US citizenship comes with a big administrative burden even if you don't live in the US.
Some parents with European citizenship sometimes do not file an American birth certificate when registering their child for a European birth certificate. I.e. if the country facilitates registration of child based on parent citizenship and not birth location of child, they just never declare the child was born in the US. "It was a home birth"
At international schools in some countries this is an open secret and happens quite often, as long as the parents are not feds and are not under heavy scrutiny. So the kid has two different BC & passports with two different birthplaces. Some even have different birth-dates and names.
Sure saves the poor kids the nightmare of not being able to open a bank account abroad, as a US citizen.
The moral is, plan your money, plan your kids, the federales will never inform on what is in your best interest. Both kids and money come with paperwork attached. Best read up now.
And yes, a timely consultation with a lawyer before the fact is most often cheaper than the cost of renouncing US citizenship and the time you waste on declaring while not living in the US.
>>Sure saves the poor kids the nightmare of not being able to open a bank account abroad, as a US citizen.
You save them nothing, soon or later Uncle Sam will crunch numbers and discover that the German version of John Doe is an American, as far as IRS is concerned.
USA can solve the problems for 99.99% of expats and accidental Americans by making laws for those with $million+ salaries /assets. They gain nothing by making every poor guy spend thousands a year to tell IRS that they owe nothing.
FYI: People from a lot of countries are paying and will pay tens of thousands to bring their kids to USA...illegally. So US citizenship is still valuable. Very valuable.
I used to own a company in the UK, which was bought by Apple and part of the purchase agreement was that I and the other company partner[] move to Cupertino.
Owning a company meant actually submitting forms to the Inland Revenue (the UK equivalent of the IRS) every year, and it was sufficiently a hassle that we paid an accountant to do it.
Fast forward to a few years after the move to the US, and the IR are still sending me forms every year to fill out about my income in the UK. Eventually I tire of this yearly ritual, so I just drew a diagonal line over every single page of the return, put a big fat '0' in the last entry, and in the comments at the end I wrote
"I live in the US. I have lived in the US for the past 5 years. I do not have any immediate plans to return to the UK, so this is a waste of your time and mine. Please. Stop."
I wasn't actually expecting it to stop... But a month or few later I got a letter from them saying that they took note of my comments, would stop sending me yearly forms, warning me that if I returned to live in the UK, they would expect me to notify them "perhaps more politely". At which point I sort of felt guilty letting the frustration spill out onto the form...
[] Before we were bought, we travelled yearly to the US (in part to see Apple). Most times, in the Bay Area, we stayed in Sausalito just over the bay from San Francisco, and caught a ferry to SF in the morning. String in the sunlight on a ferry with a Danish pastry is an excellent way to commute, and we typically stayed in 'Hotel Sausalito' (interesting fact: a converted brothel).
Early on in this series of yearly events we arrive (for Java-one this time), and John (not his real name) walks into the reception and proclaims "I am John <name> and this is my partner <my name>". They booked us into a single room with a queen bed. Both being owners we generally shared a room on these trips (small company finances can be brutal), but never actually a bed. The hotel didn't have any two-bed rooms left, and there'd been a mix-up with the booking, but eventually they gave us another room for 1/2 the price, which was an acceptable compromise :)
Plenty of countries allow dual citizenship, including the US, Canada and most of the EU, so it's not that unusual to have and travel with multiple passports.
Having your entire life shut down, through no fault of your own, by some entire remote country you have no dealings or relationship with and no power to fight, is a first world problem?
Even in the thirdest of third worlds, people have some sort of shop which is their families livlihood, which could be taken away and destroyed, and which would be devastating.
1. Getting a visa to be in the US is so difficult for citizens of third world countries that very few would find themselves in such a situation.
2. Only first world citizens would perceive an additional US citizenship as a mere nuisance, best to be avoided. For the vast majority of third world citizens, the benefits of an additional citizenship from the US far outweighs the difficulties of abiding by its rules.
The people who got visas (however they got them) are not accidental citizens.
And, everyone else should just shut up and not cpmplain that something they didn't ask for is being done to them, regardless of it's cost or damage? Because you think it's valuable? Wow. I can only assume you didn't read the article you are commenting on, or are the last person whos opinion anyone should care about, given how thoroughly you just disregarded anyone else's. And at the same time having the balls to charge "first world problem"... holy cow.
> The people who got visas (however they got them) are not accidental citizens.
The visa point was about the parents of the accidental citizens. How many Papua New Guinean are there out there who were born in the US while their parents were on vacation there? How many Australians?
I don't know why you're taking so much offense here, but this is actually first world problem by definition - it only applies to residents of countries in the US sphere of influence. Everyone else can just ignore any latent US claim of citizenship.
It applies to, by definition, people who do not live in the US. Anything other guilt-by-assosciation is an invalid and callous invention to avoid caring about a problem that doesn't affect you personally.
Some parents with European citizenship sometimes do not file an American birth certificate when registering their child for a European birth certificate. I.e. if the country facilitates registration of child based on parent citizenship and not birth location of child, they just never declare the child was born in the US. "It was a home birth"
At international schools in some countries this is an open secret and happens quite often, as long as the parents are not feds and are not under heavy scrutiny. So the kid has two different BC & passports with two different birthplaces. Some even have different birth-dates and names.
Sure saves the poor kids the nightmare of not being able to open a bank account abroad, as a US citizen.
The moral is, plan your money, plan your kids, the federales will never inform on what is in your best interest. Both kids and money come with paperwork attached. Best read up now. And yes, a timely consultation with a lawyer before the fact is most often cheaper than the cost of renouncing US citizenship and the time you waste on declaring while not living in the US.