Your Experiences: Banking; Dealing with Consulates; Entering the US

85 thoughts on “Your Experiences: Banking; Dealing with Consulates; Entering the US”

1. UK passports only state city of birth, not country. I was born in California in a place which sounds Spanish (not one of the obvious ones like LA or SF). That was helpful when I visited North Korea and travelled on my British passport, hiding the fact that (at the time) I also had US citizenship.

2. I met an American-British dual citizen who was born in Atlanta, Georgia. On his UK passport it states his place of birth as “Georgia”. Knowing that the birthplace should show the city, he asked the passport office to correct this and put “Atlanta”. They refused to do so. I told him he was lucky. When opening bank accounts in UK, if anyone bothers to ask, he can reply that he was born in Tbilisi.

3. And today at the bank…

   “Is the business a resident of another country for tax purposes?”

   This language is moving into plausible deniability territory – kudos to the lawyers.

4. Posting here for a new friend in Canada with concerns about visiting the USA. Left the US as a baby 57 years years ago and has never set foot there are he fears an arrest warrant.

   Thoughts?

   I have invited him to post details here.

5. I was going to post a facetious comment asking what crime he committed as a baby but then thought that would be insensitive so I won’t .
   The only concern visiting the excited states is catching Covid..

6. You’re referring to an arrest warrant for not having filed tax?

   Tax isn’t an issue at the Border, as it is not in DHS’ mandate to do administrative enforcement for IRS nor do they have the information to do so (they do not have access to IRS database).

   Border patrol would execute an arrest warrant, if there were one – that being a criminal matter — BUT simply not filing 1040s cannot cause an arrest warrant to be issued.  There are bona fide reasons for not filing,such as making less than the minimum income required for filling, and failure to file is presumed to be an administrative matter.   And an application for an arrest warrant must be very detailed.   Name, date of birth, and “that’s all we know about this guy, but maybe he owes us money” is not enough, far from it.

   IRS has not pro-actively sought out people who left the US decades ago and have no financial connection to the US.  International collection is really messy and costly for IRS to enforce, which may be why they’ve been leaving sleeping dogs lie.

   No one who left the US long ago and doesn’t file has reported to Brock, since its inception in 2011, that they have been pro-actively contacted by IRS, nor have I heard/read of any such “average Joes” who left long ago being contacted.

7. My new scaremongering friend does not seem to want to post here despite his invite. I’ll cut and paste you comment to the forum if that ok, Pacifica?

   And I entirely agree, not knowing anything about a person other than they do not file US taxes, when there are good reasons for not filing, is never going to result in an arrest warrant.

8. Sure, that’s fine.

9. The arrest business is a non-issue. End of story.

   Entering the US with a Canadian passport showing US birthplace *might* cause a question or two, if the border officer is unusually awake and alert. I did it all the time and was only busted once, but they still let me in after a polite talking-to (and my producing an expired US passport that I’d tucked into my bag).

10. Yes I know, Ron.

    Just dealing with a scaremonger on another forum, he declined to chat here and tell us why Canadian folk (specifically Canadians) should be afraid of arrest at US borders for not filing US taxes.

    On a side note, sort of connected with banking…..

    A young friend of mine, never lived in the US took her stimulus check to a the local bank and asked if they could cash it, yes they could was the instant reply and the reason the bank teller was so confident was, and I quote.. “we have had quite a few of these recently”.

    This is a very small town in the north east of England?!

    I would love to know how much those fools have sent all over the world, the US public thinks twice about “citizenship based taxation” if they learn it brings in next to nothing while they send millions all over the world to support other nations economies!