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A comment on Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports.

Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by dragonwriter on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @05:54PM (#11206795)
4,279 out of ~319,000,000 may be a "record number", but its so small as to be negligible.
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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by fabulist on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @06:15PM (#11206937)
The author is arguing that the rate at which it was increasing (18x between 2008 and 2015) and the persistence of the trend (every year for the past three years) as well as that the most major contributing factor (tax law) is unlikely to change made this newsworthy, not the proportion of the population.

Edit: And I don't find it to be a moving counter argument. Additionally, I'm not sure its a good apples-to-apples comparison as the phenomenon seems to be prevalent among US ex-patriots, rather than the entire population.

Edit2: It turns out that it's hard to know how many americans live overseas[0], but it seems like 6.8 million might be a good guess. 4.2k / 6.8m is still only about .0006% though.

[0] http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/counting-uncountable-...

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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by toothbrush on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @06:57PM (#11207165)
> ex-patriots

Nitpick: the word you're looking for is “expatriates”. Although this one made me smile :).

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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by fabulist on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @11:40PM (#11208118)
It's too late to edit my post, but thank you for pointing it out, I was always perplexed by that.
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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by officialchicken on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @06:40PM (#11207071)
Yes, as absolute numbers. But how many of those are "high net worth" individuals, who may (or may not) contribute considerably more in taxes each year than the average tax payer? I believe, "Is there an exodus of people with access to large amounts of capital", is the real question with various long-term implications.
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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by scottwhudson on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @07:04PM (#11207205)
It's also worth noting that more and more American students are moving to Europe for free university and staying for the jobs. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this demographic begins to explain the increase in the US exodus, at least partially. Student debt can be a scary thing.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/why-american-students-are-...

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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by dalke on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @08:10PM (#11207484)
In looking at recent history, it's well worth remembering all of the Americans who emigrated to Canada and Europe to avoid the Vietnam draft. Many stayed.

It's very unlikely that the uptick in expatriation is due to a recent increase in the number of US students enrolled overseas. It takes 6-8 years of residency to get German citizenship, and while I don't know the details for Germany, in Sweden that excludes residency as a student.

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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by klipt on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @08:23PM (#11207534)
> It takes 6-8 years of residency to get German citizenship

That doesn't sound any slower than the US - it'll probably take me around 8 years of post-student residency to become a US citizen (3 on H1-B, then 5 on a green card - and bear in mind it's much faster for me than for someone born in India or China, who face massively backlogged green card quotas).

A lot of people fixate on citizenship, but permanent residency is 99% as good as citizenship. Ask any green card holder, they'll tell you the real challenge is getting the green card. The subsequent 5 year wait for US citizenship is gravy by comparison.

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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by dalke on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @08:41PM (#11207588)
We're talking about expatriation. It's difficult to live as a stateless person. You really want to have citizenship in another country before giving up US citizenship.

While permanent residency might be a possible substitute, the lack of any citizenship will likely make it more difficult to travel to another country, and there may be legal problems should you have a child as a stateless mother.

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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by klipt on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @09:02PM (#11207655)
True, assuming you're not a dual citizen to start off. Some of the Americans moving to Europe might already have a European citizenship by descent (although not necessarily of the country they end up settling in).
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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by CyberDildonics on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @08:39PM (#11207581)
> It's very unlikely that the uptick in expatriation is due to a recent increase in the number of US students enrolled overseas.

He didn't say that it was.

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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by dalke on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @08:45PM (#11207601)
Oh, I see! I read "begins to explain the increase in the US exodus" and interpreted it as "exodus from US citizenship"/expatriation not "exodus from US residency"/emigration.
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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by st3v3r on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @10:32PM (#11207934)
"who may (or may not) contribute considerably more in taxes each year than the average tax payer?"

Likely not. If they're so angry at paying taxes to the country that helped them build their wealth, they're likely already employing several other ways to cheat on taxes.

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Re:Record number of Americans dump U.S. passports by kafkaesq on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @10:19PM (#11207896)
No number of "refuseniks" is negligible for a country whose political system has inculcated its citizens -- perhaps more successfully than any on Earth[1] -- that theirs is not just the "best" country in the world, but, in polite terms, the Best Motherfucken Country In The Whole Goddamn World (further expletives deleted) -- such that while OK, they might want to go live somewhere for a while (or even permanently) -- no one in their right mind would even think of revoking their permanent Right of Return to this, the Greatest, Freest, Proudest Nation The World Has Ever Seen, Known or Dreamt Of.

[1] For any length of time; so not comparing to, say, the National Socialist bubble in Germany, 1933-1945.

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