Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

Monthly Archives: August 2013

Counting the Uncountable: Overseas Americans by Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, University of Kent at Brussels Joe Costanzo, George Mason University

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Some of us (many of us?) may have been interviewed for this well-researched book and awaiting its publication.

Where Are Overseas Americans?
Who Are Overseas Americans?
Counting the Uncountable
How Many Americans Leave the United States in a Given Year?
Census Counts
Other Estimates
Counting Overseas Populations: An International Challenge

Dear Survey Respondents, dear Interviewees–

Thank you so much for your patience with me! Turns out book-writing is a long process. However, it’s nearly here! I’m delighted to let you know, if you haven’t happened across it already, that my book is listed on Amazon – although it’s not actually published yet.

… until the book is actually published, which is scheduled for January 2014. …

In the meantime, a colleague and I wrote this piece, which you might find interesting (the book expands on these points): http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/print.cfm?ID=951

May 17, 2013

The migration debate in the United States — a country with a long history of immigration and currently home to around one-fifth of all international migrants — often focuses on the number of foreign born who enter and reside in the country. Much less focus is paid to Americans who live abroad. While small numbers of high-profile Americans such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, or Josephine Baker have long captured the imagination of the American public for their adventures in Paris and elsewhere, there are millions more living lower-profile and very different lives.

The US government does not formally track how many Americans leave the United States, whether temporarily or permanently, meaning that one has to rely on estimates to get a sense of how many US citizens live overseas, in addition to the 289 million US citizens (out of the total population of 311.6 million) who live in the United States. As the Census Bureau reported to Congress in 2001: “No accurate estimate exists of the total number of Americans living abroad or of the other components of this population. At this time, we cannot estimate accurately the size of the universe of the overseas population.”

Despite efforts by American organizations and the US government to achieve more consistency, current estimates vary from 2.2 million to 6.8 million — a substantial range. This population’s size, characteristics, and distribution remain an enigma — as do their economic, political, and societal impacts both in the United States and abroad.

This article explores what is known about Americans overseas — common destinations, occupations, and motives for leaving the United States (and ultimately staying abroad) — and also examines the challenges of calculating the population’s size and distribution. It draws on a variety of sources, including the US Census Bureau, the US State Department, the World Bank, and a forthcoming study based on interviews conducted in 2011 with 115 Americans in Berlin, Paris, and London, and a survey with 884 respondents, based primarily in Western Europe.

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

My best regards,
Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels

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South Korean diaspora policy and the thirty-five thousand U.S. green card holders living in South Korea

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From an article last week in a South Korean newspaper, I was able to get a lead on some statistics I’d been trying to find for a while: the number of U.S. green card holders who reside in South Korea without making declarations of permanent return (which would require them to cancel their green cards). I’m still working on gathering all the earlier statistics from government yearbooks, but after the jump I translated the article itself, which provides some interesting insight into South Korea’s diaspora policy and how they are reforming it to cut unnecessary red tape and adapt to the reality of a globally-mobile population.

To summarise: right now there’s more than thirty-five thousand green card holders who are recorded as living in South Korea, up by about 30% since they started keeping track in 2005. These are distinct from the 1,991 people who made declarations of permanent return last year; the latter had their green cards or U.S. citizenship cancelled and their residents’ registration restored, whereas the former still have green cards and so face certain restrictions on financial transactions and real estate purchases in South Korea.

A newly-proposed reform plan would remove the requirement to give up foreign permanent residence or citizenship in order to restore South Korean resident registration. This is good news for the Korean diaspora, though the reform plan probably also means that the South Korean government will stop keeping statistics on how many of its citizens give up U.S. green cards.

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More from Laura Saunders @WSJ – Overseas Americans: Time to Say ‘Bye’ to Uncle Sam?

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The good news is that renunciations of U.S. citizenship are getting publicity.

The bad news is that the article does not recognize the needless suffering, desperation, and fear of Americans Abroad.

That said, it is better than most articles coming out of the Homeland.

Here is a comment that seems to me to be “right on”:

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Articles at globalnews.ca and occupy.com with contributions from the Isaac Brock Society

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Some of our bloggers have made some nice contributions to articles this week:
An article at occupy.com cites Victoria Ferauge and Marvin van Horn:

Exposed: IRS Is Colluding With Banks To Unfairly Target U.S. Citizens Abroad

I and others spoke with globalnews.ca

Why are so many American expats giving up citizenship? It’s a taxing issue

Our own Eric is behind the article’s reporting of the discrepancy between the numbers at the FBI and the Federal Registry:

More expatriate Americans are renouncing their citizenship than at almost any other time. And comparing statistics from the FBI indicates the State Department may have been lowballing its numbers.

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Will Europe pay the price for one-sided US #FATCA demands?

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A new post from Jim Jatras

It seems that “automatic exchange of information” (AEOI) is all the fashion at the European Commission as a means to combat “revenue losses incurred due to tax fraudsters and evaders.”  To that end, a recently proposed Council Directive would base an AEOI “pilot action” on model intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) drafted pursuant to a “joint statement” last year by the U.S. Treasury Department and five EU governments for “reciprocal” implementation of the U.S. “Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act” (FATCA).

As an American, I cannot tell Europeans they should not base their tax policy on AEOI or the FATCA model.  But if the Commission or EU Member States believe that the U.S. will actually provide “reciprocity” for the kind of information they are committing to deliver to Washington, they should reconsider their assumptions.

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South Korean foreign ministry: 1,991 of our citizens gave up U.S. citizenship or green cards last year

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Today, in honour of Liberation Day, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) published the 2013 edition of its annual Diplomatic Whitebook. Among other facts and figures, it revealed that 1,991 “reverse migrants” from the U.S. restored their South Korean resident registration and provided proof that they had given up U.S. green cards or citizenship in 2012, slightly down from 2,128 the year before.

This number contrasts sharply with the lists provided by the U.S.’ Internal Revenue Service last year, which contained only 932 names of people of any nationality who gave up U.S. citizenship or green cards. Among those 932, only sixty-three had Korean-language given names — itself the highest total since 1997, but still far below the true number hinted at in other sources. (Ex-green-card holders are only supposed to show up in the IRS’ lists if they held their status “long term”, i.e. for at least eight years; as I discuss later in this post, the IRS seems to think that at least half of ex-green-card-holders meet this criteria.)

Fortunately, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act Request by Shadow Raider, we have another number to which we can compare this: the number of people reported by U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services to have filed Form I-407 to abandon their U.S. lawful permanent residence status. The MFA’s count of South Korean reverse migrants from the U.S. has generally been 9–13% of USCIS’ count of ex-green-card-holders of all nationalities, and 2012 was no exception. The agreement between these two sources coming from bureaucracies on opposite sides of the globe speaking two different languages — and their common disagreement with the data published by the IRS — is yet another indication that the IRS data is wildly inaccurate.

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Has your life been stolen from you by the IRS? Comment of the day

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AtticusinCanada has written a nice little summary of her sufferings–I nominate it for the comment of the day award:

My whole life has changed because of this. I’ve felt immense grief that the only way to deal with and move on is to renounce. I always assumed if you were born some place you were entitled to that citizenship without any other need of proof. As long as you didn’t commit treason or some serious crime you were a citizen. I had never, once heard of an FBAR! I called the IRS many times over the years to make sure I still was within their rules and nobody every mentioned such a thing. Nobody mentioned when after 9/11 we were required to get a U.S. passport either. Some have said that it’s written on page 4 of the passport. Well, my vision is VERY bad even with glasses and I never even attempted to read those pages. I assumed if it was anything important I would have been told about it and barely glanced at the tiny,tiny print on those pages. Couldn’t someone have informed us when we landed here? In fact up until I had to get a U.S. passport I wasn’t too sure I was even a citizen there anymore sometimes since the person I spoke with when I landed at Buffalo insisted over and over that “You may lose your U.S. citizenship over this” So when I went for that passport in the back of my mind I was worried they might not give me one. When they did I mentioned the fact I’d been told I might lose my citizenship and the person there did say “No, you were misinformed.” I came here in 1980 so maybe the rules were different or something back then but, I only landed and had not taken citizenship.

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Members of #FATCA Compliance Complex are the moral descendents of Boston’s tea smugglers

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This post appeared on the RenounceUScitizenship blog

Thought I might add this to the “possible ISB” reading list. Niall Ferguson is somewhat of  a “celebrity academic” and author of a number of books including “The Ascent of Money” – which I would highly recommend. In any case, he is also the author of “Empire” which is described as a book about:

“The rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power.”

I would recommend this book as an aid to understanding what is going on in the world today.

Obviously the intention is provide possible lessons for America.

Here is an interview on TVO with the author.

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A congressional speech on the centennial of the Expatriation Act of 1868

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Below I present the May & June 1968 correspondence of Durward G. Hall (R-MS) with Kentucky Democrat Fred Vinson of the Department of Justice on the treatment of certain emigrants. It was first published at page 22149 of the Congressional Record for 18 July 1968, just days short of the 100th anniversary of President Andrew Johnson’s signing of the Expatriation Act of 1868.

In 1868, men stood on the floor of the House and quoted philosophers from the Roman Republic, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands in support of the proposition that emigration and change of citizenship are basic human rights. In 1968, men stood on that same floor and spluttered that Americans who emigrated and changed their citizenship were traitors who should never be allowed to return for a visit.

I’m posting this a bit late for the Act’s 145th anniversary, but I suppose if I had posted it on time it would have just ruined the mood. Instead I hope that it was a happy day that we all celebrated properly even without knowing the significance of the date: by continuing to exercise our right to live contentedly in the lands of our choosing, regardless of what people in the United States might have to say.

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