www.harpers.org/ElectingToLeave.html
Sources So the wrong candidate has won, and you want to leave the country. 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. Th e State Department does not record the annual number of Americans renoun cing their citizenshiprenunciants, as they are officially termedbut the Internal Revenue Service publishes their names on a quarterly basis in the Federal Register. The IRSs interest in the subject is, of course , purely financial; since 1996, the agency has tracked ex-Americans in t he hopes of recouping tax revenue, which in some cases may be owed for u p to ten years after a person leaves the country. In 2002, for example, the Register recorded only 403 departures, of which many (if not most) were merely longtime re sident 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 wa nt you to have obtained citizenship or legal asylum in another countryu sually a complicated and expensive process, if it can be done at all. Wo uld-be renunciants must also prove that they do not intend to live in th e United States afterward. the declaration must be made at a consuls office abroad. Those who imagine that exile will be easily won would do well to consider the travails of Kenneth Nichols OKeefe. An ex-Marine who was discharge d, according to his website, under other than honorable conditions, O Keefe has tried officially to renounce his citizenship twice without suc cess, first in Vancouver and then in the Netherlands. His initial bid wa s rejected after the State Department concluded that he would return to the United Statesa credible inference, as OKeefe in fact had returned immediately. After his second attempt, OKeefe waited seven months with no response before he tried a more sensa tional approach. He went back to the consulate at The Hague, retrieved h is passport, walked outside, and lit it on fire. Seventeen days later, h e received a letter from the State Department informing him that he was still an American, because he had not obtained the right to reside elsew here. He had succeeded only in breaking the law, since mutilating a pass port is illegal. Heading to Canada or Mexico In your search for alternate citizenship, you might naturally think first of Canada and Mexico. But despite the generous terms of NAFTA, our neig hbors to the north and south are, like us, far more interested in the fl ow of money than of persons. Canada, in particular, is no longer a parad ise awaiting American dissidents: whereas in 1970 roughly 20,000 America ns became permanent residents of Canada, that number has dropped over th e last decade to an average of just about 5,000. Today it takes an avera ge of twenty-five months to be accepted as a permanent resident, and thi s is only the first step in what is likely to be a five-year process of becoming a citizen. At that point the gesture of expatriation may alread y be moot, particularly if a sympathetic political party has since resum ed power. Seniors should know that the country does offer a lenient program for retirees, who may esse ntially stay as long as they want. But you will not be able to work or t o vote, and, more important, you must remain an American for at least fi ve years. France Should one candidate win, those who opposed the Iraq war might hope to fi nd refuge in France, where a very select few are allowed to assimilate each year. Assimilation is reserved for persons of non-French descent w ho are able to prove that they are more French than American, having mas tered the language as well as the philosophy of the French way of life. Each case is determined on its own merit, and decisions are made by the Ministre de lEmploi, du Travail, et de la Cohsion Social. When your n ame is published in the Journal Officiel de la Rpublique Franais, you are officially a citizen, and may thereafter heckle the United States wi th authentic Gallic zeal. The coalition of the willing Should the other candidate win, war supporters might naturally look to jo in the coalition of the willing. But you may find a willing and developi ng nation as difficult to join as an unwilling and developed one. It tak es at least five years to become a citizen of Pakistan, for instance, un less one marries into a family, and each applicant for residency in Paki stan is judged on a case-by-case basis. Uzbekistan imposes a five-year w ait as well, with an additional twist: the nation does not recognize dua l citizenship, and so you will be required to renounce your US citizen ship first. Given Uzbekistans standard of living (low), unemployment (h igh), and human-rights record (poor), this would be something of a leap of faith. The Caribbean A more pleasant solution might be found in the Caribbean. Kitts and Nevis, which Frommers guide praises for its average year-round temperature of 79F (26C), low hum idity, white-sand beaches, and unspoiled natural beauty. Prices start at around $125,00 0, which includes a $25,000 application fee and a minimum purchase of $1 00,000 in bonds. Processing time, which includes checks for criminal rec ords and HIV, can take up to three months, but with luck you could be re nouncing by Inauguration Day. The island of Dominica likewise offers a p rogram of economic citizenship, though it should be noted that Frommer s describes the beaches as not worth the effort to get there. Speed is of the essence, however, because your choice of tropical paradis es is fast dwindling: similar passport-vending programs in Belize and Gr enada have been shut down since 2001 under pressure from the State Depar tment, which does not approve. In any case, it should be noted that unde r the aforementioned IRS rules, you might well be forced to continue sub sidizing needless invasionsor, to be evenhanded, needless afterschool p rograms. Indian reservations Our Native American reservations, which enjoy freedom from state taxation and law enforcement, might seem an ideal home for the political exile. But becoming a citizen of a reservation is difficultone must prove that one is a descendant of a member of the original tribal base rolland mo reover would be, as a gesture of political disaffection, largely symboli c Reservations remain subject to federal law; furthermore, citizens of a reservation hold dual citizenships, and as such are expected to vote i n US elections and to live with the results. The high seas You might consider moving yourself offshore. At a price of $13 million y ou can purchase an apartment on The World, a residential cruise ship tha t moves continuously, stopping at ports from Venice to Zanzibar to Palm Beach. Again, however, your expatriation would be only partial: The Worl d flies the flag of the Bahamas, but its homeowners, who hail from all o ver Europe, Asia, and the United States, retain citizenship in their hom e nations. To obtain a similar result more cheaply, you can simply register your own boat under a flag of convenience and float it outside the United States 230-mile zone of economic control. There, on your Liberian tanker, you will essentially be an extension of that African nation, subject only t o its laws, and may imagine yourself free of oppressive government. Micronations The boldest approach is to start a nation of your own. Sadly, these days it is essentially impossible to buy an uninhabited island and declare it a sovereign nation: virtually every rock above the waterline is now und er the jurisdiction of one principality or another. But efforts have bee n made to build nations on man-made structures or on reefs lying just be low the waterline. Among the more successful of these is the famous Prin cipality of Sealand, which was founded in 1967 on an abandoned military platform off the coast of Britain. The following year a British judge ru led that the principality lay outside the nations territorial waters. N ew citizenships in Sealand, however, are not being granted or sold a...
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