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!
@Petros
Sure, they’ll be happy to give that official number to you. They just need to do the official calculation: official number of renunciants/relinquishers x $2350 = official amount of fees received. And that’s the official number they’ll officially give you for your official FOIA request. Of course.
Seriously though, I don’t think we’ll ever know how many people are really renouncing/relinquishing. Could even be ten times more. Who knows.
One way to get a rough estimate of the REAL numbers would be to do a survey of, oh say, approx. 100 people who renounced/relinquished at least a couple of years ago (perhaps even 3 years ago – so we can be sure that the gov’t has had ample time to include said people on the Liberty List). If only 33 of them confirm that their names have appeared on the Liberty List (ex-Name & Shame list), that would mean that the REAL numbers are likely three times higher. If this were done by a reputable agency with perhaps even more people being surveyed, this could yield a fairly reliable indicator of how much the US gov’t is lowballing the numbers.
By the way, I think the gov’t knows that such a technique could be used to extrapolate the real numbers, so I suspect we will be seeing the discontinuation of the Liberty List in the not-too-distant future. I only hope that I’m in time to be included on it when I’m finally able to relinquish. I plan to frame it together with my CLN.
Is the State Department still requiring two appointments to renounce?
Keep the CLN in a safe. It is far to precious to display on the wall.
@Petros
LOL, a high-quality copy then. I will be very proud of it. It will be the most “American” thing I’ve ever done in my life. (by which I mean “1776 American,” not the 3rd millennium North Korean / East German / USSR / and, yes, even Nazi German version)
@Hard Pressed says, “I suspect we will be seeing the discontinuation of the Liberty List in the not-too-distant future.”
I’m not so sure about that. It would require Congress to amend the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) of 1996, which requires the Secretary of the Treasury to publish the list. Bureaucratic and Congressional inertia being what they are, that may take a long time.
Also, now that thousands of people are getting rid of their US citizenship — what used to be a rare thing — the US Government must have to maintain a growing database and procedures to make sure that former citizens are not granted US passports or other benefits of US citizenship despite still having birth certificates from US states. Maybe some aspects of that system will ultimately become a matter of public record.
@ Petros,
Based on the reports we’re getting at Brock, most consulates are currently doing renunciation in one visit. There’s a lot of presumably low-volume consulates we haven’t got reports on, though, so don’t know anything about them.
I’ve noticed quite a few consulates that were requiring 2 switched to 1 beginning around 2012, I suspect because they were getting swamped with so many renunciations to handle.
Thanks Pacifica. You know the implications of this: The State Department has actually more than likely at least doubled the number of renunciations that it is handling.
I thought a rough estimate before, when two appointments were required, was about 10-20K renunciations per annum.
The increase in renunciation fee was justified to cover the actual cost of renunciation based on two visits I think. Should the process be streamlined down to one visit for efficiency’s sake, State will be overcharging. What are the chances of them even reducing the charges even if they eventually did everything by mail like Canada does? Zilch, I’d say.
Once a citizen is treated as disposable, fleecing them while disposing of them becomes inconsequential especially when those who are paying view exiting as a necessity.
Far too precious to forget to remember to take off the wall! Lesson from this current Albertan/Canadian tragedy — a sobering reminder of the need to have a package of *important papers* ready to grab in case of emergency / evacuation. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-prized-possessions-1.3567410.
Yet another duplicate entry? Or W. could be an initial for something other than WARD
WHITBECK CHRISTOPHER W.
WHITBECK CHRISTOPHER WARD
@Hard Pressed: One way to get a rough estimate of the REAL numbers would be to do a survey of, oh say, approx. 100 people who renounced/relinquished at least a couple of years ago
One idea. How many countries disallow dual citizenship, require naturalisation applications to submit proof of loss of their former citizenship; and list the names of all successful naturalisation applicants in the government gazette?
Denmark used to bar dual citizenship (until 2014 I think) and the names of new citizens had to be put into an actual law and passed by the legislature in order to be made official, but there don’t seem to be that many Americans naturalising there. South Korea also didn’t allow dual citizenship for almost all adults until 2012, and there’s a lot more ex-Americans there (mostly duals-at-birth and immigrants-turned-emigrants), but the names are hard to match up with names in the Federal Register because of spellings, different English vs. Korean names, etc. (I tried once and didn’t get very far). Any other suggestions for countries?
I’ll add mine, when it comes
Thanks for the kind words. I’m still around.
Anyone from Isaac Brock can email me, anytime. But please put “Isaac Brock” in the subject line.
If I get enough questions, I may answer via blog, I may even do another video.
I need to declare an interest though; I do work for the banks so naturally I’m not going to be overly critical of them.
That said, I always enjoys speaking with you guys. This is one of very few places where what is written about FATCA, the CRS etc is correct.
In summary, I’m still here, I can be emailed. One way or another I will reply.
@ Haydon Perryman
You seem to enjoy the truth bubbles coming from Brockers. I appreciate your past comments and videos but what work are you doing for the banks now? Are you helping them build bigger indicia nets to FATCAcide more minnows? I need to declare that I have developed a deep distrust of government and the banks too.
@Eric,
Japan disallows dual citizenship and publishes the pre-naturalization names of people who have naturalized. They don’t indicate what the prior citizenships were, however, so matching up names with when they appear in the Federal Register some years later would be a very tiresome chore. The number of Americans naturalizing seems to be very small in any case; of the 9469 people who naturalized last year, only 1409 were not Korean or Chinese.
http://www.moj.go.jp/content/001180510.pdf
Of those 1409, a casual glance at the 官報 suggests the vast majority do not have stereotypically American-sounding names. So I’m guessing the number of US citizens naturalizing to Japan is very small.
Another problem is that some people cheat, and hang onto their former citizenships in secret. (They can get stripped of their acquired Japanese citizenship when found out — there have been a couple of stories in recent years of this happening to US and Canadian citizens).
Anyway, I think it would be nigh on impossible to get good statistics this way, and it would be a huge slog to try to do so.
Phil Hodgen posts a mail from a reader who has concluded, based on a sample size of two (himself & his wife), that “everyone who expatriates appears in the quarterly publication, whether covered, or non-covered”
http://hodgen.com/that-quarterly-published-of-expatriates-an-anecdote/
Let me offer up my own sample of 2012 and 2013 expatriates which is twice as large and four times as geographically diverse: Nicholas Yang, Victor Okaikoi, Fauzia Kasuri, René González. Conclusion: “no one who expatriates appears in the quarterly publication”. All the names you claim to have seen are actually a collective mass hallucination.
@Eric
“a collective mass hallucination” LOL
I begin to think this entire situation we are swept up in cannot be anything else but that……..
I renounced, and received my CLN, in Q1 of this year but my name is not on the list. When a a friend of mine renounced, it took almost a year for her name to show up so I wasn’t too surprised. My guess is that it’s like the CLNs, where the processing times can vary greatly.
That said, the numbers strike me as very low given the long wait times at many consulates.
Hubby renounced in October 2012. His name has never made it to the list.
The fees angle is getting a bit of coverage, even if the author is a bit confused about what renunciation actually is (“exodus”, “those who left”, etc.) and claims the numbers include green card holders
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/u.s.-expatriation-rate-dips-slightly-in-first-quarter/article/2590438
@EmBee Thanks for the question. I appreciate it is question that many will have.
To answer – no, I am not building a tool that detects indicia, nor I am part of any organisation that does this, in whole or in part.
The banks I have worked for only apply the indicia checks absolutely demanded by the regs. I appreciate this audience will cry no tears for the banks. I understand that. In truth the indicia checks demanded by the regulations are extremely had to apply because customer data is on several platforms that don’t “talk to each other”.
I’ve yet to meet anyone who wants to go further than the regs demand.
What I do do is help the banks evidence good faith attempts to comply. Basically “Here are our processes and controls” and “Here is the evidence that we followed them”.
My experience has not been that banks want to go further than the regs demand in applying and searching for indicia.
@ Haydon Perryman
Thanks for your reply. I’d like to say I’m glad to hear banks are following the FATCA regs but really there’s nothing about FATCA that I can be glad about. It could be worse and I expect it will creep towards worse as time passes.
I sympathize with what Haydon wrote. My husband knows someone who works in the compliance department at a major Hong Kong bank. He reports that while jobs are being slashed in every other department, the compliance department is the fastest growing area of the bank. Meanwhile, the people working inside the compliance department are extremely stressed, since any individual error could have enormous consequences for the bank and hence themselves. One gets the impression that no one would choose to work there. Our friend had been a relationship executive in the business banking department and faced a choice of moving to compliance or losing employment. Since working in compliance, he has become borderline alcoholic and is in psychotherapy. One issue he reports is the feeling of betraying his own former clients by turning them in due to US indicia. Like someone in 1930s Germany faced with pointing the SS toward a cellar sheltering Jews, for fear of being shot himself.
Yes, I know 99 percent of people here at Brock will shed no tears for our friend or his colleagues. But I see them like the low-ranking guards at Auschwitz: if they refused to do their job, they would not only be unemployed but their families would suffer and might even join their “clients” in the roasting pit.
I do blame the banks for cheering on their governments in signing the IGAs. And I blame the banks for blitzkrieging every single client with FATCA forms rather than doing the more expensive investigative work of sniffing out US taint. But the people working inside the compliance department, to my knowledge, are not by nature demonic psychopaths…though their work seems to be turning them that way.
To hell with the USA for turning common bankers around the world into SS flunkies and the rest of us into hunted prey.