The Guardian view on Modi’s citizenship law: dangerous for all

2019/12/19 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

Thousands nationwide have protested against India’s new citizenship law in recent days, facing a brutal police response. This is arguably the biggest display of opposition to Narendra Modi since he took power six years ago, and for good reason. Demonstrators have been urged into action not by the sense of a new direction being established, but of the confirmation of the country’s alarming trajectory. The legislation is the proof that Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist project is not a containable anomaly, but an enterprise that threatens the nation’s very foundations of pluralism and secularism. Fear overshadows the hopes of that seven-decade endeavour.

The prime minister has piously tweeted: “This is the time to maintain peace, unity and brotherhood.” Superficially this is, as the BJP government claims, a law that expands rather than removes rights. It creates a fast-track path to citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsees and Christians arriving from Muslim-majority states, who would otherwise spend years labelled as illegal immigrants. But no one considering either its text or context could seriously regard this as a measure of inclusion. It is inherently one of exclusion, which discriminates against Muslims fleeing persecution, and signals that Muslim citizens are not “truly” Indian. It undermines constitutional protections which apply to foreigners as well as citizens in India.

Source: The Guardian view on Modi’s citizenship law: dangerous for all

And an upcoming court challenge:

India’s controversial religion-based citizenship act will have to pass the scrutiny of the nation’s top court, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pledged to push ahead and implement the law.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India S.A.Bobde issued a notice to the government seeking its response. The court agreed to examine the legality of the legislation following more than 50 petitions filed by activists, lawyers, student groups, Muslim bodies, and politicians from across the country. The court will next hear the case on Jan. 22 and may decide in January if the law should be stayed, Bobde said.

The move may calm protesters who have called the law discriminatory because it bars undocumented Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh from seeking citizenship but allows Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who migrated from these regions to do so. On Tuesday, Home Minister Amit Shah, who shepherded the Citizenship Amendment Act through the Parliament last week, defended it and ruled out any possibility of repealing the law.

“When the country was divided on the basis of religion and the minorities are being persecuted there in the name of religion, then will you not give them your citizenship?” Shah said in comments broadcast on Times Now, referring to the partition of India in 1947. “Where will they go?”

Stateless Risks

The new law is seen as a precursor to Shah’s plan to implement a nationwide citizens register to weed out illegal migrants.

Demonstrations first began in the eastern state of Assam where there are fears the new law would allow an influx of migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Some 1.9 million people in Assam — many of them Muslims — risk losing their Indian citizenship after the state enforced the citizens register in August.

Anger soon spread across many parts of India, including the capital New Delhi, over fears it would damage India’s traditional secular ethos enshrined in its Constitution that treats all religions on par.

Meanwhile, police stormed university campuses across the country this week to quell the protests, which have so far been led largely by students of all faiths.

“This isn’t about religion, this is about justice,” said Neha Sareen, a 22-year-old student at Tuesday’s protests outside Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University, which faced the worst police crackdown. “The law is against the constitution of India. It discriminates against fellow citizens.”

Repeal Demands

Protesters remain firm on their demand for a repeal of the act, said Shifa Ur Rehman Khan, president of Jamia university’s alumni association. Yet, the government has shown no signs of backing down on the bill. On Tuesday, Shah said no Indian citizen of any faith need worry about the citizenship rules.

The government is now turning its attention to building a temple for the Hindu warrior god Ram on the site of a demolished mosque in northern India, after the country’s top court gave a verdict in the favor of Hindu groups last month.

If the protests continue to gather steam there are fears it will distract the government from its economic problems and undermine efforts to attract foreign investment. Asia’s third-biggest economy is growing at its slowest pace in more than six years and unemployment is the highest in more than four decades.

Shah told industry leaders in Mumbai on Tuesday that the Modi government is working toward fixing a temporary economic slowdown and that it should recover ground in three quarters. Shah, whose interview was broadcast at the Times Network India Economic Conclave in Mumbai, got support from at least one executive.

“The idea of a strong India is important and it is sad that the students are getting sucked into politics,” said Sajjan Jindal, chairman of JSW Steel Ltd.before Shah’s speech. “This law will protect the country from illegal immigrants.”

The last time Shah addressed business leaders in Mumbai billionaire Rahul Bajaj spoke to say corporate India was hesitant about criticizing the current government.

Source: Supreme Court to Examine Contentious India Citizenship Law

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Up to a quarter of Russian immigrants to Israel may have left after receiving passports

2019/12/19 Leave a comment

“Citizens of convenience:”

Thousands of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union may have come only to receive an Israeli passport before moving back abroad.

The Hebrew weekly Makor Rishon reported that a cottage industry of companies promising expedited Israeli citizenship, and the passport that comes with it, have sprung up in Russia since the passage of a law allowing new immigrants to receive the travel document within the first three months of their aliyah.

For many in the post-Soviet world, an Israeli passport is considered as desirable as a European Union passport is to Israelis. Russian fixers have started advertising that they can help prospective “olim” obtain “Israeli citizenship within two days” for a cost of thousands of euros.

Under certain circumstances, the paper reported, the three-month period can be shortened to as little as a day, and some immigrants have even been able to receive their passports without having to leave Ben Gurion International Airport.

Based on data from Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, Makor Rishon estimated that approximately 8,500 emigres from the former FSU have come just for the passport before immediately leaving the country. One Jewish Agency official estimated that about 25 percent of the immigrants came for a passport and “left the country immediately after receiving it.”

Approximately 10,500 Russians and 6,400 Ukrainians made aliyah in 2018, which was the first year that the majority of new immigrants were not considered Jewish under halacha, or Jewish religious law.

Source: Up to a quarter of Russian immigrants to Israel may have left after receiving passports

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Egypt Opens Citizenship By Investment Scheme

2019/12/18 Leave a comment

Given visa restrictions on Egyptian passport holders, not sure how attractive this will be as the article notes:

Egypt cabinet has approved new citizenship law paving way for foreign investors to seek fast track citizenship for investments in the country. The move is part of Egypt’s bid to boost its finances. Under the new citizenship by investment scheme, there are five paths to becoming an Egyptian national:

  1. Donation: $250,000 (donation to state treasury, non-refundable)
  2. Real Estate Investment: $500,000 (individuals or legal entities)
  3. Investment project: $400,000 (foreigner’s share in the project cannot be less than 40%)
  4. Bank Deposit: $750,000 (refundable after 5 years in the local currency, without interest)
  5. Bank Deposit: $1 million (refundable after 3 years in the local currency, without interest)

The amounts stipulated in the 4th and 5th items have to be deposited into a special account under the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) treasury.

Prior to the latest rules, foreigners had to live in Egypt for ten consecutive years before applying for naturalization and citizenship, in general, was transferable through a father or mother.

Dual Citizenship: Persons who become naturalized Egyptian citizens may keep their original nationality if the other country permits it.

Egypt Passport Mobility: Egypt ranked No. 168 in the CEOWORLD magazine’s Global Passport Ranking for 2019, with 49 visa-free countries– but not, notably, the United States or the UK.

  • Asia: Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Macao, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal, Tajikistan, and Timor-Leste.
  • Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde Islands, Comores Islands, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe.
  • Oceania: Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Niue, Palau Islands, Samoa, and Tuvalu.
  • Caribbean: Dominica, Haiti, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
  • Americas: Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.
  • Middle east: Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, and Yemen.

Egypt has no visa-free treaty with any major economic powers, such as the United States, China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, India, France, Italy, Brazil, and Canada. Citizenship by investment is a practice and a choice offered for many seeking a second nationality in the countries where they often travel to or have a business in.

Egypt’s economy: Egypt’s economy is projected to grow by 5.8% of GDP in 2020 and to see a growth rate of 5.7% in 2021, according to study. The annual inflation rate is predicted to fall from 13.9 percent in 2019 to 5.9 percent in 2020. Egypt’s tourism is projected to hit a record of $15.1 billion in 2020 and $17.3 billion in 2021.

It also expected an increase in the volume of foreign direct investments to register $6.3 billion in 2020 and $7.3 billion in 2021. It expected that the country’s tax revenues will rise from $43.5 billion in 2019 to $53 billion in 2020 and to $58.6 billion in 2021.

The primary budget surplus will go up by 2.1% of GDP in 2020 and 2.2% in 2021, while the fiscal balance is projected to hit $26.8 billion in 2020 and $27.3 billion in 2021.

It suggested that the foreign debt will recede to 17.2% of GDP in 2020 and to 16.7% in 2021, the country’s foreign reserves will register $43.5 billion in 2020 and $41.7 billion in 2021.

Source: Egypt Opens Citizenship By Investment Scheme

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UN Rights Official Urges India to Scrap New Citizenship Law

2019/12/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Office of the U.N.’s top human rights official is urging India to scrap its new Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which it says discriminates against Muslims.

Violent protests erupted in the Indian states of Assam and Tripura in the wake of last week’s passage of India’s new citizenship law, killing three people and Injuring many others, including police officers.

The U.N. human rights office says it deplores the government’s brutal crackdown on those protesting the enactment of the law, which it calls fundamentally discriminatory.  The amended legislation grants citizenship rights to six religious minorities fleeing persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

But human rights spokesman, Jeremy Laurence, says the law does not extend the same protection to Muslims.

“The amended law would appear to undermine the commitment to equality before the law enshrined in India’s constitution and India’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention for the elimination of Racial Discrimination, to which India is a state party,” he said.

Laurence says India’s Citizenship Act could violate these international covenants, which prohibit racial, ethnic or religious discrimination.

“Although India’s broader naturalization laws remain in place, these amendments will have a discriminatory effect on people’s access to nationality.  All migrants, regardless of their migration status, are entitled to respect, protection and fulfillment of their human rights,”  he said.

A Muslim political party along with lawyers and rights groups have challenged the law in India’s Supreme Court, arguing that it violates the country’s secular constitution. The U.N. human rights office says it hopes the justices will consider whether the law is compatible with India’s international human rights obligations.

Source: UN Rights Official Urges India to Scrap New Citizenship Law

Meanwhile, riots and demonstrations continue in parts of India:

Furious protests against a new citizenship bill continued to erupt across India on Monday, provoking a harsh security response and presenting the most widespread challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he came to power five years ago.

On Sunday, police officers stormed a predominantly Muslim university in New Delhi, the capital, beating up dozens of students and firing tear gas into a library where young people had sought refuge.

The protests have gripped many major Indian cities and are a reaction to the Indian Parliament’s decision last week to pass a contentious measure that would give special treatment to Hindu and other non-Muslim migrants in India. Critics have called the measure blatantly discriminatory and a blow to India’s foundation as a secular democracy.

The legislation is a core piece of a Hindu-centric agenda pursued by Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, and many analysts predicted trouble. India’s large Muslim minority, around 200 million people, has become increasingly fearful, certain that many of Mr. Modi’s recent initiatives are intended to marginalize them.

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New Estimate: 72,000 USA Births Annually to Tourists, Foreign Students and Other Visitors (CIS)

2019/12/16 Leave a comment

Bit of an overly simple methodology to use given that it assumes similar behaviours and natality rates between groups. Much more comfortable on the Canadian data despite its limitations, available from CIHI:

Two new analyses by the Center for Immigration Studies estimate that there are 39,000 births a year to foreign students, guest workers and others on long-term temporary visa, plus an additional 33,000 births annually to tourists – 72,000 in total. Those born to these “non-immigrants,” as the government refers to them, are awarded U.S. citizenship because they were born in United States and not because a parent was a U.S. citizen or a Lawful Permanent Resident (green card holders). These births are in addition to the nearly 300,000 births each year to illegal immigrants.

Our analysis does not address the controversial question of whether the U.S. Constitution actually requires “birthright citizenship,” as it is often called, to anyone born in the United States regardless of the parents’ immigration status. Rather, our estimates inform that discussion by estimating the scale of births to non-immigrants, which is one part of the birthright citizenship controversy that is seldom considered.

“Our analysis makes clear that the number of children born to visitors is not trivial; and over time the numbers are substantial,” said Steven Camarota, the report’s lead author and the Center’s Director of Research. “It seems doubtful that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment could have anticipated that tens of thousands of people each year would automatically be granted citizenship simply because their parents were on a temporary visit to the United States at the time of their birth.”

Births to Long-Term Temporary Visitors

  • The government estimates that in 2016 there were 800,000 women age 18 to 44 in the country on long-term non-immigrant visas, primarily foreign students, guest workers, and exchange visitors.
  • Based on a comparable population of women in Census Bureau data, we estimate there are 49 births per thousand to these women for a total of 39,000 births annually or 390,000 each decade.
  • The birth rate for non-immigrants aged 18-44 is relatively low compared to the 77 births per-thousand for immigrant women generally. However the total number of births to temporary visitors is still large because so many foreign students, guest workers and exchange visitors have been allowed into the country.
  • We estimate that at least 90 percent of the fathers of children born to non-immigrant women were not U.S. citizens, almost all them on temporary visa themselves or illegal immigrants. This means at least 35,000 children were born to a non-immigrant mother and were awarded U.S. citizenship at birth solely because they were born on U.S. soil and not because their parents were citizens or Lawful Permanent Residents (green card holders).

Birth Tourism

  • Many news stories in recent years have focused on “birth tourism,” which describes the phenomenon of pregnant women coming to America shortly before their due dates so their children are born in the United States and are awarded U.S. citizenship.

  • Based on a comparison of birth records and Census Bureau data, we estimate there were 33,000 births to women on tourist visas in the second half of 2016 and the first half of 2017. This translates to perhaps 330,000 such births each decade.

  • While there is significant uncertainty around this number, our new estimate is very similar to our prior estimate for second half of 2011 and first half of 2012.

  • It should be emphasized that the small number of mothers who provide a foreign address on birth documents are probably not birth tourists, as those engaged in birth tourism likely list a U.S. address so they can receive birth certificates and passports before returning to their home countries. These addresses are typically a relative’s or a residence arranged by those “selling” birth tourism services.

Source: 372000 Born to Illegal Aliens and Visitors Every Year, 33000 to ‘Birth Tourists’

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Liberal Platform and Mandate Letter Comparison: IRCC and Diversity, Inclusion and Youth

2019/12/14 Leave a comment

Now that the mandate letters are out, went through the letters for Ministers Mendicino and Chagger, supplementing with other Ministers as needed (e.g., Justice, Public Safety, Innovation). The following table contrasts the platform commitments with the mandate letters, with no major surprises or omissions.

The most striking point was the relatively large number of Minister Chaggar’s commitments, although many are shared with other Ministers.

Hope you find this helpful and welcome any comments.

Liberal Platform and Mandate Letters 2019 – Immigration and Diversity Related

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U.S. Commission Censures India’s Proposed New Citizenship Laws

2019/12/11 Leave a comment

Of note. Haven’t seen much commentary from the Canadian government. As the Liberal government abolished the Office for Religious Freedom, any comment would likely have to come from the Global Affairs’ Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion:

A U.S. federal commission has called for sanctions against India’s home minister and other top leaders if the country passes a controversial bill that will prevent Muslim migrants from neighboring countries from receiving citizenship.

After hours of heated debate, India’s lower house of Parliament early Tuesday morning passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill — the next step in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hardline Hindu nationalist agenda.

The bill needs approval from the upper house — expected to come as early as Wednesday — before it become law. It proposes changes to existing citizenship laws to allow citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who illegally migrated to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Muslims are excluded from these provisions. If passed as expected, the move threatens the secular foundation of the world’s second-most populous nation and its constitution that treats all religions equally.

“If the CAB passes in both houses of parliament, the United States government should consider sanctions against the Home Minister and other principal leadership,” The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a press statement. “The CAB enshrines a pathway to citizenship for immigrants that specifically excludes Muslims, setting a legal criterion for citizenship based on religion. The CAB is a dangerous turn in the wrong direction.”

The U.S. commission’s statement was “neither accurate nor warranted,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs said. “The Bill provides expedited consideration for Indian citizenship to persecuted religious minorities already in India from certain contiguous countries. It seeks to address their current difficulties and meet their basic human rights,” the ministry’s spokesman Raveesh Kumar said in a statement.

USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission.

‘Discriminatory Laws’

If the bill becomes law, India’s tradition of secularism and pluralism could crumble, said Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the Washington-based Wilson Center, who has closely researched India’s politics over the past decade, comparing it with Myanmar’s discriminatory law based on ethnicity introduced in the 1980s.

“What happened in subsequent decades in Myanmar — particularly the horrors of the massacres of the Rohingya — underscore just how destructive these types of discriminatory citizenship laws can be for marginalized communities,” said Kugelman.

The bill has evoked both strident support and sharp censure, sparking protests around India, with lawyers working overtime to help millions at risk of being left stateless in the world’s largest democracy.

The hashtag #CitizenshipAmendmentBill2019 was trending on Twitter in India. On Tuesday morning more than 88,000 people had tweeted about the bill, with many supporting the government and others calling it an attack on the country’s secular traditions.

Source: U.S. Commission Censures India’s Proposed New Citizenship Laws

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ICYMI: Australia – Revoke automatic citizenship loss laws, intelligence committee urges

2019/12/10 Leave a comment

Under citizenship laws, any dual citizen aged over 14 automatically renounces their Australian citizenship if they act “inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia” by engaging in terrorist acts.

As of February, 12 people have lost their citizenship in this way.

But government departments and legal experts alike have criticised the automatic nature of the laws.

Dr Sangeetha Pillai and Professor George Williams have said automatic revocation was not only impractical, but potentially unconstitutional.

The Department of Home Affairs said the automatic loss of citizenship limited Australia’s ability to prosecute those individuals for their crimes.

The government had moved to change the laws, after the Independent Monitor of National Security legislation James Renwick called for the automatic provisions to be replaced with ministerial discretion.

Now the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security – led by Liberal backbencher Andrew Hastie – has agreed a ministerial decision-making model would be better.

The committee found as the law current works, the minister’s role is effectively limited to restoring a person’s citizenship after it has been lost or exempting a person from the automatic provisions.

A ministerial decision-making model would allow the minister to take into account a broader range of considerations in determining whether to cease an individual’s citizenship, the committee said.

“This determination was founded on advice from national security agencies, which advised the committee that further flexibility was required to utilise citizenship cessation to maximum effect,” the report said.

However such a model is not foolproof.

Australia became embroiled in a diplomatic stoush with Fiji in January after Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton stripped Islamic State recruiter Neil Prakash of his Australian citizenship on the understanding he also held citizenship in Fiji. Fiji denied he was a citizen and Prakash has effectively been left stateless.

The recommendation came as separate laws passed parliament that would make it tougher for terrorists to get bail.

The bill also closed a loophole that could have prevented some high-risk terrorists from being kept in custody after their sentences expired on continuing detention orders.

It also came as counter terrorism police arrested an alleged terrorist in Sydney on Wednesday.

Source: Revoke automatic citizenship loss laws, intelligence committee urges

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When U.S. Citizenship Starts Looking Like a Bad Deal

2019/12/09 Leave a comment

Of note:

When Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, some people, many of them Democrats, talked about renouncing their United States citizenship and moving abroad as a political protest. But now, a different group of Americans say they are considering leaving — people of both parties who would be hit by the wealth tax proposed by two senators seeking to oppose Mr. Trump in his race for re-election, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Wealthy Americans often leave high-tax states like New York and California for lower-tax ones like Florida and Texas. But renouncing citizenship is a far more permanent, costly and complicated proposition.

Many who do so to save on taxes and free themselves from American financial regulations and filing requirements are also making a larger statement.

“America’s the most attractive destination for capital, entrepreneurs and people wanting to get a great education,” said Reaz H. Jafri, a partner and head of the immigration practice at Withers, an international law firm. “But in today’s world, when you have other economic centers of excellence — like Singapore, Switzerland and London — people don’t view the U.S. as the only place to be.”

According to the United States Treasury, which publishes figures on expatriation, 231 Americans renounced their citizenship in 2008; the next year, 742 did. By 2016, the number hit 5,411, up 26 percent from 2015. It was roughly the same in 2017 before dropping to 3,983 last year.

Immigration lawyers said the numbers would be higher if embassies had the staff to accommodate the volume of requests. David Lesperance, a Canadian immigration lawyer living in Poland who specializes in helping American citizens expatriate, said many embassies around the world had backlogs in making appointments.

“The current reality is that an American who wants to renounce needs to first book an appointment in a processing system that has reached capacity — as evidenced by the significant backlogs in the granting of interview slots,” Mr. Lesperance said in an email. “In fact, the backlogs have grown so bad (up to and sometimes over a year) that most of the U.S. missions no longer publish the appointment date information online and haven’t been doing so since the system appeared to reach capacity a few years ago.”

Once that appointment is secured, the process seems to have sped up. Mr. Jafri said he had clients who waited over a year for the letter confirming they were no longer American citizens. Now, he said, that letter can come in two weeks.

“Somewhere in the system, the decision has been made to issue these more quickly,” he said. “We haven’t seen any slowdown in renouncing.”

Historically, the bulk of expatriates fell into two categories: older, wealthy people hoping to save on taxes and the “accidental Americans,” who were born in the United States but lived and worked abroad or who were born abroad but lived in the United States long enough to come under the Internal Revenue Service’s taxing authority.

Now many inquiries are also coming from younger entrepreneurs upset about the political situation in the United States and from people who want to operate their businesses overseas and not be subject to American financial reporting requirements.

“That younger person is also thinking of it as impact citizenship, like impact investing,” Mr. Jafri said. “They don’t want to be American. They’re not happy with how we’re perceived overseas.”

Mr. Jafri said he had been hearing of several other reasons, too. There are people motivated by fear. “We have people who are totally spooked about the prospect of a Warren presidency and a wealth tax,” he said. “And there are people who are equally spooked about a Trump re-election.”

There are also businesspeople who either don’t want to be subject to I.R.S. scrutiny or believe that the annual Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts has become too time-consuming or costly.

“I’ve never seen this before,” Mr. Jafri said. “People used to say, ‘If so-and-so becomes president, I’m moving to Canada.’ Well, no one did.”

But now, the price may be right to leave. While the cost of expatriating varies depending on a person’s assets, the wealthiest are betting that if a Democrat wins next year, leaving now means a lower exit tax.

For anyone with assets below $2 million or an average salary over five years of about $165,000, there is no exit tax. For everyone else, the exit is calculated on a person’s assets, as if they were sold on the day of expatriation. Someone with a portfolio of appreciated stock, for example, would be taxed at the capital gains rate.

Where it gets tricky is when people own private businesses that have to be valued. Even if they’re not selling the business, they have to come up with tax money to pay the I.R.S. But as with the tax on estates, there are ways to reduce the value of the business, including the argument that a closely held family business lacks marketability.

Mr. Jafri said he had a client who just paid a $58 million exit tax, though it had been 40 percent higher before a valuation company took various deductions.

The wealthy who are considering renouncing their citizenship fear a wealth tax less than the possibility that the tax on capital gains could be raised to the ordinary income tax rate, effectively doubling what a wealthy person would pay, Mr. Lesperance said.

“I have a client, a relatively young guy, who made a lot of money as a founder and is just not bullish on the U.S. long term, but the thing that is getting him to lock in and renounce now is he did the numbers,” he said. “He said if the least of the Democratic plans come in — taxing capital gains like ordinary income — it makes sense to renounce now.”

Regardless of wealth, anyone looking to give up their American citizenship needs to have fully complied with all tax forms for the past five years. That is one of the main stumbling blocks, said Jerald David August, chairman of the international taxation and wealth planning groups at the law firm Fox Rothschild.

“The prototype is a U.S. citizen living overseas who is tired of paying worldwide tax twice,” Mr. August said. “The specter of this five-year look back and the awareness there wasn’t total compliance can be intimidating. I’ve had situations where clients, after they’ve been fully advised, have decided not to push forward with an expatriation.”

Had they done so, without having spotless tax returns, they could have been forced to amend tax returns or, worse, be audited for tax evasion.

Even if their returns are compliant, any money they leave to their children who are still citizens will be subject to a 40 percent inheritance tax.

“If someone never stepped foot in the U.S. and died and left $100 million to someone’s children who moved to the U.S., the children wouldn’t pay the tax,” Mr. August said. “But if they left with $10 million, the U.S. retains jurisdiction to tax the person who migrated.”

Those who leave also need to consider their reputations since the Treasury Department publishes a list of people who are expatriating.

When Eduardo Saverin, a founder of Facebook who was born in Brazil but educated in America, renounced his United States citizenship shortly before the social network went public, he was criticized for avoiding taxes. But his spokesman said he had been living in Singapore for several years. Either way, several estimates said that renouncing his citizenship before Facebook went public saved him $700 million in taxes.

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Akshay Kumar On Canadian Citizenship: Got It When I felt My Career Was Over; Have Applied For Indian Passport

2019/12/09 Leave a comment

Great example of instrumental citizenship and how it can be discarded when convenient:

One of the most popular stars in Bollywood today is Akshay Kumar. The Khiladi of Bollywood has managed to make a name for himself over the years and has become one of the most bankable superstars. However, time and again, Akshay becomes a target online due to his Canadian citizenship. While the star has always kept mum on the issue, at a recent event, the Good Newwz actor was prodded about it and he shared at length the story behind his Canadian citizenship.

Akshay mentioned that there was a point in his life where he had back to back 14 flops in Bollywood. The Khiladi remembered those days and mentioned that he has thought his career was over and that he wouldn’t get work in the country anymore. Akshay then went onto mention that at that time, his friend from Canada asked him to come there to work with him. The Good Newwz actor stated that it was at that time he applied for his citizenship. Later, Akshay said that his 15th film worked and he never thought about getting his passport changed.

Akshay opened up at great length about his Canadian citizenship and mentioned that it hurts him when he has to prove his love for his country. Akshay said, “I have now applied for the passport. I don’t want to give anyone the chance to question me on it. I am an Indian and it hurts me that I am asked to prove that every time. My wife, my children are Indian. I pay my taxes here and my life is here.” About the process of getting Canadian citizenship, Akshay said, “I started the process to get a Canadian passport because I felt my career was finished and I won’t get more work here. But my 15th film worked and I never looked back. I never thought of changing my passport.”

Meanwhile, the actor is busy with the promotions of his upcoming film, Good Newwz starring Kareena Kapoor Khan, Diljit Dosanjh and Kiara Advani. At the event, Kareena accompanied Akshay and the two stunned in matching black attire. Akshay and Kareena also took the stage and performed on the song, Sauda Khara Khara from Good Newwz. Directed by Raj Mehta, Good Newwz is being produced by Karan Johar. The film is slated to release on December 27, 2019.

Source: Akshay Kumar On Canadian Citizenship: Got It When I felt My Career Was Over; Have Applied For Indian Passport

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