knew a few others who were here in the mid – late70s), although I don’t know if anyone would have responded. If I have the opportunity I may borrow the book, if it’s available, or see if I can get it on a kindle. I’m surprised at Bonnie Sherr Klein being included. She is the co-author of “Slow Dance”, a book about her experience about her two major strokes, which a friend gave me after my own stroke. Klein had her first stroke while living temporarily in Philadelphia, and her husband brought her back to Montreal to be with him where he could treat her where he was a surgeon at the Jewish General Hospital there – this doesn’t sound like a refugee. To me, a refugee is afraid to return to the country from which they have fled until their status in their adopted country is secure, and their safety has been checked multiple ways. So I’m skeptical of the some of Ms. Deverell’s “refugee claims in this book, including her own. For example, why was she nervous about crossing into Canada with her Canadian husband? Maybe I just wasn’t too impressed with her elitist attitude here.
More regarding Bonnie Sherr Klein – I gave her book to a friend, but I think I remember that Ms. Klein’s husband was an American refugee in Canada, and did not feel safe going back into the US. I wonder if Dr. Klein is still alive, and if Ms Deverell attempted to interview him.
There will likely be more folks escaping the us empire for the opportunity of freedom, dignity, and the ability to live an authentically well-lived life. Thanks for the article.
Just a couple of clarifications, though this is always dangerous:
–to the initial reviewer’s comment: “Far too politely, she makes no mention of the US $2350 fee. Likely this was not a big item in her budget.”
Rita says: I worked very hard to accomplish “relinquishment” before the $2350. fee kicked in because it would have been a very big item in my budget, only regular income is the OAP.
–To Queenston: Dr. Michael Klein is definitely alive, has just published a book on maternal health care, and is also interviewed in my book along with Bonnie.
Rita Shelton Deverell
Interesting to situate the events in the very tight timeline:
Effective November 9, 2015, the application/processing fee for relinquishment of U.S. citizenship is equal to the fee for renouncing U.S. citizenship: $2,350. https://nl.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/citizenship-services/renunciation-u-s-citizenship/
Incidentally, the author has unveiled how her dramatic personal make-that-deadline scene vanished into the veneer.
A governing narrative of “fortunate free American refugee” does render unmentionable the story of how Canada persistently engages in protracted litigation against its own masses of second-class US persons.
Rita: Sorry i missed the reference to Dr. Klein’s interview. I think the microsecond when the U S still loved us as adults ended when they said “America – love it or leave it” – until they decided they could grab our money by instituting FATCA and pressuring countries all over the world to comply. The knowledge that the US was reapplying citizenship retroactively to those of us who believed we had lost US citizenship when we became Canadian citizens pre-1986, was at least partially responsible for the panic my husband and I both felt from our initial OMG moment around 2010 or 11, until our renunciation in 2014 based on our 1974 citizenship. I think that the severe stress might have been partially responsible for unusual amount of scar tissue the surgeons found in my husband’s chest during my husband’s third valve surgery 2016, which he did not survive. I’m glad that Dr. Klein is doing well.
USxCanada, strictly speaking, that is not the fee for relinquishing citizenship–one relinquishes citizenship by performing any of several relinquishing acts (such as accepting another nationality with the intent to give up one’s US citizenship). The fee is for an official document testifying that one has relinquished. The date of relinquishment would be back-dated to whenever the relinquishing act took place.
Actually, the USA was not reapplying citizenship retroactively. The tax compliance industry was reapplying citizenship retroactively and the IRS was not discouraging them from so doing. With respect to the banks, well the guidelines from the Canada Revenue Agency made it clear that pre-2004 relinquishments were to be treated as such with or without a CLN.
The mention of pre-2004 relinquishments raises the question if the CRA had submitted their financial info anyway., we’ll never know. Any person whose financial info is submitted to the IRS should know either by asking or being informed of the fact . Shoud have been mentionned in the lawsuit. The privacy commissioner also said as much. As our PM Justin had promised,more privacy for the government and more transparency for us.
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