A Guide to Expatriating to another Country

[AnnInLa]

Full, interesting article at http://www.harpers.org


Electing to Leave
A reader’s guide to expatriating on November 3
Posted on Wednesday, November 3, 2004. Originally from Harper's Magazine, October 2004. By Bryant Urstadt.
Sources

So the wrong candidate has won, and you want to leave the country. Let us consider your options.

Renouncing your citizenship

Given how much the United States as a nation professes to value freedom, your freedom to opt out of the nation itself is surprisingly limited. The State Department does not record the annual number of Americans renouncing their citizenship—“renunciants,” as they are officially termed—but the Internal Revenue Service publishes their names on a quarterly basis in the Federal Register. The IRS’s interest in the subject is, of course, purely financial; since 1996, the agency has tracked ex-Americans in the hopes of recouping tax revenue, which in some cases may be owed for up to ten years after a person leaves the country. In any event, the number of renunciants is small. In 2002, for example, the Register recorded only 403 departures, of which many (if not most) were merely longtime resident aliens returning home.

The most serious barrier to renouncing your citizenship is that the State Department, which oversees expatriation, is reluctant to allow citizens to go “stateless.” Before allowing expatriation, the department will want you to have obtained citizenship or legal asylum in another country—usually a complicated and expensive process, if it can be done at all. Would-be renunciants must also prove that they do not intend to live in the United States afterward. Furthermore, you cannot renounce inside U.S. borders; the declaration must be made at a consul’s office abroad.

[wysi]

1. As...

... I now have Australian citizenship as well I am seriously considering going to Wellington (to the embassy) and doing this exact thing.

I no longer wish to be considered as a member of the same group as that seething mass of hate and bigotry.