Record Numbers Renounce Their U.S. Citizenship – Forbes

2016/02/08 2 Comments

Virtually none of the reporting I have seen situates this increase in the context of the total number of American expatriates. Estimates vary between 2 and 7 million, meaning that the 4,300 expatriations are tiny in relation to the expatriate population, between 0.2 and 0.06 percent.

Notwithstanding this, Victoria Ferauge, whose blog The Franco-American Flophouse I highly recommend for her insightful posts on citizenship issues, notes that the small numbers do not mean that it is unimportant.

For American expatriates affected by FATCA, it is.

More broadly,given the wide attention placed on citizenship renunciation in American media, it appears to strike a chord with many Americans who wonder why any American would voluntarily renounce their citizenship.

The numbers are less important perhaps than the symbolism, and the implications of a more instrumental view of citizenship than American citizenship having an intrinsic value by itself:

Once again, the number of Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship has gone up, up 560% from its Bush administration high. In 2015, there were approximately 4,300 expatriations according to the published names of individuals who renounced. The name and shame list is published quarterly, with the most recent three-month total being 1,058. That brings the total to 4,279 for 2015.

These numbers seem tiny compared to the influx of immigrants. Yet expatriations have historically been much lower. Moreover, the published list is also incomplete, with many not counted. Surprisingly, no one seems to know exactly how big the real number is, even though the IRS and FBI both track Americans who renounce citizenship. There is no single explanation, though with global tax reporting and FATCA, the list of the individuals who renounce keeps increasing,

(Photo credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg)

2014 was also a record year with 3,415 published expatriates. The reasons that Americans renouncing citizenship is at an all-time high can be over family, tax and legal complications. Dual citizenship isn’t always possible, as this infographic from MoveHub shows. Some countries make citizens pay a fee to hand in their passport. Some countries have no fee, but America’s $2,350 fee is more than twenty times the average level in other high-income countries.

Source: Record Numbers Renounce Their U.S. Citizenship – Forbes

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Book Sale – 25 percent off today only

2016/02/03 Leave a comment

Lulu_Feb_3rd

For those interested in the print version of Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote or Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism, one of Lulu.com’s regular sales.

The direct link to my book page is: My Author Spotlight.

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ICYMI: Why Cities Should Invest in Citizenship: Helping Immigrants Achieve Citizenship Yields Major Returns | Bob Annibale

2016/01/28 Leave a comment

Likely more correlation than causation, although citizenship both reflects and promotes integration:

It is widely recognized that gaining citizenship is a transformative social experience for immigrants and our nation. Naturalization ceremonies are often emotional events, and the integration of immigrants has shaped the face of America.

Less widely appreciated is the fact that citizenship is a powerful source of economic empowerment and strength both for the individuals who gain citizenship, as well as the cities in which they live.

In the past month the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) and Citi Community Development unveiled new research conducted by the Urban Institute on the economic effects of naturalization on immigrants and their local economies. “The Economic Impact of Naturalization on Immigrants and Cities” shows that naturalization may lead to an average increase in individual earnings of 8.9%, or $3,200, in the first year after becoming a U.S. citizen. If all eligible immigrants were to naturalize, employment and homeownership rates among eligible immigrants may also rise.

Cities also reap economic benefits from naturalization. If all of the eligible immigrants across the 21 U.S. cities studied were to become citizens, their increased employment rate and earnings would generate millions in new tax revenues – $2 million per year in cities with smaller immigrant populations, like Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Reading, Pennsylvania, and up to $152 million per year in Chicago, $364 million in Los Angeles, and a whopping $789 million in New York City.

Source: Why Cities Should Invest in Citizenship: Helping Immigrants Achieve Citizenship Yields Major Returns — and It’s the Right Thing to Do | Bob Annibale

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Christine Taubira, justice minister at odds with French government, resigns

2016/01/28 Leave a comment

A further reflection of the divisions within the Hollande government and party members and supporters over the proposed citizenship revocation measures:

French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, a left-winger often considered at odds with her government on matters of law and order enforcement, resigned on Wednesday, President Francois Hollande’s office said in a statement.

The announcement came as parliament prepared to examine a controversial constitutional reform that would allow for people convicted of terrorism to be stripped of their citizenship in certain circumstances.

Taubira, who expressed reservations about the plan, said on her Twitter account: “Sometimes you remain in place to resist. Sometimes resisting means you go.”

The statement from Hollande’s office said Taubira would be replaced by Jean-Jacques Urvoas, widely regarded as more supportive of Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Hollande.

Taubira, born in French Guiana, was perhaps best known for shepherding legislation through parliament to legalize same-sex weddings in France. While her active role on that major social policy change was widely recognised, she was often accused of advocating a softer touch on law and order than others in her government.

That stance has looked even more problematic in the wake of the Nov. 13 Islamist militant attacks on Paris and the security clampdown they sparked, and as countries across Europe take a harder line on policing.

Source: Christine Taubira, justice minister at odds with French government, resigns – World – CBC News

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Trudeau plans repeal of Tory union, citizenship laws as Parliament returns

2016/01/26 1 Comment

These sources suggest a simple full repeal of C-24 rather than a more surgical approach on C-24. Broader than platform and mandate letter commitments:

So the economy will be the priority. But government sources suggest it won’t be the sole preoccupation in the first two weeks as the new government looks to put a positive stamp on these early days in power.

Among the measures expected to be dealt with through new legislation:

  • Repealing the Conservative’s Bill C-24, which allows the government to strip Canadian citizenship from dual citizens who are convicted of terrorism-related offences.

  • Repealing two other Conservative laws that the Liberals argue weaken the rights of trade unions. They are Bill C-377, which requires unions to disclose how they spend members’ dues, as well as Bill C-525, which makes it harder for unions to organize in federally-regulated workplaces.

  • Introducing parliamentary oversight for Canada’s national security agencies, though the commitment to repeal parts of the previous government’s anti-terrorism law, Bill C-51, is expected to come later.

Source: Trudeau plans repeal of Tory union, citizenship laws as Parliament returns – Politics – CBC News

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Dozens of nations discriminate against women in citizenship laws – study

2016/01/26 Leave a comment

Good overview and not surprising that most of these countries are in Africa and the Mid-East:

More than a quarter of the world’s nations have sexist laws on nationality, such as stripping women of citizenship if they marry a foreigner, that can deprive women of access to jobs, education and other benefits available to men, a new study says.

The discriminatory laws range from forcing women to give up their acquired citizenship if they are divorced or widowed or denying children the citizenship of their mother, said the report released on Monday by Equality Now, an international human rights organization.

Not having legal citizenship can mean being unable to obtain a passport or work permit, being unable to attend public schools or living under threat of deportation, the report said.

It also can leave women stuck in abusive marriages or unable to win custody of their children, it added.

The report found 53 countries with discriminatory nationality laws, 20 of them in sub-Saharan Africa and 16 in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Sex discrimination persists in nationality and citizenship laws in over 50 countries around the world, continuing to trap women and their families in a web of sexist nationality laws,” the report said.

“Too many governments have simply decided that a woman should have fewer rights than a man to pass on her citizenship to her children or her foreign spouse, or to acquire, change or keep her nationality,” it said.

For example, women cannot pass their citizenship to adopted children the way men can in the Bahamas, Barbados and Mauritius, it said.

Foreign women who take on their spouse’s nationality lose it if their marriage ends in Bahrain, Togo, Tunisia and Yemen, it said.

The report cited recent progress in several countries, including Senegal and Suriname, where laws were changed to give women the same rights as men to transfer their nationality to their husband and children, and Vanuatu, where married women won the right to pass their nationality to a foreign spouse on the same terms as married men.

Source: Dozens of nations discriminate against women in citizenship laws – study

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Ontario lauded for high school history curriculum

2016/01/25 Leave a comment

While I expect the debate over the teaching of history, and which histories and interpretations, will continue, this improvement over the past five years is noteworthy.

I can only wonder, given Alberta’s poor score, whether it had some influence on the increased emphasis on history in Discover Canada (which was needed), the citizenship guide introduced by former minister Jason Kenney, and the requirement, for teenagers, to take the citizenship knowledge test (not needed):

Ontario stands at the top of the class for its strong Canadian history curriculum in the latest ratings by this country’s history education watchdog — and we trounced Alberta, whose fuzzy timelines and lack of compulsory high school history credit landed it dead last.

Ontario’s rich Grade 10 history credit course — so jam-packed the report suggests it be spread over two years — plus its mandatory half-course in citizenship helped earn it a mark of 82 per cent on the Canadian History Report Card, to be released Monday by Historica Canada, a group that promotes awareness of Canadian history.

Also strong were British Columbia (81 per cent), Quebec (80) and Manitoba (80). However Alberta scored just 62 per cent, and Saskatchewan 69 per cent, in a report that calls for schools to work harder to help students understand their country.

“We tend to be lacking at either the front end — recent history — or the back end before 1867, but we’re getting better, which is important because understanding history helps you understand why we are the way we are,” said Historica president Anthony Wilson-Smith.

If anything, Ontario’s Grade 10 history course tries to cover too much, he said; “from the early 1900s to now — both world wars, the great influenza epidemic, the injustices done to immigrants like the Chinese who didn’t get the vote till 1947… let’s think of that scope! It would be better spread over two years.”

Canadian schools have pulled up their educational socks since 2009, when Historica’s last report card handed out failing grades to five provinces and territories, with two more squeaking by with only 50s.

This report card looked at history curriculum from Grades 4 to 12 to see how well it balances the teaching of timelines with deeper themes like diversity, gender, aboriginal peoples and national identity — and from a range of perspectives, from global to local, social to national.

It also measures how well each province teaches students to think about history using the six “historical thinking concepts” that have to do with historical significance, considering evidence, examining continuity and change, cause and consequence, looking at broader historical perspectives and the ethical dimension.

Wilson-Smith said Canadian schools are moving beyond the perspective of European settlers to include First Nations, women and non-European immigrants’ perspectives, and consider more than just military and economic milestones by discussing ethics and social responsibility.

Historica also consulted classroom teachers, and some in Ontario expressed their frustration at having little time for a deep look at events such as the FLQ crisis, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Indian Act, residential schools, the Montreal Massacre, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, OPEC crisis, the Oka crisis and the Meech Lake Accord, said Historica’s program manager, Bronwyn Graves.

Source: Ontario lauded for high school history curriculum | Toronto Star

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Halifax man helped thousands pretend they were in Canada to get around citizenship rules

2016/01/16 Leave a comment

Good detailed account of citizenship application fraud and how it worked (in the overall context, CIC data suggests that the percentage is low – see “Protecting Canadian Citizenship” – Citizenship Fraud Update – Numbers Still Small). Sentence appears small in relation to the scale of the fraud committed:

If anyone dialed the Halifax phone number Mohd Morelley wrote in his application for citizenship as proof he was integrating in Canada, it would ring out in an office on the outskirts of Halifax. Someone might answer, but it wouldn’t be Morelley or his wife or three children, who all wanted to be Canadians.

They were all living in Kuwait.

Along with the bogus phone number, Morelley and his family bought a full-service bogus citizenship package from an immigration consultant, including a Halifax address for a home he never lived in, tax returns and employment records for a job he never held, payment of utility bills he never used, ATM withdrawals to show local transactions he didn’t make and a letter from a local Islamic society saying he was deeply involved in the activities at a mosque he didn’t attend.

Morelley’s phantom phone — and fake life — were far from unique: more than 140 cell phones, labeled with the number and name of a client, were organized in the Bedford Highway office of the Canadian Commercial Group, run by immigration consultant Hassan Al-Awaid.

At least 1,244 clients were listed in Al-Awaid’s files, most accompanied by family members.

And he is but one of several crooked consultants caught recently peddling easy ways around the residency (and other) requirements for foreigners to gain Canadian citizenship.

Here is how they did it.

Hassan Al-Awaid, 62, an Iraqi national, worked in public relations and marketing for a government-owned petrochemical company in Kuwait before immigrating to Canada in 1992 and settling in Nova Scotia, where he and his wife had three children, including twin girls.

He might have once been a legitimate immigration consultant when he started, at least as far back as 1997. He was a member of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants until he was suspended in 2006. And he didn’t join the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council, Canada’s current regulatory body, making him another “ghost consultant,” working in the shadows.

Increasingly, Al-Awaid shifted to black market services and relied on referrals from clients, since his specialization was hard to advertise.

“My office is one of the famous offices in Nova Scotia and my services differ from any other office, especially after arrival, and everyone know that,” he boasted in an email to a client.

…Al-Awaid’s furtive and sometimes frantic business began to unravel in 2007, when Shawna Woodin, an intelligence officer with the Canada Border Services Agency in Halifax, noticed two different signatures for the same person in a citizenship application.

The CBSA and the RCMP started a lengthy investigation. Several of his clients confessed to investigators of the duplicity. Searches in 2010 at Al-Awaid’s office, home and car revealed his meticulous record keeping.

Police found more than 140 labelled cell phones and a stack of ATM cards with their PINs among the 20 filing cabinets of records seized, including reams of emails with clients and detailed records.

He was arrested in 2011

Al-Awaid eventually pleaded guilty to eight offences under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and ten under the Citizenship Act, for cases stretching from 2002 to 2011.

At his sentencing this summer, court heard he was being treated for hypertension, hypothyroidism, elevated cholesterol, gout and diabetes.

“I am simply not satisfied that the Correctional Service of Canada can safely and effectively monitor and treat Mr. Al-Awaid’s very significant health issues,” provincial court of Nova Scotia judge Anne Derrick said.

That allowed him to avoid jail, instead getting a conditional sentence of two years less a day, a $4,000 fine and 240 hours of community service.

Prosecutors lamented the growing presence of citizenship fraud.

“That these ‘address of convenience’ cases went from virtually unheard of a short number of years ago to making regular appearances in news reports across Canada is indicative that the scheme has served to foster an overseas industry that thrives on immigration fraud,” prosecutors Timothy McLaughlin and Ronda Vanderhoek told court.

For the charges against Al-Awaid, police focused on 53 clients who used eight Halifax addresses to falsify residency. Of those 53, seven provided states to police; nine of the applicants had already obtained their citizenship, 19 withdrew from the process, while the rest were still in the application process at the time his case went to court.

Source: Halifax man helped thousands pretend they were in Canada to get around citizenship rules

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‘The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen,’ by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian – The New York Times

2016/01/12 Leave a comment

Richard Bellamy’s review of The Cosmopolites and his valid  commentary regarding the nature of citizenship:

The Canadian philosopher Joseph Carens has characterized national citizenship as “the modern equivalent of feudal class privilege.’’ That seems all too accurate a description of the citizenship of the absolute monarchies of the U.A.E., where only 15 percent of the population enjoy the privileges of citizens. These benefits are paid for largely by the unearned windfall of oil and gas revenues and they involve almost no civic duties or political rights. The multiple citizenships of the U.H.N.W.I. are similarly free of responsibility and lacking in political commitment — that is their point. They are commercial transactions conducted for profit. Neither of these types of citizenship corresponds to the hard-won forms of citizenship found within democratic states.

Herein lies the weakness of Abrahamian’s analysis. The political and social rights of genuine, state-based citizenship derive from the contribution members make to sustaining the public life of the community, be it through participation in the economy as workers and consumers, caring for children and the elderly or simply recognizing and abiding by its laws. All who contribute in these ways should be entitled to citizenship. By contrast, global citizens belong nowhere and anywhere. Yet both the injustice of denying citizenship to the bidoon and those like them and the unfairness of granting it as a commercial transaction to the super-rich stem from the same cause — a failure to link the rights of citizens to those civic duties that arise from active membership in a political community.

Source: ‘The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen,’ by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian – The New York Times

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Metropolis 2016 – Areas of Focus

2016/01/11 Leave a comment

Metropolis 2016.001With the draft program for Metropolis out (here), I took some time to analyze the areas of focus for the academics, settlement organizations and other NGOs, and government officials who have organized plenaries, workshops and roundtables.

The conference themes are: selection, governance, settlement and access to services, and identities and migration history.

With the exception of the plenaries – determined largely by the Association of Canadian Studies which organizes the conference – the focus reflects the response to these themes from participants, and thus gives a sense of what individuals and organizations involved in immigration-related issues are working on.

The chart above is my admittedly somewhat subjective take (not always clear, and in some cases, sessions cover more than one area).

Not surprisingly, integration and settlement are the most active areas, followed by multiculturalism, immigration and refugees.

Citizenship is largely absent (and was not mentioned specifically in the sub-theme of identities and migration history)), surprising given the magnitude of the 2014 and earlier changes to citizenship under the Conservative government, and the effect these are having on the immigrant-to-citizen model.

Federal government organized sessions involve two departments (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, StatsCan), and are largely integration, refugee and research focussed.

This is another illustration of IRC’s relative neglect of citizenship and longer-term integration issues, given that these are outside its ‘centre of gravity’ and focus.

Given the transition of multiculturalism back to Canadian Heritage, there are no government-organized sessions on multiculturalism (but academics and others are heavily engaged given the identities theme).

Only Saskatchewan, PEI and Ontario are organizers or panelists in  some sessions, although settlement organizations in most provinces are heavily involved.

I have organized two sessions: From the ‘Big Shift’ to the ‘Big Return’? Election 2015 Mainstreaming of Ethnic Votes and Citizenship: Finding the Balance to address some of the gaps.

While a ‘market-driven’ approach to conference themes responds to those active in the field, it can also result in neglecting significant policy areas, as the lack of attention to citizenship attests.

That being said, Metropolis provides one of the few opportunities for academics and practitioners to exchange findings and knowledge.

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