re: "Globe and Mail: "IRS bearing down on Americans in Canada" "

Fred Fry at Fred Fry International ("Citizen Journalist and Observer of Human Nature") discussed overseas tax liability for U.S. citizens.

Money quote(s):

"Many Americans both Conservative and Liberal are upset with how their Government is functioning at the moment. I know I am not happy with the idiocy that is going on and the lies being put forward that somehow, we would be able to continue spending the outrageous amounts of money that the Government is currently spending, IF ONLY rich Americans paid a little more. Even Americans living overseas cannot escape the long arm of the US Government, which has decided to extend the arm of the Internal Revenue Service, the dreaded IRS, into the pockets of Americans overseas, even those who have no link to the country other than to have been born in the US or born by US parents. Apparently, there are lots of them."

Quite a few folks are born abroad to one (or more) U.S. citizen parents; many of them (no idea of the percentage....) eventually go "home" to the U.S. to live, study, marry, work, what-have-you.

U.S. nationality laws are written so that the U.S. citizen parent(s) have to have at least some U.S. "presence" prior to the birth of their U.S. citizen children; this is intended to prevent an unending series of generations of overseas "Americans" who have only a paper connection with the United States.

Many U.S. citizens abroad do not bother to file income tax returns with the IRS; and in many cases (see Fred's account below) they are not required to do so. There's a threshold income amount below which filings are not required.

That being said, Fred learned one of the reasons why it's a good idea to comply with those IRS rules.

"I lived in Finland for three years while doing my MBA. Two of those years I filed a tax return. The third year I didn't because I didn't meet the minimum reporting threshold. It turns out that it was good that I did because a short while later I moved back to the US and applied for a GreenCard for my soon to be Finnish wife. One of the requirements was providing copies of my previous three years Income Tax Returns, or an explanation of why I didn't file."

Consular officers working the immigrant visa (IV) portfolio will doubtless have encountered this situation numerous times: the U.S. citizen expatriat whio has married a foreign national and now want to get his or her a "green card."

Well, DHS issues the "green card" once a legal immigrant has been lawfully admitted to the U.S. What was once "the U.S. Consular Service" has to issue him or her an immigrant visa first.

There are a number of administrative and legal hurdles to that, and the overcoming the presumption that an immigrant will become a "public charge" once admitted to the U.S. is overcome by a sponsor (usually the petioner spouse him- or herself) providing proof of sufficient income to support the immigrant. Thus the requirement for providing copies of the federal income tax filings.

"It is odd however, to see the amount of effort that the IRS is extending to track down money overseas the US thinks it can extort from Citizens, however unfair, while at the same time they do little to nothing to hunt down illegal aliens living within the US who are working without the legal authorization to do so, are conspiring with their employers to not pay/evade taxes (in some cases also committing identity theft) and are simply getting a free pass."

Good point!

9/26

re: "Total BS: "These young people should not be punished for their parents’ mistakes." "

Fred Fry at Fred Fry International ("Citizen Journalist and Observer of Human Nature") had all kinds of criticism for amnesty.

Money quote(s):

"This week we had President Obama act to give illegal aliens amnesty and work permits. Their excuse is that they want to concentrate on deporting violent criminals. My first problem is that The Government is not following through in it's obligation to enforce the law. My second problem with this is that they even intend to permit criminals to stay, as long as they are not 'violent'. And given the way that these people lie, I am afraid to find out what their definition of 'violent' is. We already know that they like keeping illegal aliens who drive drunk around, at least until they kill someone. And where do they think these violent criminals come from? They are criminals first, and before they were criminals, they were merely an illegal alien." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

In consular work, we implement the law as it's written, not the way we'd necessarily have written it ourselves. That is to say, we've sworn an oath of office and carry it out to the best of our abilities.

"(A) more accurate statement would be that 'these young people should not be punished for their parents’ crimes.' Their intention is to simply reward all of them, even the criminals, other than a couple token violent criminals which they will use as evidence of being tough on crime. That too is a joke, as we should be putting them in jail, instead of sending them back home to cause havoc there."

There are numerous opportunities for waivers that are already built into our immigration law. Congress wrote them. Various presidents signed them into law. If we need more, then amend the law. That's how America rolls.

CAA is not unsympathetic to people who want a better life by coming to America. But we have our own laws on the subject, just as the countries our immigrants want to leave have their own laws.

"It is reported that not only will many illegal aliens be permitted to stay, but they will also be given work permits to compete for jobs against millions of Americans already out of work. The NY times story mentions that there are about 300,000 currently facing deportation proceedings that will be effected, but I suspect that that list will grow once illegal aliens figure out the best way to get in line to see a judge, to be excused from deportation and handed a work permit for a gift. After all, when you reward something, you get more of it."

8/20

re: "Obama: Sending Jobs Overseas Bad - Illegals Takings Jobs Here Just Fine"

Fred at Fred Fry International ("Citizen Journalist and Observer of Human Nature") talks about the varying impacts of outsourcing jobs and illegal workers.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he President has been hammering US Corporations for sending some work overseas, blaming this 'outsourcing' for lost American jobs. These Corporations have been vilified by the President specifically and Democrats in general.

This same President however fails to see that the end result is the same if they go and let these corporations go and hire illegal aliens to do the work. Sure the job is still here, but instead of sending the work overseas, they brought the foreign worker here to do the job. Illegal aliens are outsourced labor. Instead of sending the work to them, they came to the work."

&

"(I)f a company is outsourcing jobs to Mexico, each Mexican that takes one of those jobs is one less Mexican trying to get to the US. But when a Mexican in the US illegally takes a job in the US, the end result is the same, in that there is one less job available to an American. Not only that, but his 'success' is noted back at home, only encouraging more people to come illegally in search of work.

By letting Illegal Aliens work in the US, they are now competing for jobs that are very difficult if not impossible to send overseas. Think construction and landscaping as two of those industries where the work pretty much needs to be done here."

One thing Fred forgets to mention is the many millions of U.S. dollars in remittances sent home by illegal workers, money which is then lost to the U.S. economy.

re: "Embassy Security in Iran - The Lesson Not Learned"

Fred at Fred Fry International ("Citizen Journalist and Observer of Human Nature") just finished reading Guests of the Ayatollah. He draws some lessons-learned (or not).

Money quote(s):

"One thing that is clear by the end of the book is that the best way to deal with Iran is to keep ourselves isolated from them. Negotiations for the release of the hostages was an ongoing joke as the Iranians constantly changed their demands, always demanding more once the US Government demonstrated that it was willing to deal in order to win the freedom of the US Embassy staff being held hostage."

"(C)onfirmed recently was the Iranian people's ability to still act as agents of their Government while at the same time acting in a way that the Government can deny any involvement. This happened at the end of December when protesters stormed a UK Diplomatic compound in Tehran. This is exactly how the US hostage crisis started. The only reason this did not turn into a hostage situation was because it did not appear to be their goal, but it certainly could have been.

In short, the Iranians are the same thugs and are capable of the same acts as thirty years ago. Unfortunately, the US, UK and other Western Governments still have yet to adapt to deal with them. There was even recent talk of re-establishing diplomatic relations and re-opening the US Embassy in Iran."

&

"Iran is not the only place where US Embassies are at risk of a similar occupation. Another question is whether or not the US is prepared to use lethal force the next time five, ten, a hundred 'protesters' come jumping over an Embassy wall."

Two points.

First, there is what I sometimes cynically call the "full employment for ambassadors" program. There's what seems to me sometimes to be an unseemly haste to open or re-open embassies in places where perhaps we have no business being, or before it's reasonable and prudent or perhaps not really best in U.S. interests to do so. And there's always a reluctance to close (temporarily or otherwise) an embassy when things start to go to Hell. While Churchill was right ("jaw-jaw is better than war-war"), first questions should be asked first, to wit: Is it in the best interests of the United States to open/re-open its embassy in Country X at this time and why?

Second, with only very few exceptions, U.S. diplomatic facilities really aren't designed to function as fire bases, holding off human waves of attackers using cleared fields of fire, &tc. Neither are their security staffs; even where we have U.S. Marines ("No better friend, no worse enemy.") there simply aren't enough of them. Under the Vienna Conventions, the host nation is responsible for ensuring the safety and security of foreign diplomatic missions. Our own security arrangements, both physical and otherwise, are intended only to delay or obstruct an attack to allow the host nation time to respond and increase its protective measures.

What should be obvious (but is apparently not) is that when the host nation uses "spontaneous demonstrations" as a means of communicating its displeasure with the United States (countries like Iran, China, Syria, and Serbia come immediately to mind) then this system breaks down. Hell, it's not really broken in such cases, it's being used against us in a form of international lawfare. That's when you've got to constantly be re-visiting your first questions (see above).