Letter of a Canadian businessman to his dual US/Canada citizen son on the occasion of his high school graduation renounceuscitizenship.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/let…
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) March 2, 2013
I just remembered a recent conversation with a U.S. based immigration attorney and thought I would post about it.
Last month I was talking to a U.S. based immigration lawyer. He confirmed that there was a huge increase in inquiries regarding expatriation. He told me that although he understood why people were renouncing (but like any homelander) he thought it was short sighted. Why? Interestingly he said that one consideration in the renunciation decision was that:
Once you cease to be a U.S. citizen you lose the ability to automatically pass on U.S. citizenship to your future children.
He was arguing that this was a reason to retain U.S. citizenship!
Family Planning For U.S. Citizens Abroad Who Can Pass U.S. Citizenship To Their Offspring:
Some U.S. citizens abroad are capable of passing U.S. citizenship to their offspring. Read the rules here.
Althought these decisions are based on your life circumstances, it may make sense to relinquish U.S. citizenship before having children so that your children are not born with the disabilty of U.S. citizenship. As the letter from the Canadian businessman to his U.S. citizen son implies, restrictions on U.S. citizenship abroad are simply to great.
Taxes are often a minor consideration for those renouncing US citizenship isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/02/22/blo… -It’s the life restrictions stupid!
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) February 26, 2013
Family Planning For Green Card Holders Resident in the U.S. Who Are Thinking Of Having Children:
Consider having them born outside the United States.
It’s funny that in Homelander school we are taught that the 14th amendment (Everyone born in the U.S. is a citizen) was used as part of ending slavery. We can now see that the 14th amendment is being used to create slavery! Also the U.S. defintion of equality is that:
The law in its majesty prohibits both the rich and the poor from sleeping on the park bench.
Unfortunately I see the opposite quite lot on the internet: Homelanders and expats of recent vintage telling would-be renunciants not to give up citizenship until after they have children, since your children might not agree with your “politics” and it’s wrong to “force your decision on them”. Whereas of course it’s perfectly right and just for Uncle Sam to make you file onerous paperwork on educational & medical savings accounts you hold in trust for kids who have never lived in the US, demand that they register for the Selective Service at age 18, prevent them from traveling to foreign countries which Uncle Sam doesn’t like, etc.
Thanks for presenting this important information once again. A caveat is make sure not to have a child who may have developmental disability special needs as there is no way to break free of that US citizenship ball and chain.
To add your comment, Eric: Parents, Guardians or Trustees cannot renounce or relinquish the U.S. nationality of a citizen lacking full mental capacity: A guardian or trustee cannot renounce on behalf of the incompetent individual because renunciation of one’s citizenship is regarded, like marriage or voting, as a personal elective right that cannot be exercised by another. Should a situation arise of the evident compelling need* for an incapacitated person to relinquish citizenship, you are asked to consult CA/OCS/PRI for guidance.
* compelling need = life or death situation per DOS officials
…
As pointed out by recalcitrant at a Globe & Mail article:
…..he thought it was short sighted…… maybe for a small % but for the majority it should be easy besides the emotional aspect to make a clear cost/benefit analysis
Eric
It has reached the point where the renunciation decision is not related to politics. It is a matter of the defense of yourself and your family. See the following poll:
Do you feel that you muct renouce to protect yourself from the U.S. government?
http://renounceuscitizenship.wordpress.com/
I can’t really say for the Canadians since the US and Canada are so similar in terms of language and culture. But living overseas and **adopting another culture and language is a life changing experience**, at least it was for me. Small world: some Canuks from Toronto heard me speaking in my 2nd language the other day and seemed pretty dazzled, even though I don’t think it’s anything special.
If there are any psychologists on here, it would be interesting to get this confimed. Groups tend to try to keep members as part of their group. When people try to leave the group, they may try to sabotage the person, or try to dissuade the person verbally from leaving the group. In this case, the US uses financial or paperwork penalities for leaving. This is the only explanation I can think of because exempting us isn’t that hard to do. Plus, look at how journalists try so hard to dissuade people from renouncing, or even leaving the US. It’s a complete joke!
Yet we are all overseas. We don’t wear US propaganda blinders. Moving overseas was the best thing that I ever did in my life. The next best thing I look forward to is renouncing.
The real irony here is that once upon a time, it was deemed “cruel and unusual punishment” to strip someone of their citizenship for any reason.
Yet, for some reason, no one bothers to notice that if you are dumb enough to report a birth abroad, that kid is stuck with all the consequences till they are 18+ and legally allowed to even consider renouncing the thing. You can’t do it for them, nope.
Best advice on this is to simply never report it. Keep all the documentation safe and stored away so at any point in the future if the kid actually wants to stake a claim, they can. It’s actually quite trivial. Regardless of what some may claim, if requirements are met or not, it is a subject that requires verification and official recognition. “Citizenship” might be automatic, but recognition of that fact is most certainly not. Furthermore, the official stance of the state department is to just go ahead and issue visas for potential claims while urging them to investigate their potential claim. Hell, if you’re pressed for whatever reason, you can even supply false documentation to the embassy and it has absolutely zero bearing. They have no real evidence that you have been living in the US for 5 years after the age of 14, and there’s nothing they can do if you claim you cannot prove it at the time. Can’t prove a negative afterall. And come of age, if the kid has any brains and chooses not to exercise the claim, they never exist as a citizen unless they are dumb and like causing trouble for themselves.
@Fred
It’s useful to know that in ONTARIO you can request a “short form” official birth certificate copy.
It’s accepted for all official functions (drivers license, school admission bank account, etc) but while it includes parents names it DOES NOT include the parents’ place of birth.
@Wondering
I’m just flat out saying, do not, for any reason even report anything to the US government about your children abroad. Let them decide that on their own when they are old enough to grasp the full implications of it. The US system is setup in a way that it assumes that everyone wants to live in the US and as such anyone with a potential claim wants to prove it valid and live in the US. As such, it’s increasingly difficult to exist as a US citizen outside of the US. And the homies deem us as traitors anyways for not buying the bullshit that they do.
I recall seeing a media piece about 10 years back about expats in China from way back in the day. They had 3 kids here. 2 stayed in China and do quite well if you bothered to check out their stories. 1 went to the US and became a taxi driver. The taxi driver son bailed about a year after the piece and came back to China. Apparently he got fed up with being given shit about China in the US. However, the “journalistic” portrayal of the 3 brothers was intent on showing that he was the happiest and the other 2 were miserable. The other 2 actually have a large farm in China and are pretty damn happy. The brother ran off back to China to join in the family business, so it can’t be all that bad.
The best part was that after seeing that quip in the Chinese media, all the original stories based in the US were wiped clean like it never happened.
You see this really quite often here, especially among the new wealth. They imagine the US is everything they see in movies and tv shows, spend a lot of resources and give up a lot of their life to get there. And once there, they discover it’s not at all what they had expected, and not in a good way either. Risking loss of face is a major reason why they stay though, end put up with the endless bullshit. Don’t think for an instant that the US is not aware of this reality and does not exploit it as much as possible.
Oh, also, it doesn’t matter where the parents are born, US or not. If two expat americans have a kid in Canada, they still have to prove that at least one of them was in the US for the required length of time to be able to pass on citizenship. Refusing to prove that just leaves it in limbo and there’s nothing the US can do to force you to prove it either. Nor, generally, can they prove it one way or another themselves either.
@Fred
What’s interesting is that a child born of a US citizen in a foreign country through in vitro fertilization of both donated egg snd sperm cannot be assumed to be a US citizen. Ironically, the US is the world’s largest exporter of human sperm, making them easy infiltrators of other countries treasuries, if they so chose to.
@fred
I can’t find anywhere where a child born outside of the US to two US citizens its required of his/her parents to meet a physical presence test of anything other that having once had been resident in the US.
Does anyone believe it would be possible for the US to start actively pursuing the citizens of other countries who have no other connection to the US other than citizenship through descent?
@Bubblebustin
Here are the rules for passing citizenship to children:
http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_5199.html
The comments on this thread are interesting. As I read the comments from @Fred I had the following thoughts:
1. Obviously (assmuming you are also filing a Canadian tax return) you make sure that you don’t claim the kid as a dependent on either the Canadian or U.S. tax returns.
2. I am committed to the view that the U.S. treats and sees its citizens as property. If the U.S. sees its citizens as property, then they would regard the offspring of the property as property. (Example dog breeders). Obviously the U.S. sees the primary value of its citizen/property to serve the country. For most this in the form of paying taxes and for some it also includes military service. (Note exemptions on both counts for government officials. When did the U.S. last have a president who served in the military?)
3. The form 8938 (which will evolve) is a statement of foreigh property and assets. Therefore, it is perfectly logical that they will start asking whether U.S. citizens have reported all their offspring. This would be a logical extesion of the form 8938.
4. Perhaps, so that this is not missed, under the leadership of Carl Levin, the U.S. could develop a specfic:
Foreign Child Accounting Report – the FCAR Bar with the usual penalites (with a multiplier based on the number of unreported children).
This would increase the number of U.S Trojan Horse ( http://renounceuscitizenship.wordpress.com/?s=Trojan+horse )Soldiers in other nations, allowing the U.S. to actively attack the treasuries/economies of those nations.
So, obviously the answer to your question is:
Yes, of course, it will only be a matter of time.
@USCitizenAbroad Yes, I will not be surprised to wake up one day in the next decade or less and see some governmental campaign against “heartless tax-evading parents” who are “abusing their offspring” by depriving them of the “wonderful gift of U.S. citizenship”. Accompanied by a national outcry along these lines:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2sWSVRrmo
It will no doubt be accompanied by a bunch of PR agency-promoted stories about some bright young kid who wants to attend a US university but is having trouble coming to the US, and it’s all the parents’ fault for not registering the child at birth and cooperating to help him establish his claim to US citizenship. (In all the brouhaha none of the so-called “investigative journalists” will mention the fact that it’s actually the State Department screwing things up by refusing to issue the kid an F visa.)
For a contemporary example of how the media spins visa issues relating to children — remember all those stories from a few months ago about that British girl who had grown up in the US but was being kicked out of the country when she turned 21?
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/06/smallbusiness/visa-entrepreneurs/index.htm?iid=GM
As was blatantly clear to anyone who understands these things, her parents deliberately got E-2 (treaty investor) non-immigrant visas instead of EB-5 green cards when they came to the US so they wouldn’t have to deal with “citizenship-based taxation” of green card holders when they went back to the UK. Then USCIS seems to have denied her an F-1 visa to study at a US university, probably because her parents lived in the US and so she was presumed to have “immigrant intent”. But of course the clueless reporter spun the story as “we need moar green cards 4 everybuddy!”
@bubblebustin, my bad… the criteria is different, but it’s still there. It requires that at least one parent lived in the US at some time prior to the birth. Technically though, it’s entirely possible for 2 americans who have lived overseas their entire life to produce a stateless child. When 1 parent is a citizen however, it drags into consideration the residency requirement, which, as I mentioned, requires evidence such as transcripts or bills or whatever else to prove that the residency requirement was met. As they cannot compel you to do you, and simply do not have the resources to prove it themselves, it’s possible to just never make the claim at all. Nor can they deny it at any point it is made in the future.
I wonder if we will ever hear a case where a child sues his parents for registering him as a US citizen at birth.
Interesting question @bubblebustin re the ability of a child to bring suit against the parent who saddles them with the USP burden:
Registering him/her at birth as a USP, or even conferring the status via parenthood, effectively deprives the child of the ability to access the normal and equal economic benefits of being a Canadian citizen (non-USP) or permanent resident (non-USP):
– such as being able to use our Canadian federal government-blessed deferred or tax-free savings. This means that such a child would be deprived by their parent of such benefits as saving for post-secondary tuition via the aid of a RESP with its matching Canadian government grant – effectively making them pay a higher tuition cost than an equivalent Canadian – and denying them government aid. And, denying them the opportunity to save tax-free using a TFSA – in effect denying them the government ‘gift’ of the Candian taxes that would have otherwise been imposed. They, like all of us, would subsidize those benefits for all others in Canada who can access them, since we would all be subject to the same Canadian tax system, but denied the same benefits.
– The child could also sue us for restricting their mobility – restricting their freedom of movement: re ability to travel to Cuba, and into/over the US without the US passport and its tie to tax status.
– the child could sue us for saddling them with a lifelong economic disabililty since the inherited US status imposes involuntary annual financial asset and tax reporting (and associated costs and jeopardy) for life and beyond (via estate).
Now that would be very interesting. A mock trial or suit of that kind would certainly draw curiousity and media attention if only for novelty value.
Perhaps a public mock trial would be a useful and creative tool.
Why not put Uncle Sam on public trial – for crimes against our children, and all those deemed ‘US taxable persons’ ‘abroad’ who are jeopardized and persecuted as potential tax criminals only on the basis of conferred or accidental citizenship or birth?
This is even more evident in the case of a child who will never be able to renounce.
@badger and bubblebustin,
I love it — a mock trial or mock class action suit against us by all of our US children. That surely would draw attention.
As far as the US having any way of knowing whether or not I lived in the US long enough to pass along citizenship to my children. Actually they know exactly how long I lived in the US. The only American thing I had was a birth certificate. But in order to file taxes, the US in it’s wisdom requires all US citizens to have an actual Social Security Number whether you want one or not. This can only be applied for at a US consulate in person. But you can’t just show them your birth certificate & expect them to simply order a card for you. No, you must account for where you have been all your life since you left the US. in the way of documented proof. So every year I have lived in Canada has been accounted for. Would they have any way of knowing who my children are? Right now for me they wouldn’t care anyway because with current rules my children are not US citizens. But should that law change retroactively, would they have anyway of knowing who they are? Well actually yes they could make some educated guesses. Everyone in my entire family had the misfortune to have me as a signing authority on at least one account. & I filed those blasted FBARs.
I have an SSN obviously, however entry and exit data is simply not allowed to be tracked in the US. As far as the IRS is concerned, I don’t think I have ever actually given them much in the way of real information, and as the clock starts ticking at age 14 for the pre-86 requirements, I sure as hell hadn’t filed anything in the way of taxes at that age. Nor do they have any evidence they can access which prove residence within the US. There just simply, isn’t anything to go off of and if confronted with it, I am perfectly cool with flat out lying about it. Lying to an embassy isn’t a crime.
No, I mean seriously, there’s literally nothing they can do to me. I can lie my ass off to them at will. Oh no, perjury in the US (a place I do not live, own anything or at least anything in my name), living in a country with no extradition and permanent residence status anyways. They have no biometrics on me, I have never submitted fingerprints or in any way entered myself into the system. And at least over here, it’s child’s play as a brand new citizen to pick out a new name, a new identity and hell, even change official place of birth for documents.
As far as lying goes, it’s kinda simple really. You can lie without it being construed as a lie. “I do not recall” seems to work pretty well.
@badger, Calgary 411
I haven’t yet responded to your suggestions about a mock lawsuit because I hadn’t quite figured out how I would until now. In some ways it would be an interesting exercise with perhaps the result we want, but it would involve exploiting a child who may already be a victim of US policies concerning its citizens. It would also involve USP’s outing themselves in the process, unless of course it was staged by bona fide actors.
Calgary, have you contacted any Canadian associations who represent the disabled to get their reaction to your son’s predicament?
There’s no doubt that we are inflicting harm on our loved ones through passing on US citizenship to them when it prevents them from thriving where they live, or leaves them with no other choice than to break the laws of the country of which they are also a citizen but where they do not reside. It’s a lose/lose situation for the USP abroad. I have crossed paths with many Americans as I’ve been traveling for the last 5 weeks (of course with a Canadian passport) and I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to tell them how US citizenship sucks when you live abroad. I wonder how these Americans would react if I told them that I am going to renounce US citizenship because the world considers it a handicap and prevents me from taking advantage of all of the benefits of living in Canada. I imagine at first they may believe that Canada has laws that discriminate against Americans and it would require more explaining that the time at airplane lineup would allow.
@bubblebustin, badger,
Of course for me it would have to be completely “mock” to protect my son. It seems that something so drastic as our children having to bring a class-action suit against their USP parents for their USP citizenship would be the only way to get the story across. I have had well-meaning media “offers” that would feature, and in my mind thus exploit, my son, so NO.
Since I nor any other Parent, Guardian or Trustee or a USP family member who is developmentally delayed or otherwise mentally incapacitated (and would not understand the concept of citizenship nor the benefits or consequences of its renunciation) do not have the right to make such a decision for our loved one, it is my decision to go forward as “don’t ask / don’t tell”. I would prefer the peace of mind of resolution of this absurdity but realize, as it stands, that is not going to happen. I will, though, become very vocal on this subject if the US threatens my son in any way. I’ll have to live with the hope that they wouldn’t be so stupid for no gain to them, but that threat will be there for me until I’m gone – then the burden placed on my daughter for her brother. It is not within my power to change.
I have though told my family’s story to many government representatives, including Canada’s Finance Minister Flaherty, the head of Alberta’s Human Services, Alberta’s Assured Income for Severely Handicapped program, Alberta’s Persons with Developmental Disabilities and PLAN, the organization which introduced and worked for the federal government for implementation of the Registered Disability Savings Plan. Hands are tied. There will be mention of this in the book being written by Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, Ph.D., MA in Migration Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, University of Kent, Brussels.
Here are the views I submitted in a comment for the Canadian Community Living Association publication, to an excellent article called “Apple Trees for the Future” http://www.cacl.ca/news-stories/blog/view-point-apple-trees-future#comment-225. I was glad to see that it got through moderation. It is specifically about the innovative Canadian Registered Disability Savings Plans (RDSP), also considered by the US a “foreign trust” so taxable to the US and reportable on IRS forms 3520 and 3520A. If we are to be discriminated against for having such accounts in that the cost of administration will negate any benefit, at least tell every Canadian that if they are also a US Person, these are not effective savings plans for them. Warnings will save some people from this nightmare.
The following is a comment on this subject I made previously at Isaac Brock, which I am unable to link to so put in its entirety here:
In the meantime, I will continue to advocate, as best I can, on this for others without a voice though I am at peace that I have done as much as possible for my own family member’s situation.
@calgary411
The USG would find you to be a formidable foe, should they be stupid enough to persecute you and your son. Don’t mess with mama bear! There is one part of your comment in response to the “Apple Trees for the Future” article that I question. Would the Canadian government be within their rights to claw back their contribution to yours son’s disability savings? What would disqualify him, after all doesnt he meet all the criteria to receive it here in Canada? In this regard, I worry more about low information Canadians whistleblowing us to the IRS.
@bubblebustin and @calgary, when I mentioned the idea of a mock trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_trial , I really thought of it with proxies or a simulation with role players, not a scenario in which real specific people would be outed, or real children and minors involved.
I was thinking more of this http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/136422-protesters-hold-mock-trials-over-public-service-cuts or the kind of thing that the Raging Grannies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raging_Grannies or others might do to bring attention to the issue in a way that captures the essence, is understandable by a wide audience, and appeals to the public.
It could only be done with either a degree of anonymity, or by those who are clearly already beyond any possibility of backlash.