On Sat, 4 Feb 2012 14:18:03 +0000 (UTC), "Anonymous Remailer
Post by Anonymous Remailer (austria)Post by terri siasut, then, your complaint amounts at most to utter bullsh*t if
you are a U.S. citizen because you do not plan actually to do anything
whatever to renounce that status.
Do you think I am joking or do you think it is impossible that a US
citizen would like to separate himself from the US?
Of course it is possible for a US citizen to want to
separate himself from the US. Former US citizens have done so.
But do not know whether or not you are joking and you
have chosen not to explain what you mean by joking in this context.
However, I do think you have not been and still are
not being serious about what you purport to want because your lack of
seriousness appears amply confirmed by your own conduct.
For example, you indicate that you have been toying
with the notion of citizenship renunciation for some time but that,
despite this, you chose not even to begin this newsgroup thread until
after the only recently announced administrative change for those who
choose to renounce their US citizenship at a U.S. State Dept. office
or at one of its consular offices outside of the US. You therefore
have not bothered even to hint and certainly you do not explain why,
if you were serious about what you say you have wanted to achieve, you
waited until now not only to continue not to act but instead to
content yourself mostly with rumination about mechanics.
Additionally, it is ridiculous, not serious, for you
to purport to ask someone you only speculate obviously is a law
student who is not an attorney to represent you pro bono in some sort
of fantasized lawsuit somewhere while you also do not even mention
where in your opinion that somewhere ought be.
However, that you make only that sort of vaguely open
ended solicitation is also to imply that you have not even consulted
with a well informed attorney or for that matter with a US State Dept.
officer or other US governmental employee about your options as you
would have done if you really were serious about achieving what you
purport to desire instead of merely complaining about a nominal fee
and related mechanics.
Your intellectual laziness is especially apparent
insofar as you do not say that if you have not been able to find the
information you seek via some maybe simple to conduct www searches,
although you have not said that you have attempted any such search,
you have tried to use the FOIA to obtain from the US State Department
all if any the legal memoranda under color of which it implemented the
imposition of the nominal fee to which you indicated you object if you
wanted to opt for an in office renunciation.
You also have not posted any facts to the effect that
you are incapable of wording and transmitting to the US government an
unequivocal renunciation making explicit a specific intent to renounce
arrived at and being implemented uncoercedly and instead entirely
voluntarily. And you also do not say that you have asked the State
Dept. or CIS/INS for confirmation that the method for so doing that
you indicate you would prefer would be considered effective by them to
achieve the renunciation you purport to want and, if not, why not. It
therefore appears to be you rather than the Secretary of State who has
created your own uncertainty.
Nor do you say that you are not aware that there have
been any number of federal court of appeals and, in effect via denial
of certiorari or other review, US supreme court rulings which have
upheld a US citizen's renunciation if and when done in a manner that
shows a specific intent to renounce citizenship status even when such
renunciation was not made at a US State Dept. office or at one of its
consular offices or even on a form provided by the US government.
But you might have found on your own, for example,
authority such as Richards v. Secretary of State, etc., 752 F.2d 1413
(9th Cir. 1985), and Meretsky v. U.S., Meretsky v. Department of
State, 259 App. D.C. 487, aff'd mem. 816 F.2d 791 (D.C.Cir. 1987)
(affirming Dept. of State's loss of nationality determination because
Meretsky had voluntarily and intentionally renounced his US
citizenship by executing a Canadian prepared certificate which he
provided to the government of Canada so that he could become a
licensed practicing attorney there), and Jolley v. INS, 441 F.2d 1245,
1249 (5th Cir. 1971), cert. den., 404 U.S. 946, 92 S.Ct. 302 (1971).
But of course, and as at least you indicate you are
aware, any sensible person would know that she or he could not judge
only from what you have said so far in this thread what if any
complexities may be entailed by you refraining from acquiescing in the
comparatively new US State Dept. procedures. Nevertheless, you
purport to be willing to solicit pro bono subsidy for your
contemplated quest even if from someone whose knowledge and experience
and degree or not of ability and of good or bad judgment is not
actually obvious to you even though you pretend otherwise.
Post by Anonymous Remailer (austria)I already live abroad and simply want to completely shake the dust
of the US off my feet. So to speak.
It is probable that you are correct to believe as you
imply you do that careful assessment of the factual particulars will
be important for what you if you have reason to believe that some US
governmental official or agency probably would later challenge the
effectiveness of an attempted US citizenship renunciation by you.
But to the extent that avoiding such emotionally
experienced uncertainty is important to you if you began this thread
motivated by more than a desire merely express the vague politicized
insinuation you did, one might wonder what dollar value you would
ascribe to you achieving the elimination of such uncertainty and, in
particular, why it would not be worth at least $450 and a brief trip
to a US state department consular office to allay whatever are your
concerns.
Post by Anonymous Remailer (austria)Look, you are obviously a law student; would you consider taking
the case for me, pro bono?
And so instead of taking responsibility for what you
claim to want, you want someone else to volunteer their time and
effort and dollars to indulge your desires.
And even then, you seem blissfully unaware that a
basic underlying assumption in your initiating posting given the
subject you assign to this thread is that, as a US citizen, you ought
be deemed to have some sort of constitutional right, to which you want
a US governmental agency or a US federal court or maybe even the US
supreme court to rule you are entitled, but entirely in the
vindication of you shaking the dust of the US off your feet. So to
speak.
If the Richards decision cited above arguably can be
said basically correctly to summarize some general principles of law
in this connection it might be noted that that summary does not
include requiring the filling out of any sort of bureaucratically
drafted and requested form.
It thus may be that a mentally and otherwise competent
adult has a "free choice to renounce United States citizenship"
regardless what her or his motivation for doing so may be and that
such motivation therefore might be whether to make more money, to
advance a career or other relationship, to gain someone's hand in
marriage, to participate in the political process in the country to
which she or he has moved, and even may be a desire to avoid otherwise
applicable US tax obligations.
But even if so, to the extent that a tax avoidance
purpose is present but, realistically estimated, is likely to be later
US governmentally disputed, care with the degree of specificity that
would be desirable would of course be required - something that Robber
Baron Jay Gould's on-again/off-again expatriate granddaughter did not
do as decided correctly in Matheson (Est. of Burns) v. U.S., 400
F.Supp. 1241, 1245 (SDNY 1975), aff'd, 532 F.2d 809 (CA2 '76), cert.
den., 429 U.S. 823 (1976).
If realistically speaking there are facts about why
you want to do your dust shaking off that may be complicated and if,
as the Matheson (Burns) case illustrates, while also indicating the
breath of the Richards examples of entitlement, but if a veritable
team of highly paid "white shoe" Wall St. Law Firm type attorneys
were not able to achieve their desired ends in the Matheson case, one
also might wonder why you so blithely assume that anyone who obviously
is a non attorney law student would be able to achieve for you
whatever it is that you want, if you actually want to achieve
anything. Even if I were such a person. Although contrary to your
assumption, it is not obvious that I am or am not such a person.