Creation of people who want to inspire fear there are ways to renounce citizenship it may not be as convenient it may not be as easy to find but there are ways to do it right now and so in that regard i’m actually going to side in some regard with the u.s government
I’m going to read you an article from the guardian a newspaper that hates residents and citizenship by investment or newspaper that hates your ability to have options i’m surprised they even cover this quite frankly because they really want you to stay in and pay high taxes and be stuck but the article from
The guardian this came a little while ago called americans seeking to renounce their citizenship are stuck with it for now as many as 30 000 citizens living abroad and that number is probably higher have been unable to secure a loss of nationality interviewed during the pandemic and i wanted to share this with
You now that in the united states you just have the state of the union address the pandemic is uh is allegedly over we’re on to new things um and yet we don’t really see a wholesale opening of u.s embassies to take renunciation appointments it’ll be interesting to see what happens in
Coming weeks and months but those of us who followed this kind of stuff realized that the u.s government started out charging zero to renounce then it was 450 then it was 2350 you almost start to think as i’ve been saying recently that events are used by the government tragic
Events no doubt events that are really happening there is a pandemic no doubt but that event has been used by the government who continues to run embassies who continues to do all kinds of government business who continues to pay everyone who works there hey maybe this is a reason to stop providing
Services that we don’t really want to provide 30 000 people are estimated to be unable to get into a u.s embassy for an interview here’s the article in recent years michael has come to regard the united states a nation of which he has been a citizen all his life as an
Abusive parent we’ve talked about it before this is emotional people think it’s just about taxes you guys don’t want to pay taxes it’s about being told even if you don’t live in the country you’ve got to follow all these different rules because you carry our passport you
Carry if you want to get extreme our slave card we own you i can acknowledge michael says my past association with that person what the same time wanted to keep future association to a minimum he said very powerful stuff michael his name is false as he requested anonymity to avoid being
Inundated with hate mail you can send your hate mail to me we could play found his dissatisfaction with his native country reached crunch point in 2020 the chaotic end of donald trump’s presidency combined with the inequities exposed by the covet pandemic made him despair of being an american the
Coronavirus made me realize that in the u.s if you’re not a member of the money delete you’ll have to fend for yourself with virtually no help from the federal government he said the farcical presidential campaign made me realize that i don’t want to be a member of a
Society in which my vote is made irrelevant by gerrymandering or the electoral college there’s a political aspect here for michael and certainly he’s entitled to believe what he wants but so michael decided to renounce his u.s citizenship uh having moved to finland 10 years ago he would break the
Ties that officially bound him to a country his values you no longer recognize i have heard our team has heard more and more people from the us and now from canada and germany and australia and new zealand and others uk also saying i don’t recognize my country anymore for numerous different reasons i
Don’t believe they’ll keep me safe i don’t believe they care about me and most importantly i never thought andra be calling you five years ago i thought and i started watching it three years ago this guy’s a little nuts now i see it i don’t recognize my
Country and i know they won’t be there for me some people will take this ultimate step of wanting to cut their ties others will will merely build the infrastructure that enables them to do that if they ever so choose in the future but this is when michael’s troubles really began the article
Says he discovered that along with thousands of other u.s citizens living abroad he was caught in a trap for almost two years since the potomac began in march of 2020 most u.s consular missions around the world have suspended their expatriation services for those wishing to give up u.s citizenship the
Process is you generally want to go through two appointments embassies have done it differently you’ve occasionally had an embassy that lets you do it in one appointment you’ve occasionally had an embassy where you can do one appointment by phone and then do the second appointment in person they all
Kind of set their parameters but what happened at the beginning the epidemic was more of a uniform approach to here’s how you need to do it and by the way shut down the services embassies were still open embassies were still performing some services they weren’t accepting citizenship appointments
The u.s embassy in london the article says the largest of the sort in western europe announces on its website that is currently unable to accept appointments for loss of nationality applications and is unable to say when services resume that’s the problem here okay the u.s state department says giving up
Citizenship requires a face-to-face interview with a government official and that it’s too risky during the corona virus and if you’ve ever been to a u.s embassy you know you’re between the thickest piece of glass you can possibly imagine with a little hole that you kind of talk to and you slide your documents
Through i don’t know how anyone was getting sick before the situation you’re not just talking to someone up close and personal they’re not sitting next to you at a desk they’re behind glass obviously that wasn’t for a pandemic but i don’t see why it couldn’t be used for
A pandemic and if it can’t be used during a pandemic why don’t we adjust the approach that we take to allow people to to renounce their citizenship if that’s the goal is to allow people to choose their destiny in life if the goal is to allow your citizens who you’re supposed to be
Working for to do what they want including the ultimate step of deciding they don’t want to be your citizen anymore why should anything get in the way of doing that and so delays have led to a growing mountain of disgruntled citizens by some calculations there may
Be as many as 30 000 people among the estimated five to nine million u.s citizens living abroad who would like to begin the renunciation process but can’t the nine million number is perhaps close to what it is but a little bit low the thirty thousand i i think is largely
Gathered by some alleged kind of waiting list for people who want to be on a waiting list i believe that if you focus only on the western world 30 000 maybe the number if you focus on people such as myself who aren’t living in finland where they have a job aren’t living in
London aren’t living in switzerland’s always another one aren’t living in canada is another big one where this is a story that’s talked about you know the the american living in bali or the philippines or colombia or paraguay that person’s not talked about as much and i doubt many of them are on
This list i think the number is probably much higher and lawyers that i work with believe the number is also much higher joshua grant is one of them he was born and raised in selma alabama until i moved to germany when he was 21 to learn the language he’s been there ever since
He lives in lower saxony and married a german citizen last year grant age 30 feels ready to acquire german citizenship but under german law at least for now he must let go of his u.s passport easier said than done so now he wants to be german the idea that the u.s
Theoretically supports they allow they tolerate rather dual citizenship he can’t even become german he can’t even get that to secure potential rights for where he lives he’s not avoiding taxes he’s paying a boatload of taxes living in germany he submitted a pile of paperwork to the u.s embassy in july of
2020 nothing has happened remember he’s still paying now he’s probably not paying much because he lives in germany he’s probably paying everything to germany but they’re supposed to work for him and potentially they are collecting some money off of him and depending on some situations maybe if he holds
Cryptocurrency long-term he may have to pay something to the u.s that he wouldn’t otherwise pay to germany they’re collecting his money he’s filing a tax return they’re requiring him to comply with their laws but yet when it comes time for them to lift a finger they won’t do anything he’s written
Emails to embassy staff with no reply he contacted the office of his u.s senator from alabama they passed him on at the state department which in turn passed him back the bureau of consular affairs which mentioned the pandemic this pandemic has been the greatest excuse for
Bureaucrats to not do their job which is all the more reason why you need a second citizenship all the more reason why you need infrastructure that if your country doesn’t serve you you can cut them out why are you going to pay 40 or 50 of your income why are you going to
Pay on capital gains in some cases no matter where you live in the world why are you going to pay them why are you going to be subject to their regulations why are you going to let one country decree where you can travel where you
Can live what you can do what kind of business you run why are you going to do that when it comes time to serving you they don’t do the job you’ve paid them to do citizenship is supposed to be a right it’s supposed to be a benefit it
Is not it has become a system where we oppress people who only have one and that’s why two is one and one is none that is my new motto it’s very taxing my whole life in germany is on hold he says it’s funny people in germany tend to see
That the us is a liberal country with a rule of law is established but i can’t find anyone in the u.s government to talk to nine u.s citizens abroad who have found themselves unable to give up their nationality are now suing the state department in a federal court in
Washington yeah listen if you couldn’t renounce and let’s say that you were building a business and you couldn’t renounce and you get yourself in a position where oh you’ve got to pay an exit tax now that you wouldn’t have had they been doing their jobs behind thick glass
Yeah that seems to me like reason uh hey i was ready i had all the procedures ready to go you guys couldn’t help me you couldn’t do your jobs so the suit brought in the plaintiff’s behalf by a french-based group association of accidental americans likens the situation to feudal
Times now the association of accidental americans is basically helping europeans who may have been born in the u.s they never realized they were u.s citizens and they have lives in europe it’s not necessarily the same group there’s no med capitalists but they say the u.s appears intent on preventing their
Citizens from exercising the natural and fundamental right to voluntarily renounce their citizenship listen if you want to shame me if you want to shame other people who have publicly renounced like eduardo sovereign of facebook fame chuck schumer gets up on the u.s senate floor and shames a guy for making a decision
He didn’t want to live in the u.s anymore he wasn’t even born there he made the decision to leave because you weren’t giving him anything for all the money he was paying he didn’t want to live in your country and he made the most fundamental choice
To choose his identity you want to shame him you want to shame me you go right ahead but it is a fundamental right of people to be able to choose where their citizenship is and as i’ve always said people think oh it’s just about avoiding taxes the u.s government has become an abusive
Entity that takes advantage of its citizens provides nothing in return while demanding everything from you subjects you as if you are basically a slave a property of the government you’ll never get what you need they make sure you do with the point of enforcement they make sure that you uh
Serve them they don’t serve you and so when you decide i don’t want to be in an abusive relationship oh it’s because you don’t want to pay taxes the taxes are the salt in the wound the taxes are the insult to injury and sure people can save a lot of money renouncing their
Citizenship in some cases allegedly eduardo severan just did just that saved hundreds of millions of dollars you know what there’s plenty people who don’t renounce citizenship to save hundreds of millions of dollars because they view it as valuable so so what if he decides i don’t want to live here
Anyway i might get out while i can save a couple bucks good for him i’m not going to begrudge him for doing that he didn’t want to live there and so the article goes on talks about fatca talks about how the us is one of only
Two countries it taxes people hey if you can’t give up your argentina citizenship if you can’t give up your iranian citizenship that may be negative there may be some occasional consequences but they’re not chasing you around and saying oh for the two years that we didn’t bother to take you
Hey please keep sending in your tax bill now let me tell you my experience our experience here is there are still embassies that are open there have been pretty much the entire time there was a time it was rough and there are some that are open now if you are an employee
Which is generally who people like the guardian are talking to yeah you’re going to have a harder time because you probably think hey i live in switzerland let me go to the one in switzerland you’ve got to be more creative these days and you’ve got to find the ones that are
Open and there are some that have done a good job of being flexible some are open but slow some are open and fast there are some that they do a good job now my personal experience was not doing the pandemic i want to say this in favor of the u.s government
Because this is i don’t i want to be very fair here my experience was nothing but professional i got immediate response to my emails they offered me to come in anytime i wanted they were extremely flexible they were extremely empathetic my experience was nothing but professional i have nothing bad to say
About the experience whatsoever and quite frankly by the way i i laughed at the time when they were starting to speed things up once you go through the process our experiences we’re seeing that people are going through uh relatively quickly i mean they’re not dragging their feet the way they might
Have a handful of years ago and so there are some things that are improving there are some embassies that are open the challenge is and i think it’s very much what we talk about here you’ve got these kind of legacy brand countries where the us embassies kind of follow this this
Culture of we don’t owe you anything you go to some of the smaller embassies they’re going to be more open to helping you but if you’re going to switzerland or canada or the uk they’re going to just kind of take that hubris that’s associated with being there and those
That’s why i think that they’re more likely to make people wait in line establish waiting lists um just close down for good using these excuses so there are some embassies out there that are cooperative but you know for me this just shows the great unfairness you know it’s one thing to tell people
And i’ve been very clear you will live in the us you’re going to pay u.s taxes you can move to puerto rico that’s in the u.s you can move to the u.s virgin islands you can do different things but if you’re going to live in the mainland u.s that comes with certain consequences
You can vote i don’t think voting is going to change anything and even when you elect a guy like donald trump or george w bush they lower your taxes by a few percentage points you’re still paying some of the highest tax rates in the world and unlike european citizens you’re
Practically getting nothing for that money but if that’s what you want and you accept that deal that is the deal that you’re making by living in the u.s and i think people should just accept that and stop complaining about it uh is it fair no but that’s what it is you’re choosing
To live there that’s the government if you if you claim to believe in this great american democracy that people who live in the us claim in well you’re getting the system that you want and it comes with high taxes but if you don’t want to live in the u.s
Then i don’t believe you have to pay but again i’m not in charge the u.s has put together a system based on years of jingoism and convincing people it’s the best place to be to where if you’re one of the 9 million no one’s going to come
Out and defend you no one’s going to come out and say you shouldn’t pay in fact you know what you see politicians in countries like canada saying that’s a pretty good idea why should you have the privilege of being canadian and not paying it’s essentially becoming a mafia
These western governments if you want to have our tattoo you’re going to pay tribute and so i see that as a disturbing trend why not just americans want a second passport to have protection to where they can exit at any time but quite frankly if you’re thinking of exiting i
Think that it’s generally a situation where you want to fast-track that to get comfortable with being overseas get comfortable with having the infrastructure i’m helping a lot of people create infrastructure to where they have places to go places to put their money places where they feel good
All that so they can be able to make an informed decision because this kind of stuff is only going to be more difficult i’ve talked about how second passports are gonna become more difficult that’s gonna be the next thing where it’s gonna be hard just getting a citizenship with which you can
Renounce because they’re gonna start cutting down the options in the wake of the pandemic in the wake of russian oligarchs of everything else you’re going to have fewer options to be able to create than infrastructure in the first place but if you once you have the infrastructure in place i think it’s
It’s important to come to a decision if you want to be a us citizen and you’re willing to to deal with whatever that comes with then i think it’s a great decision i’m not telling people to renounce but if you’re thinking of renouncing because of any of the reasons
Why people renounce i think that generally sooner is better than later and i’m sure that many people watching aren’t even thinking for tax reasons um i think there’s a lot of drama that comes with being a us citizen that if you don’t want to live in the u.s may
Not be worth it when you can get plenty of their passports but you want to get your passports before some of those options get cut off you know i think it’s important to realize what they’re doing here it’ll be interesting to see and we’ll report back
If you leave a comment on what happens in the coming months are they going to start reopening as the world gets back to normal are they going to resume these services or is it going to be something that they continue to drag their feet on that will be interesting to watch don’t
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