According to an article in the Arab Times, Kuwait is going through another one of its periodic crackdowns on holders of dual citizenship, forcing them to choose one nationality or the other. Two years ago the focus was on Kuwaitis with inherited nationality of Arab or South Asian countries; this time, however, they seem to be looking to root out Kuwaitis who were born abroad in jus soli countries — including “accidental Americans” born to in the U.S. to international students who later came back to Kuwait. This could mean long lines outside the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City, and even bigger numbers of CLNs piling up on State Department desks in Washington, DC waiting to be approved.
Tag Archives: Renunciation-Relinquishment of US citizenship
2,158 Koreans gave up U.S. green cards or citizenship in 2011, says South Korean government report
A recent article in a Korean American newspaper, referring to newly-published statistics from South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has revealed that the number of Koreans cutting off their ties with the U.S. reached an 11-year high last year: 2,158 Koreans gave up U.S. green cards or citizenship in 2011. Very clearly, this is larger than the Federal Register number for the same year — and of course, the Federal Register includes people of all nationalities, not just Koreans.
Keep in mind that the Federal Register is only supposed to cover citizens and “long term residents”, those who have had their green cards for more than eight out of the past fifteen years, so some of those 2,158 were not supposed to show up in the “name-and-shame list” anyway. That said, this article is another piece of evidence to add to the ones we already have that the Federal Register grossly understates the number of people ceasing to be U.S. Persons. I’ve translated the article and various background materials below.
Continue reading
Korean Americans who gave up U.S. citizenship and joined the South Korean military
There are many reasons to emigrate from the United States; love, career, and study are just a few among them. And for just as many different reasons, some people find that once they’re overseas, their ideal path naturally leads them to the point where they choose to give up U.S. citizenship. Below, I’ve translated some South Korean media coverage about a less-common career choice for ex-Americans: the Korean military.
The first article is from earlier this month and discusses people who are in the most recent Federal Register list, while the second is from a few years ago. Don’t hold your breath for them to be featured on NBC Nightly; they’re too busy scouring the lists of ex-citizens for rich people so they can keep screaming the tiresome narrative that people giving up U.S. citizenship consist solely of “wealthy investors leaving the United States to avoid the estate tax”.
Continue reading
John Duncan Jr. (R-TN) libels renunciants as “tax evaders”
From a recent post on Duncan’s website. Transcript and commentary after the jump.
NBC Nightly News interviews Phil Hodgen, Chuck Schumer about Denise Rich
The video is not embeddable; you’ll have to watch it over on NBC’s site. You can also check out Phil’s post on it. The somber-faced newsreader begins by intoning:
00:00/Announcer: While many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, there is a growing trend among some of America’s ultra-wealthy: they are willing to give up their U.S. citizenship, in many cases to save money in taxes.
Clearly if two people renouncing citizenship are ultra-wealthy, then all 1,800 must be!
Cartoon by Randall Munroe/xkcd.org; licensed CC-BY-NC 2.5
Breaking news: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. And Reuters just noticed Denise Rich’s 2011 renunciation.
Lynnley Browning (Twitter: @LynnleyBrowning) brings us the two-and-a-half-month old news that songwriter Denise Rich, the ex-wife of Marc Rich, had her name published in the Federal Register back in April due to her renunciation of U.S. citizenship in November 2011. Her editors at Reuters seem to have decided that a neutral statement of the aforesaid fact wasn’t good enough for the headline, so they pushed it out over the wires it as the inflammatory “Socialite Denise Rich dumps U.S. passport”. The story has also been picked up by HuffPost and MSNBC.
The bipartisan fight against American demonisation of U.S. Persons abroad
Laura Harrison McBride has an interesting article over at The Smirking Chimp blog (tagline: “News and commentary from the vast left-wing conspiracy”) entitled “Me and Eduardo Saverin; The major difference is money”, in which she discusses her own relinquishment of U.S. citizenship in February 2012 and eloquently contests the tiresome mainstream narrative (spread by bloggers like Matias Ramos and the Tax Justice Network) that people giving up U.S. citizenship are all rich traitors “fleeing” the United States with ill-gotten gains in their pockets.
A hypothetical tax scenario: what if Eduardo Saverin had gone to Harvard as a visa student?
Farhad Manjoo has a piece over at Pando Daily entitled “What Eduardo Saverin Owes America”. He gives a list of five specific items: his safe childhood, his erstwhile friendship with Zuckerberg, Harvard, the Internet, and the justice system. This made me think of the obvious counterfactual scenario: what if Eduardo Saverin’s family had moved to Europe instead to escape the threat of kidnappings in São Paulo, and he’d come to Harvard as a visa student? Four out of Manjoo’s five points still apply, but Saverin would face a far lower tax bill. Would Saverin owe any less of a moral debt to America? And what does the resulting tax situation have to say about the justice of the U.S.’ peculiar practise of taxing overseas citizens wherever we go?
Technology entrepreneurs giving up U.S. citizenship? A U.S. tech startup webforum reacts to one case
On Hacker News, a tech entrepreneurship community that both Phil Hodgen and I frequent, there was a discussion a couple of days ago about one entry in the Q1 2012 loss-of-citizenship list which matches the name of a well-known entrepreneur. (Edit: to clarify, I’m not talking about Eduardo Saverin, the news of whose renunciation just popped up on Bloomberg; I wrote this post before that news came out. This is about another guy, follow the first link in this post if you want to know his name).
Regardless of whether or not that name is indeed him, the news sparked some interesting comments. This should serve as a reminder to us: the Isaac Brock Society is not the only collection of people out there who object to the United States’ citizenship taxation policy. There are many others, most of whom are just going about their daily lives while trying to grin and bear it, and who may never give us “extremists” more than a passing glance — but whose overall silence should not at all be taken to imply acquiescence to this unjust state of affairs, as the mainstream media do every time when they say “1,800 renunciants is such a small number compared to the six million Americans abroad”.
Recent media coverage: one entry for the Hall of Fame, lots for the Hall of Shame
Ms. Atossa Abrahamian’s article last month about U.S. persons abroad giving up citizenship has really opened up the floodgates to a deluge of reporting on issues of interest to us here at the Isaac Brock Society. It’s hard to keep up with all of it, let enough find the time to comment on everything. Here’s a roundup of recent coverage. Thanks to FromTheWilderness and others who left comments pointing us to these articles.
