Having somewhat recently been with my brother-in-law when he became a naturalized citizen, I know for a fact that you have to renounce your ties including citizenship to any other country in order to be granted U.S. citizenship.
That is the statutory requirement, but it is explicitly not enforced beyond the wording of the oath.
You stand in front of the judge, raise your right hand, and say "I hereby renounce my allegiance to all other foreign powers," and then you walk out the door and that's the end of it. Any foreign country that permits dual citizenship will ignore it. You are still a citizen of the other country when you walk out that door. The US government will never check your citizenship status (not that it really can in any conclusive way) and will never ask you about it again.
You may choose to act like you really have given up your original citizenship, and stop renewing your foreign passport and so on, but that's completely up to you.
Simply put, your are flat out and 100% wrong with your assertion here, and it is not based on any kind of knowledge of U.S. immigration policy.
It is in fact based on working at the State Department and spending more time in the company of immigration attorneys than I'd care to recall.
We can spend all day calling each other wrong and it will get nobody anywhere. If you are genuinely interested in the topic, I suggest you consult an attorney who has real experience in these matters, rather than going on the legal opinion of your brother-in-law and/or his inept representation, if any.
Tell me about it. I used to work at a backpacker hostel in Earl's Court. Still, plenty of Americans about in and amongst the throngs of antipodeans.
As for the "skilled" and "supernumerary" requirements, those are very flexible in practise. A barmaid can be performing "accounting and recordkeeping" duties while contributing her West Virginia accent to the place's "unique cultural ambience".
Hopping about and working off the books are both recipes fro disaster. Social Security benefits will leave you stranded in your old age. And God help you if you have a serious accident or medical condition as disability payments including jury awards will be minimal without accumulated earnings histories. Try telling a court that you earn money under the table and can no longer work because a car wreck messed you up. You'll land in prison and starve to death from a minimal disability payment when you are released.
Nobody's stopping you from reporting your income to the IRS and paying social security tax using schedule SE. On my latest SS statement it said I'd receive something like $2000/month which is more than enough to live in great comfort in most of the world (and yes, you can collect your SS payments while living outside of the US, I have a parent who has been doing so for years).
Most of your concerns are based on someone working off the books within the US; the situation is quite different if you work elsewhere. Also, of course, as you get older, you always have the option of acquiring permanent residency or citizenship in the country of your choice, which would allow you to take advantage of their almost surely more comprehensive programs.
At the moment I'm in France; despite entering the country as a tourist, when I had a medical problem I was seen to promptly and at minimal cost without involving my US-based insurer - less than my deductible if I'd seen a doctor in the US. I'd rather have cancer uninsured here than with insurance in the US.
In fact, YOU are entirely incorrect. When my father was naturalized a few years ago he was required to renounce any allegiance to "all foreign potentates."
As of 1990 the State Department has stopped pursuing this issue. You can make all the oaths you want in front of the naturalization court judge but it's basically considered to be a matter of heart and mind rather than legal status. You do not have to follow up with your original country of citizenship and make any renunication to them, so effectively you can maintain your original citizenship. Whether or not your father was aware of this is, of course, another matter. It's not something the naturalization officials advertise.
I invite you to read the long-standing and well-respected dual citizenship FAQ from Rich Wales.
Or, as I've done (not necessarily for the purpose of this discussion on Slashdot) date a lawyer who works on this stuff.
Could you please give some first-hand clues about criminality rates and cost of living?
Crime seems to be about the same as you'd get in UK or France - bag snatching, burglaries predominantly. In 5 years I haven't experienced any crime personally, despite frequent post-bar walks through dark alleys at 3am. Nor has my petite western wife, who walks everywhere with her laptop.
Cost of living in Kuala Lumpur (which is a lot more expensive than most of the rest of the country):
1500ft2 3-bedroom apartment with pool and tennis court in nice part of town: US$1200/month.
1200ft2 3-bedroom apartment with no pool in typical neighbourhood: US$600/month.
Cheap meal out: US$1
Fancy meal out: US$15
Mobile phone service w/400 minutes per month: US$15
Broadband internet, 4mbps: US$50
Broadband internet, 1mbps: US$25
Car: twice whatever you'd pay elsewhere, due to huge protectionist policy for local car industry
Which is why everyone buys pirate DVDs, which are obviously uncensored. Seriously, there are things I could find to complain about Malaysia, but snipped smooch scenes on Astro would be pretty low on my list of gripes.
Lets forget about the religious police and the de facto apartheid that exists in the country, you have no access to a free press of any denomination.
Forgetting about the religious police is a good idea, because if you're not muslim, they don't have jurisdiction over you. It's a topic of conversation with your muslim friends but has no direct impact on your own life.
As for the press, you have access to something called "the internet", which lets you read whatever you want. The internet in Malaysia is fundamentally unfiltered (the only sites blocked are a few pyramid scams; they tried blocking RPK's Malaysia Today once but gave up on that within a matter of days).
Anyway, my point is that Malaysia is a very easy place, compared to most of Asia, for a westerner to show up and become socially integrated and have a good time making close friendships with locals. Of course there are some downsides to life in KL - bad traffic jams, cigarette smoke everywhere - but there's no place on earth without downsides.
As long as you are healthy, have significant personal funds and have relevant skills it can be done, but the bar is quite high.
You've got to be kidding me. If you graduated from college and worked for a few years as anything requiring your brain, and you have a job offer, you've got residency. Use the calculator thing you linked to and do the maths for yourself. NZ is basically the easiest developed country in the world to immigrate to. They are desperate for young blood. In Malaysia we're inundated with ads begging us to consider moving to New Zealand.
Obviously you'd have to have an incredible boredom threshold to consider it, wherein lies the source of their desperation, but the option is there for almost any educated white collar worker.
It's been a while since I looked at any stuff like this, but I believe that to become a US citizen you have to renounce citizenship to all other countries. The exception is if a country does not allow you to renounce your citizenship, in which case you get a dual-nationality. I'm not sure how citizens-by-birth are affected by this.
That is entirely incorrect. The US makes no requests or demands with regards to other citizenships, in fact policy is to pretend that they don't exist.
Try Malaysia. It's the easiest place for westerners to integrate culturally and socially, by a long shot. People speak English well and are genuinely interested in and knowledgeable about the outside world (unlike, say, Thailand). My social life in Kuala Lumpur is the best I've ever had in my life (even compared to undergrad) and my friends are 80% local. I've been invited to countless homes, met everyone's families, gone on long road trips and even international trips with my local friends (2 road trips to Singapore and one trip up to Bangkok this year alone), play on a couple local sports teams, and attended more weddings than I can recall. I'll go weeks in a row with dinner/drinks invitations 7 nights a week.
This stands in stark contrast to my prior existence in Washington DC, where despite having a lot of acquaintainces, I met few people I'd really consider friends, and often felt quite alone, voluntarily sequestering myself at home and spending my weekends on long solo bike rides because I couldn't bear another night out of shallow idiotic conversation with people who really only seemed to tolerate each other because they were familiar faces.
Places like China, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and so on, these countries have tremendous amounts of personal freedom, much more so than in any 'western' country I've been to. If it's political freedom one is looking for, then Asia is probably the wrong place to be.
Here I agree with you. There's an overall slack casualness that means in daily practice you have a lot more liberty than you do in more structured, developed societies. Park wherever the hell you want, sit outside until 5am buying beer from a guy with a pushcart, etc. Just watch your step around Sensitive Topics of National Interest.
This is, unfortunately, not something as easily done in America once you get here, and the number of options for emmigration are practically none once you get an American passport.
1. Why does getting an American passport reduce the options that he has through his British passport?
2. BS on your whole point. It's easy for Americans to emigrate. In most European countries, all you have to do is hold down a job for 3-5 years and then you can naturalize. New Zealand will take anyone with a pulse. Australia's not far behind, as long as you're of child-bearing age and have a couple university degrees.
I live in the US and have looked at migrating to another country. Of course one that speaks english. I am a high skilled worked I guess (programmer/IT) and on paper it would appear many countries would value my skills even though I cannot speak the native language. However in practive I have found it incredibly difficult to do this. There is a metric shit ton of paperwork involved and unless you want to spend a lot of time dealing with it your employeer usually handles it. Also I live on the west side of the US and have been looking at getting a job on the east coast for a change of pace. I'm having trouble even getting a serious look because employers only seem to want to deal with local candidates. So I can't imagine dealing with another country in all practicality.
You're making it much too difficult. I've lived and worked in a bunch of countries (Australia, all over Europe, the Middle East, and now Southeast Asia, though at the moment I'm on a few-week gig in Paris). The trick is to spend less time sitting at home fretting about paperwork and about how complicated you imagine it will be, and to spend more time shopping for plane tickets and getting your ass over there.
With the exception of Saudi Arabia, where there was no real way around having a job in hand before arrival, the sure-fire plan has always been this:
Land.
Find a cheap place to stay.
Hit the bar.
Make friends.
Get job leads.
Get a job - either over or under the table, depending on local conditions.
Enjoy.
I do IT work and get paid well, so it's not like you have to be stuck tending bar in tourist joints either, as some would have you believe.
Unless you work for a multinational that can transfer you around the globe as easily up two flights of stairs, you've got to take matters into your own hands and stop trying to do the conventional thing like you've done at home. Live a little. Take a risk. Get outside your comfort zone. You will be well rewarded.
Kind of off-topic, but Latvia has excellent net access speed. e.g., check out speedtest.net's stats. Latvia average download: 11.73 mbps. Australia average download: 4.92 mbps. In fact Latvia is their 6th highest worldwide. Speedtest.net isn't entirely scientific but is broadly representative in my experience.
I've missed many connecting flights, which means my baggage has been checked in, and spent the night at the airport or hotel sans baggage only to find my bag sitting calmly for me at my destination. I've even missed the gate closing for a flight and had my bags still make that flight and me wondering if I should have just checked myself into my luggage. There is nothing that stops them, no regulation, no rule, from putting your baggage on the plane onces you've checked in and giving your seat to someone else.
You're missing a critical distinction, and then you've taken that as license to elaborate some poorly detailed anecdotes into the realm of fiction. The distinction is this:
-- If you miss a flight due to circumstances you could not reasonably be expected to control - such the late arrival of a connecting flight - they often will let your luggage fly without you.
-- If you miss a flight due to circumstances that were in your control - such as your late arrival at the gate after checking in, your luggage will not travel without you.
In general, your luggage is much more likely to travel without you on the second or subsequent leg of a multi-leg itinerary, than on the first leg or first leg after a stopover (in which case it almost never will).
Deliberately unaccompanied baggage is subject to special screening requirements and in some airports/countries it is not accepted from passengers at all (only from bonded third-party agents which are required to follow strict security inspection procedures).
If the passengers have checked luggage, then the plane will sometimes wait for them. The luggage would have to be located and removed, which takes a while. Waiting 10 minutes for the passenger can be more sensible than waiting 20 minutes to get their bags off. Except for the moral hazard issue, I suppose.
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That is the statutory requirement, but it is explicitly not enforced beyond the wording of the oath.
You stand in front of the judge, raise your right hand, and say "I hereby renounce my allegiance to all other foreign powers," and then you walk out the door and that's the end of it. Any foreign country that permits dual citizenship will ignore it. You are still a citizen of the other country when you walk out that door. The US government will never check your citizenship status (not that it really can in any conclusive way) and will never ask you about it again.
You may choose to act like you really have given up your original citizenship, and stop renewing your foreign passport and so on, but that's completely up to you.
It is in fact based on working at the State Department and spending more time in the company of immigration attorneys than I'd care to recall.
We can spend all day calling each other wrong and it will get nobody anywhere. If you are genuinely interested in the topic, I suggest you consult an attorney who has real experience in these matters, rather than going on the legal opinion of your brother-in-law and/or his inept representation, if any.
That's more or less how it works in Germany. It hasn't been perfect, but has resulted in less packaging and more use of recyclable components.
Tell me about it. I used to work at a backpacker hostel in Earl's Court. Still, plenty of Americans about in and amongst the throngs of antipodeans.
As for the "skilled" and "supernumerary" requirements, those are very flexible in practise. A barmaid can be performing "accounting and recordkeeping" duties while contributing her West Virginia accent to the place's "unique cultural ambience".
Nobody's stopping you from reporting your income to the IRS and paying social security tax using schedule SE. On my latest SS statement it said I'd receive something like $2000/month which is more than enough to live in great comfort in most of the world (and yes, you can collect your SS payments while living outside of the US, I have a parent who has been doing so for years).
Most of your concerns are based on someone working off the books within the US; the situation is quite different if you work elsewhere. Also, of course, as you get older, you always have the option of acquiring permanent residency or citizenship in the country of your choice, which would allow you to take advantage of their almost surely more comprehensive programs.
At the moment I'm in France; despite entering the country as a tourist, when I had a medical problem I was seen to promptly and at minimal cost without involving my US-based insurer - less than my deductible if I'd seen a doctor in the US. I'd rather have cancer uninsured here than with insurance in the US.
As of 1990 the State Department has stopped pursuing this issue. You can make all the oaths you want in front of the naturalization court judge but it's basically considered to be a matter of heart and mind rather than legal status. You do not have to follow up with your original country of citizenship and make any renunication to them, so effectively you can maintain your original citizenship. Whether or not your father was aware of this is, of course, another matter. It's not something the naturalization officials advertise.
I invite you to read the long-standing and well-respected dual citizenship FAQ from Rich Wales.
Or, as I've done (not necessarily for the purpose of this discussion on Slashdot) date a lawyer who works on this stuff.
Crime seems to be about the same as you'd get in UK or France - bag snatching, burglaries predominantly. In 5 years I haven't experienced any crime personally, despite frequent post-bar walks through dark alleys at 3am. Nor has my petite western wife, who walks everywhere with her laptop.
Cost of living in Kuala Lumpur (which is a lot more expensive than most of the rest of the country):
Which is why everyone buys pirate DVDs, which are obviously uncensored. Seriously, there are things I could find to complain about Malaysia, but snipped smooch scenes on Astro would be pretty low on my list of gripes.
Forgetting about the religious police is a good idea, because if you're not muslim, they don't have jurisdiction over you. It's a topic of conversation with your muslim friends but has no direct impact on your own life.
As for the press, you have access to something called "the internet", which lets you read whatever you want. The internet in Malaysia is fundamentally unfiltered (the only sites blocked are a few pyramid scams; they tried blocking RPK's Malaysia Today once but gave up on that within a matter of days).
Anyway, my point is that Malaysia is a very easy place, compared to most of Asia, for a westerner to show up and become socially integrated and have a good time making close friendships with locals. Of course there are some downsides to life in KL - bad traffic jams, cigarette smoke everywhere - but there's no place on earth without downsides.
You've got to be kidding me. If you graduated from college and worked for a few years as anything requiring your brain, and you have a job offer, you've got residency. Use the calculator thing you linked to and do the maths for yourself. NZ is basically the easiest developed country in the world to immigrate to. They are desperate for young blood. In Malaysia we're inundated with ads begging us to consider moving to New Zealand.
Obviously you'd have to have an incredible boredom threshold to consider it, wherein lies the source of their desperation, but the option is there for almost any educated white collar worker.
Yes you are. Check out www.bunac.org.
Dude is already a British citizen. Becoming an American citizen as well won't change that.
That is entirely incorrect. The US makes no requests or demands with regards to other citizenships, in fact policy is to pretend that they don't exist.
Try Malaysia. It's the easiest place for westerners to integrate culturally and socially, by a long shot. People speak English well and are genuinely interested in and knowledgeable about the outside world (unlike, say, Thailand). My social life in Kuala Lumpur is the best I've ever had in my life (even compared to undergrad) and my friends are 80% local. I've been invited to countless homes, met everyone's families, gone on long road trips and even international trips with my local friends (2 road trips to Singapore and one trip up to Bangkok this year alone), play on a couple local sports teams, and attended more weddings than I can recall. I'll go weeks in a row with dinner/drinks invitations 7 nights a week.
This stands in stark contrast to my prior existence in Washington DC, where despite having a lot of acquaintainces, I met few people I'd really consider friends, and often felt quite alone, voluntarily sequestering myself at home and spending my weekends on long solo bike rides because I couldn't bear another night out of shallow idiotic conversation with people who really only seemed to tolerate each other because they were familiar faces.
Here I agree with you. There's an overall slack casualness that means in daily practice you have a lot more liberty than you do in more structured, developed societies. Park wherever the hell you want, sit outside until 5am buying beer from a guy with a pushcart, etc. Just watch your step around Sensitive Topics of National Interest.
1. Why does getting an American passport reduce the options that he has through his British passport?
2. BS on your whole point. It's easy for Americans to emigrate. In most European countries, all you have to do is hold down a job for 3-5 years and then you can naturalize. New Zealand will take anyone with a pulse. Australia's not far behind, as long as you're of child-bearing age and have a couple university degrees.
You're making it much too difficult. I've lived and worked in a bunch of countries (Australia, all over Europe, the Middle East, and now Southeast Asia, though at the moment I'm on a few-week gig in Paris). The trick is to spend less time sitting at home fretting about paperwork and about how complicated you imagine it will be, and to spend more time shopping for plane tickets and getting your ass over there.
With the exception of Saudi Arabia, where there was no real way around having a job in hand before arrival, the sure-fire plan has always been this:
I do IT work and get paid well, so it's not like you have to be stuck tending bar in tourist joints either, as some would have you believe.
Unless you work for a multinational that can transfer you around the globe as easily up two flights of stairs, you've got to take matters into your own hands and stop trying to do the conventional thing like you've done at home. Live a little. Take a risk. Get outside your comfort zone. You will be well rewarded.
With a little practice, it's not hard. I have about a 90% success rate. It's only the subtle shift key pushers who throw me off.
fail
The weird thing is that it's been going on for at least a month. Nobody with write access to the server notices this? Bizarre.
I'm using FF on OSX. I thought that was the trendiest fashion statement I could make.
Try this one: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/06/24/tehran_seven/index.html
P.S. Is Slashdot's CSS just going to get weirder and weirder until the site can't used at all? Now the comment field is about 3cm wide.
Kind of off-topic, but Latvia has excellent net access speed. e.g., check out speedtest.net's stats. Latvia average download: 11.73 mbps. Australia average download: 4.92 mbps. In fact Latvia is their 6th highest worldwide. Speedtest.net isn't entirely scientific but is broadly representative in my experience.
I doubt the Section 508 Police are any less impressed by imagified email addresses than they are by Javascript-obfuscated ones.
You're missing a critical distinction, and then you've taken that as license to elaborate some poorly detailed anecdotes into the realm of fiction. The distinction is this:
-- If you miss a flight due to circumstances you could not reasonably be expected to control - such the late arrival of a connecting flight - they often will let your luggage fly without you.
-- If you miss a flight due to circumstances that were in your control - such as your late arrival at the gate after checking in, your luggage will not travel without you.
In general, your luggage is much more likely to travel without you on the second or subsequent leg of a multi-leg itinerary, than on the first leg or first leg after a stopover (in which case it almost never will).
Deliberately unaccompanied baggage is subject to special screening requirements and in some airports/countries it is not accepted from passengers at all (only from bonded third-party agents which are required to follow strict security inspection procedures).
Those of us who don't get free biz/first class tickets do have to pay extra.
If the passengers have checked luggage, then the plane will sometimes wait for them. The luggage would have to be located and removed, which takes a while. Waiting 10 minutes for the passenger can be more sensible than waiting 20 minutes to get their bags off. Except for the moral hazard issue, I suppose.
Not today it doesn't. Who in this scenario is the puppet of the US elite?
Sounds awesome. Your calls will sound great with 50000ms coast-to-coast latency.