Yes, seriously. This is a huge issue in Canada precisely because there are so many law-abiding Canadians who also hold US citizenship. A lot of these Americans-on-a-technicality have no Social Security number, and the ones I’ve talked to hope that by not getting one, they can stay off the radar. But this now effectively bars them from ever working in the US.
As I read it, it is $151,000 per year in federal income tax liability. I am no law expert so I am not entirely clear if it is every year for 5 years (i.e. 5 x $151,000 = $755,000 or more in five years) or if hitting the limit in any one of the preceding five years is sufficient to trigger the penalty status. (i.e. 1 x $151,000 + 4 years x $0)
Still, anyone with a home in certain areas of the country or a farm could easily find themselves hitting the asset limits. Land rich, cash poor.
Further, all the references I can find refer to assets, but I see no explicit statement that these refer to net assets. Given the punitive nature of this law I am not certain that they wouldn’t push someone into penalty status who has a home or business with little equity and a massive loan balance. They have a big asset. And huge liability too.
Or, of course, the filing requirements could trip you up no matter how great or small your tax liability. Filing US income taxes while living overseas is complicated. If someone missed one form five years ago, even if it did not affect his tax liability, then that would put him into penalty status under this proposed law.
The proposed Ex-Patriot Act also had a provision to apply this penalty status retroactively to certain persons who renounced citizenship up to ten years prior to the implementation of the act. There is good reason to look closely at any law which proposes to retroactively impose a penalty of any kind.
Curiously, the United States dealt with the issue of expatriation rather decisively in 1868. The US came out strongly in favor of the right of an individual to expatriate. Cite
Of course that act was assuming people were expatriating themselves in order to emigrate to the United States. Subsequent SCOTUS opinions found the language broad enough to cover the right of Americans to renounce their citizenship.
The East Germans used to shoot anyone who had the temerity to want to leave their wonderful country. Going back was certainly not an option.
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I’m afraid you’re mistaken: you can now get a Canadian passport valid for 10 years, it gets issued within 10 days, and if you go into your local passport office, they’ll look your documents over, copy them, and return them on the spot. Mrs. D18 did it for us just yesterday.
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http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3212603.shtml#.Un3r8B74CUn
Border guards can do anything according to them.
One of my friends is an “Accidental American”. He was born in Maryland, to a mother who was working in the World Bank. Left when he was 18 months and did not have any other ties. When at the age of 23 he went to get a visa, he was told he needed a US passport.
IIRC one of the Guantanamo inmates was also an Accidental American as well, who has no idea about his citizenship.
Nitpick but that isn’t want bi-manual means usually.
There is also a video on youtube if you want to see it.
I have no fucking clue why they wanted to feel her cervix.
I find it frightning and scary the way America is changing and what it is turning into. All in the name of freedom and democracy, of course.
I find “exit laws” a clear sign that something is wrong. Like a scorned person who wants to get revenge. “You owe all you are and all you have to us; in a way you belong to us and you cannot desert us without paying back.” That has been the thinking of some communist countries… and now America.
Add this to the authoritarian mood that is taking over and it is a bad recipe.
People who want to renounce their American nationality are being considered by public opinion and by laws almost like traitors. Sort of the same thing that happened with soviet defectors in their countries and yet in the west it was taken as a sign that things weren’t going well in their home countries. Maybe America could stop to think about all this for a moment.