Many responses, but only a few have tried to answer this question:
What do you speculate is the percentage of Canadian citizens, resident in Canada, who are deemed by the United States to be U.S. citizens who:
— have NO meaningful relationship with the United States (e.g., no passport [unless demanded by U.S. border guard], no U.S. voting, no IRS filing, consider themselves only to be Canadians and not Americans) and do not want to be an American)
Most readers won’t speculate, but Portland (below) speculates that that percentage is around 85%, a very large percentage.
Is that percentage likely to be correct? No? 5% is a better estimate?
I have no way to guess what percentage of dual citizens living in Canada are “accidental Americans”, which I’ll define as ones born in Canada to a US parent, or born in the US to a Canadian parent, and who “returned” to Canada with their families at a “young age”. Arguably, I’ll define young age as being between newborn and say, 14 years old, but for some individuals could easily be quite older.
I can speculate that the percentage of Accidentals who “have NO meaningful relationship with the United States” to be the vast majority, and I’d even say 90%.
The only dual citizens whom I’ve met who are bent on retaining their US citizenship are ones (likely born in the US) who came to Canada as adults and who grew up in the US, including working, filing taxes and voting.
One I met who moved to Canada as an adult has been retaining US citizenship and filing taxes purely due to the mistaken belief that this is necessary to retain their claim to US Social Security benefits.
I just tallied up the “American-Canadians” amongst my acquaintances and I can say that the level of their connection to the US is pretty much 50/50.
Have a passport- my guess iis 15%
No meaningful relationship- 85 % Would ditch citizenship if they can afford to and didn’t have to file. Most of this 85% are ignoring everything.
Canada Census data for 2011 shows the following:
US born total: 316,165
US born self-identifying as Canadian Citizen Only: 190,445
StatCan’s table on my screen (which I’m looking at) has the following url http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/dt-td/Rp-eng.cfm?TABID=2&LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GK=0&GRP=0&PID=105411&PRID=0&PTYPE=105277&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2013&THEME=95&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=
but clicking on the link doesn’t seem to work. I think the link needs to be truncated somewhere, but I have to split for dinner. Meanwhile I’ll post a screenshot http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/?attachment_id=58842
BTW, a lot of these people probably don’t have CLNs. I recall the 2006 Canada Census data was
US born total: 298,370
US born self-identifying as Canadian Citizen Only: 117,425
and almost no one had even heard of a CLN in 2006 (CLNs seemed to start to become known about five years after that).
Pacifica,
Following your good idea, I found with Google the Canadian 2016 Census, but will need explanation as to what the numbers mean and their accuracy and extent that they are representative of the Canadian population.
It looks like for 2016 there were 338,220 persons self-identified as being born in U.S. living in Canada. This breaks down to 198,275 who were also Canadian citizens and 139,945 born in US who were not Canadian citizens. The numbers are along the lines of what you found for the 2011 census.
Yet, there were 118,550 Canadian persons, presumably from the same born in the U.S. group (right?), BUT WHO SELF IDENTIFIED ONLY AS CANADIAN CITIZENS. Am I understanding the numbers correctly?
Out of 198,275 born in the U.S. Canadians, 118,550 (some? many? of which the U.S. deems to be U.S. citizens?) do not consider themselves to be U.S. citizens? Why not?
What do you think are the likely reasons for the 118,550 born in the U.S. Canadians self-identifying as being ONLY Canadian citizens…?
This Link seems to work:
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/dt-td/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=7&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=C&FREE=0&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=110525&PRID=10&PTYPE=109445&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2016,2017&THEME=0&VID=0&VNAMEE=Citizenship%20%285%29&VNAMEF=Citoyennet%C3%A9%20%285%29
Stephen Kish asked:
Likely there are a lot of Accidental Americans in that number. My sister and I are among those. My Canadian-born parents and older brother moved to the US (for my father’s work) where my sister and I were born. I was 12 and my sister 9 when the family returned to Canada. We’ve never had any family in the US and no ties since we returned. We’ve always identified as only Canadian. A few years ago I successfully claimed a 40-year-old relinquishment of US citizenship (based on Canadian government employment) but my sister could make no such claim and is still stuck with dual-citizenship as far as the US is concerned.
118000 do not consider themselves US citizens-why not? Because they don’t want to be.
“Canada Census data for 2011 shows the following:
US born total: 316,165
US born self-identifying as Canadian Citizen Only: 190,445”
These numbers omit Canadian-born but inheriting US citizenship from parent(s), which seems to me it would be a larger number than either of those.
Tallies omit accidental Americans who don’t know that they’re Americans.
“Out of 198,275 born in the U.S. Canadians (some? many? most?) who the U.S. deems to be U.S. citizens (?), 118,550 do not consider themselves to be U.S. citizens? Why not?”
Maybe some of them don’t know that the US Supreme Court retroactively reinstated their US citizenship, i.e. they still think they relinquished? Or maybe they still really did relinquish but have reasons not to apply for backdated CLNs?
@ Stephen,
Thanks for getting the correct link!
Re: “Out of 198,275 born in the U.S. Canadians who the U.S. deems to be U.S. citizens (?), 118,550 do not consider themselves to be U.S. citizens? Why not?”
Some of course would know categorically they aren’t US citizens because they renounced; or relinquished and have a CLN; or relinquished and don’t have a CLN but are aware they fit the criteria of a relinquishment (the CLN doesn’t cause the relinquishment, just documents it, and they’ve opted not to get one).
Some others are probably unaware of CLNs but have long had reason to believe they are no longer a USC. I’m thinking of persons naturalising some decades ago. I did not have a CLN during most of life, being unaware of them, although I do now. However, all along it was my understanding that upon taking Cdn citizenship, I had automatically lost my US citizenship. Canada Immigration routinely warned US born persons of this, and I was aware at the time of persons being told this by the US embassy and a couple of consulates here. (I also recently saw a letter from the 1970s, stating this, from the US Embassy in Ottawa, a reply to a letter a Brocker wrote them asking about this just prior to her naturalising here in the 1970s.)
It being my understanding that my naturalising would cause termination of my US citizenship, I have always, since naturalising in 1978, self-identified as Canadian Citizen Only on the census.
(That one’s citizenship was “automatically” lost, I’ve learned through research I’ve done in recent years, was not strictly true, even in that era. Technically, it was “possibly” lost, depending on the person’s intent. But “automatically” was a word often used and a concept widely, if not universally, expressed by officers of both governments at that time. At any rate, it doesn’t really matter if that was strictly accurate or not. If you went ahead and naturalised (whether you thought the citizenship termination was automatic or not), as long as you had the intent to terminate US citizenship and acted accordingly as a non-citizen after naturalising, you relinquished, whether in possession of a CLN or not.)
I think also that some of the people self-identifying as Cdn Citizen Only might be accidentals who don’t realise that they are US citizens due to being born in the US.
And I think that some accidentals identifying as Cdn Citizen Only would be those who were aware of having US citizenship but have renounced or relinquished it. The Canadian government at one time was apparently also warning US-born persons upon offering them employment that this would cause loss of their US citizenship (much as Canada Immigration was doing with people naturalising at that time). A Brocker here in Ottawa told me about this and showed me a file with notes he’d made at the time he was offered govt employment around 1980.
Re: “Maybe some of them don’t know that the US Supreme Court retroactively reinstated their US citizenship, i.e. they still think they relinquished? ”
The Supreme Court didn’t reinstate their citizenship. The Supreme Court made intent of the person necessary for a person to lose their citizenship. If a person had the intent to relinquish, the citizenship remained terminated.
Is it possible to cross-reference the Canadian census data with any IRS data? Do they publish any information on the number of returns received from various countries outside the US? Or the number of passports issued to Canadian addresses?
My hunch is that the 118k who are born in the US and identify as Canadian contain relatively few renunciants (a few thousand at most?) while the rest either naturalized and assume that by so doing they relinquished, or they are accidentals who don’t realize that they are US citizens.
I can’t even begin to guess at the percentage of US citizens in Canada who have ties, versus those who do not. I would expect that compliance is pretty low though. Not sure why it would be any higher than the estimated 10-15 percent for all US citizens abroad. Based on my limited contact with other duals, my assumption is that most of those who file have spent time in the US as adults and created some sort of tie, or at least awareness of the IRS.
I can see why Solomon Yue wants that number to be big. He wants to prove that TTFI will benefit a large number of people and possibly prevent them from renouncing. I tend to think that anyone who isn’t already compliant shouldn’t go near it. And the majority of duals in Canada remain blissfully ignorant of this situation.
Has anybody tried to calculate the number of Canadian citizens who have formally renounced or relinquished US citizenship? I realize the quarterly US figures are low, and only go back so far, but this might still give us some idea.
Never mind–the Federal Register doesn’t list their nationality. I was remembering some lists posted here, which must have included only renunciates who were notable enough for their personal information to have been publicly known/
“the CLN doesn’t cause the relinquishment, just documents it,”
And from the USG’s point of view, the CLN makes it possible to prove in court, if required, that the individual does not have US citizenship and has no claim to US citizenship.
While it is hard to be exact, the number of accidentals is much higher than the 10% he noted. There is just weak documentation in the US of people born in Canada (or other countries) that happened to have had a US father. Most do not make the fact public and parentage is not always easy to tell for the US. Most of them have had no US connection in their lifetimes. That is the US has never spent a penny on their well being and have never let them vote in any elections.
@Pacifica
Re: “reinstating” USC/intent
I know 2 people who have described actually notifying the US in the mid-80s that they wished to retain US citizenship. I think there was even an actual form. It would seem to me that without an actual act such as this, the US would have no grounds to question intent or not. Useful perhaps to offset the nonsense of “if you think you have lost your USC you probably haven’t……..” (from compliance professionals, the only people I know of who push this garbage)
The U.S addresses the more general question: How many persons deemed by U.S. to be US citizens actually live “overseas”. Allison Christians (2016) says:
“…8. U.S. GOV’T ACCOUNTABILITY OFF., GAO-04-898, 2010 CENSUS: COUNTING AMERICANS OVERSEAS AS PART OF THE DECENNIAL CENSUS WOULD NOT BE COST-EFFECTIVE,
1-2, 4-6 (Aug. 19, 2004), http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04898.pdf (stating that”the precise number of overseas Americans is unknown,”that counting this population would be “a monumental task that would introduce new resource demands, risks, and uncertainties to an endeavor that was already facing a variety of difficulties,” including the difficult and costly problem of locating and obtaining cooperation from the targeted population and then verifying U.S. citizenship, and therefore recommending that the U.S. Census Bureau not include this population in the 2010 Census); Frequently Asked Questions: Will 2010 Census Apportionment Population Counts Also Include Any Americans Overseas?, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU https://ask.census.gov/faq.php?id=5000&faqId=981 (“Private U.S. citizens living abroad who are not affiliated with the Federal government (either as employees or their dependents) will not be included in the overseas counts.”); see also Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, The Case Against Taxing Citizens, 58 TAX NOTES INT’L 389 (2010) (discussing the GAO report and concluding that “We have no idea how many U.S. citizens live overseas”). The decision not to count nonresident citizens continues for future census planning. U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, 2020 CENSUS OPERATIONAL PLAN: A NEW DESIGN FOR THE 21ST CENTURY 125 (Nov. 2015), http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/program-management/planning-docs/ 2020-oper-plan.pdf (including within the planning for the 2020 Census only those nonresident U.S. citizens who are “U.S. military and federal civilian employees stationed or deployed overseas and their dependents living with them”). The failure to count nonresident citizens in the census has led to lawsuits in the past, since a principal purpose of including nonresident citizens in census is to allocate congressional seats to the several states. For a discussion, see Susanna Groves, Americans Abroad: U.S. Emigration Policy and Perspectives, in DIASPORAS, DEVELOPMENT, AND GOVERNANCE 239, 242-43 (Abel Chikanda et al. eds., 2015)….”
From:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2717367
The form State uses to try and determine intent is DS 4079. In the early days, they actually tried to relieve people of their citizenship and deny passport renewal if they performed such heinous acts as swearing allegiance to another country.
Then, for unknown reasons, they turned the process 180 deg. and now make it difficult to lose ones’ citizenship. So, if you were a dual, and didn’t vote in the US, didn’t have a passport, own property, hold a licence, pay taxes, and so on. If one does none of these things, intent is clear.
If someone does a number of these acts , intent to remain American is also clear.. problem is there are large numbers with mixed facts. They are supposed to be decided by the ‘preponderance of the evidence’ but unfortunately may be decided at the whim of a bureaucrat.
There are also many, like myself, who do not want US citizenship but we have a US passport because it is simply required by law. I would gladly give it up if I could afford the paperwork and the renouncement fee.
@ Patricia,
Re: “I know 2 people who have described actually notifying the US in the mid-80s that they wished to retain US citizenship. I think there was even an actual form. It would seem to me that without an actual act such as this, the US would have no grounds to question intent or not. “
That really closes a door. But there’s still another ground upon which DoS can question intent — if a person’s behaviour after their relinquishing act appears consistent with retention of US citizenship, such as renewing a US passport or voting.
Re: “Useful perhaps to offset the nonsense of “if you think you have lost your USC you probably haven’t……..” (from compliance professionals, the only people I know of who push this garbage.”
Yes. And not only compliance condors — I’ve even known non-condor professionals, decent people, who believed this myth was the truth (I’ve found honest types are quite receptive to facts, though, once provided with them). And here in Ottawa, the US embassy itself a few years back was dishing out that garbage to individuals and professionals. Brock was instrumental, if not the sole factor, in getting them to stop. The fight to defeat this myth is never-ending though . . . but so important.
Pacifica,
I was one of those people. In the 1980’s I sent the Department of State an affidavit (there was no form) stating that although I had just taken on Canadian citizenship I did so not wanting to give up my U.S. citizenship. Some months later I received a letter from DOS in DC confirming that a decision was made that I had retained my U.S. citizenship.
Times change and I renounced in 2016.
@Pacifica
Yes I assumed (but should not have) that we are all aware of “preponderance of the evidence etc.”. I just don’t remember anyone bringing up the affidavit issue here…. Thanks!
“I know 2 people who have described actually notifying the US in the mid-80s that they wished to retain US citizenship. I think there was even an actual form.”
Am I the Fourth? I don’t think there was a form. I went to Buffalo and had a declaration notarized, stating my intent. Silly me. I also voted in the US, renewed US passports, and did my silly stupid idiotic best efforts to comply with US tax forms.
@Norman
Stephen was one of the 2, so you only make 3!