Ted Talk: The Global Power Shift

Fascinating talk by Paddy Ashdown (former MP in the British Parliament).  I think he may be right to call the wars of the 20th century as the "European Civil War."  I had a professor at university who referred to them as "The 30 Years War of the Twentieth Century."  Ashdown sees three power shifts on a global level that he thinks will destabilize us in the 21st century.  Is this the end of Western hegemony in the world? Perhaps that is not the most constructive way to look at it.  How about we say instead (as Ashdown points out) that the world is beginning to share a common destiny.

And here is the John Donne poem he refers to at the end of his talk:

No Man is an Island

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Foreigners' Rights when Traveling Abroad

What do Florence Cassez, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal all have in common?

They were all arrested while traveling or living in a country outside their country of origin.  Their stories are well-known and were the subject of many articles and debates on and off-line.

This blog post is not about their guilt or innocence, nor is it a commentary on the legal systems that they have had the misfortune to become very familiar with.

I'd like to focus instead on something that all of us who travel or reside abroad ought to know:  our rights if we are arrested and detained (or jailed) in a country outside of our home countries.

Yes, it does happen - more often then you might think.  Around 1000 Australians are arrested abroad every year with around 200 actually going to jail.  Mexico and the UK seem to be real trouble spots for Americans.  Ouest France reports around 2000 Frenchmen and women in foreign prisons, many of them in Tanger.

So, with that in mind, here are a few things you should be aware of:

Local Law Wins Every Time:  The most important thing to understand is that the laws of your country of citizenship do not apply in a foreign country.  Strangely enough some people still don't get this.  Laws (except for international law) are territorial and cannot be packed in your suitcase to be brought along in case of an emergency or a situation that does not appeal to you.  You are both expected to know the laws of your destination country and to obey them even if you don't agree with or like them.   Just for fun, have a look at the France Diplomatie website which has an entire page devoted to helping French tourists to understand some of the legal differences between the U.S. and France with an eye toward avoiding unfortunate incidents.

International Agreements:  You have some rights under international agreements.  If you have some time to kill, check out the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963) and scroll down to Article 36 which, in a nutshell, says that you have 1. the right to contact your consulate without interference, 2. the right to have your consulate informed if you are detained and 3.  the right to have consular officials help you with legal representation and visit you in your place of detention.  Is that all?  Yes, that's about it.  Here is how how one jurisdiction in the U.S. (Los Angeles, California) applies the Convention.  Be aware that not all countries have signed on to this protocol.  This is something worth checking before you purchase that plane ticket.

Home Country Intervention:  In addition to being to able to communicate with a consular officer and getting help finding a local lawyer that speaks your language, what else can they do?

Well, they can protest and try to pressure the government concerned if they and you think that you are being treated in an inhumane or unfair fashion.  Sarkozy, for example, tried to intervene with the Mexican government on Florence Cassez's behalf.  The U.S. government did the same with Shane Bauer and John Fattal.  Neither government initially succeeded in getting its citizens released and to date only one of these stories has had a happy ending.

A quick look at the government sites I looked at were very clear that their authority, and their ability to help you, is limited in a foreign country.  Read the U.S. State Department's article on Arrest or Detention of an American Citizen Abroad.  Read and admire the Australian government's website which is very explicit: no free legal advice, for example, or getting you a Get Out of Jail Card.  France has this procedure for its citizens abroad.

I've said it before and it's worth repeating, "know before you go" or you just might find yourself seeing a part of another country about which you really would have preferred to remain ignorant.

The 2012 Diaspora Tax Wars

It appears that the U.S. government has finally done something so annoying to the American Diaspora that they are actually organizing and their fury and frustration is something to see.

The issue at hand is FATCA (the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) which would require foreign FFI's (banks mostly) to report the accounts held abroad by U.S. citizens.   On the citizen side (folks like me) there is a new form to be filled out to report foreign financial assets over $50,000.  This Form 8938  is in addition to (not a replacement of) the already little known and often misunderstood FBAR (Foreign Bank Account Report).  Between FBAR and FATCA the reporting requirements are onerous and the penalties draconian.  Non-compliance can result in a foreign entity's assets in the U.S. being seized and for American citizens they run the risk of having their life savings wiped out if they are audited and found wanting by one of the local IRS agencies abroad in Frankfurt, London, Paris or Beijing (yes, the American "fisc" is quite the international organization.)

FATCA is a road to hell in the service of at least one good intention.  The original purpose seems to have been to expose American citizens living in the U.S. who might be hiding taxable assets abroad.  Somehow in the making of this law it escaped the notice of Congress that there are around 6 million "regular folks" (Americans who live and work abroad as teachers, managers, nurses, and so on) who are directly and adversely impacted by it.  An American living in London does not have bank accounts there to evade U.S. taxes - he or she has them in order to be able do manage such mundane tasks as getting paid and saving for retirement or paying rent and buying food.  One very concrete and unfortunate consequence of this law is that European banks are dumping customers with U.S. citizenship as fast as they can.  I can only cringe as I imagine the reaction of an overseas Americans to the news that he is no longer a valued customer but an annoyance to be reluctantly, but firmly, cast off lest his bank suffer the unpleasant attentions of the American IRS.

The heartening news is that, for the moment, their host countries seem to be on their side.  Canada and the EU have already expressed their "concern" about FATCA (which I think is a diplomatic way of saying "Are you out of your minds?").  Many countries would have to revise their privacy laws to comply and there is no real benefit to them since U.S. banks do not seem inclined (and are under no obligation) to share the names and account numbers of their citizens hiding money in U.S. "low-tax" states.

However, Americans should not count too much on their host countries' support.  I think it is very likely that one of the possible results of FATCA is that the U.S. government will make deals with other countries (over the heads of the U.S. states) to make U.S. account information available to foreign tax agencies. This would give foreign governments a stake in the game and a real incentive to pass their own new data collection and tax laws for their own diasporas. I believe it is already illegal for a French to have a foreign bank account abroad if he/she has not reported it to the French government. It might be very interesting (and perhaps quite lucrative) for said government to get their citizens' account information from, say, California...

As the deadline for implementation approaches, American citizens abroad are waking up and they are both fearful and furious.  FATCA was the just the trigger and now there is an avalanche of discontent about a whole host of other issues:  voting rights, discrimination, double taxation, citizenship rights, lack of representation.  To get a feel for some of this anger I invite you to consult this selection of articles and sites:

• American Citizens Abroad (ACA) They are leading the charge from the heart of Europe with their Repeal FATCA Now!  campaign.  
• The Isaac Brock Society in Canada.  "Liberty and Justice for All U.S. Persons Living in Canada and Abroad."
• Renounce U.S. Citizenship - "Stop Citizenship Based Taxation - Repeal FATCA."  
• James Fallows FATCA series in The Atlantic:
Fatca: The Menace You'll Hear About in 2012 (with links to articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal)
The Fatca Menace! (good selections from the mail he received in response to his first article with concrete examples of the impact to Americans abroad)
The Fatca Chronicles: Tales From China, Canada, and Estonia

A truly depressing read but, please take heart, because there is something that can be done about it (above and beyond venting your spleen on an Internet forum.)  We are 6 million U.S. citizens abroad and we may not live on U.S. soil but we most definitely still have certain rights and one of those is the right to vote.  Yes, every U.S. citizen wherever he or she is on this planet has the right to vote in the upcoming presidential election.  2012 will be a close race and overseas Americans can make a difference and send a message.  To find out how easy it is to vote from abroad go here.   And then get yourself registered and have that absentee ballot mailed to you.  Just do it.  Hiding our heads in the sand and pretending that Washington, D.C. does not exist is no longer a viable option.

Hallelujah Chorus - Quinhagak, Alaska

And this one which was passed along by a family member in Seattle.  This is the Hallelujah Chorus by Handel interpreted by 5th grade students at the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat school of Quinhagak, Alaska.  

The Origin of the Modern Calendar

From Andrew Sullivan, a short but very entertaining video explaining the origins of the modern calendar

Proving Citizenship

There is a rather tense debate going on the U.S. over some state's insistence on having registered voters provide identification on election day.  The goal is a good one - voting is one of the last real explicit privileges of a citizen and it seems reasonable that Americans ought to provide proof of identity/citizenship before exercising that right.

However there are some problems with this and it's not just the American context that causes trouble, it's also true of France.  If any one of you were asked right here, right now, to prove your citizenship, would you be able to do so to the satisfaction of the state in question?  I suspect not since most of us don't carry that kind of information on our persons.  A driver's license, for example, is not proof of citizenship (my French spouse has an American driver's license and he is not a citizen of the U.S.), neither is a passport or, in some cases, even a national identity card or a birth certificate. To be absolutely100% sure that you are the citizen of the country you claim AND to prove that you are not also the citizen of another country you would need to do some research.

You would have to look at many things pertaining to your ancestors:   the birthplaces, marriages, countries of residence or territories and their status at the time of the births, for example. You might even have to know something about the history of the country since territories changed hands rather often in the last century.   Then, once you had all that information, you would need to look at the citizenship laws prevailing in the country of residence for say, two or three generations, the laws in force at that time in the home country and then look at whatever the citizenship laws are today.  Sound complicated?  Indeed it is and I assure you that you might just have a nasty surprise waiting for you at the end of all your hard work.  Consider these two cases which I think are excellent examples of the difficulty and complexity involved in proving citizenship.

In 2008 François Werckmeister, born in Switzerland but raised all his life in Alsace (i.e. in France) went to get his French identity card and his passport renewed and was refused.  Why?  Because Mr. Werckmeister's father was born in Alsace in 1909 when the area was German territory.  In order for his father to be considered French he would have had to request a "certificate of re-integration" which he apparently never did and probably never needed to since he seems to have lived out his life quite happily in France.  However this caused much headache for his son, who at 56, having never had a doubt that he was French, suddenly found himself not only a foreigner (Swiss/German) but also one who was "sans papiers."  This meant no identity card and no passport.  He did however at the time the article was written still have his voter registration card so theoretically he could still vote.  How ironic is that?

Leeland Davidson, a 95-year old World War II veteran living in Centralia (state of Washington) had a similar tale.  Born to American citizens living in British Columbia, Canada, his parents failed to have his birth registered in 1916.  That would not really have mattered if Mr. Davidson could have proven that his parents were born in the U.S.  Alas for him, his father was born in the state of Iowa several years before that state started issuing official birth certificates. So as far as the U.S. is concerned (and in spite of his military service) he is not an American citizen (he is Canadian) and if he wishes to become an American he must go through the process of naturalization - something that he is quite willing to do though he is understandably quite distressed at the necessity for it.

When I read these stories (and there are others) I came to the rather startling realization that the only people who can be absolutely sure of their citizenship status are naturalized citizens since they are usually the only ones who have had to go through the trouble of proving their former citizenship status in order to acquire a new one.  For everyone else, unless he or she can prove otherwise with the appropriate documentation, there must be a doubt.  

The good people who are so adamant about requesting identification/proof of citizenship at the polls might want to take this into account.  The only way any of us can know our status is to do the research and then have that researched certified by the relevant authorities.  This means, at the very least, requesting a "certificate of nationality" (something that exists in both France and the U.S.) from the Federal government. 

Since requests for this are relatively rare in the U.S., it is said that acquiring this document can take up to a year.  But if people are really serious about making sure that every potential voter showing up at the polls is, in fact, eligible to vote as a bona fide American citizen, then this is what would be required along with a national identity card (one would imagine a biometric card with photo) issued on the basis of that certificate.  And it is very clear that, if required to actually prove their status, some Americans who thought they were citizens would be disenfranchised and required to go through the naturalization process before being allowed to vote.  A rather sobering thought, isn't it?

Bonne Année 2012

Bonne Année à toutes et à tous!

Que 2012 vous apporte la paix, la prospérité et la santé.


Happy New Year, everyone!

May 2012 bring each and every one of you peace, prosperity and health.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson