Photos of Arles, France

We've been in Arles, France visiting friends for the past couple of days. Rather than give an extensive post, I'll just share some photos (plus, our flat in Paris has been robbed while we're here, so I'm not terribly keen on writing today).

Arles has a rich, rich Roman history. I'd write more, but as mentioned ...

Click on the photos to see larger versions.

Exterior of the Roman Arles Amphitheatre

Want to move abroad? Trace your family history

Is he the key to you moving abroad?
Public domain photo

I've regularly spoken with people who say "I would love to move abroad", but they've done absolutely nothing to make this happen. While there's a big difference between talking and doing, it's an easy transition to make. For every would-be expat who isn't sure how how to move abroad, there are several steps I recommend them to get started:

1. Get your passport.
2. Read Why you'll say "no" to moving abroad.
3. Read the Start Here post to figure out your next moves.

Now I have to add a fourth item to that list: research your family tree.

I haven't focused on this topic as much as I should have and there's a rich trove of both information and misinformation to be found there. For example, while living in the US, I often heard the canard that "I can move to England if I want because my mother's father was born in England."

Well, no. Amongst other things, the UK ancestry visa only applies to commonwealth citizens and while that's great if you're from South Africa or Australia, but you're out of luck if you're a US citizen (even then, this visa — first introduced in 1972 — has been considered for elimination due to the constant British desire to reshuffle their immigration laws in an apparent attempt to ensure that would-be immigrants can never figure out how to enter the country).

That being said, there are still plenty of ancestral opportunities, some going back far further than you would think. For example, in my post No, Bill Clinton can't run for the French presidency, I mention, almost as an aside:

[Are] you of Italian descent? If had an Italian ancestor since 1861 (more or less), you might be able to claim Italian citizenship so long as no one along your chain of ancestors renounced their Italian citizenship.

Do you know your ancestors going back a century and a half? Or how about over 500 years? Sephardic Jews are now eligible for Spanish citizenship, an attempt made by the Spanish government to apologizing for expelling them in 1492 (though in practice, many Sephardic Jews are still waiting for the law to go into effect). Portugal has passed a similar law.

Most other options for moving abroad via ancestry are for a more limited time period, such as getting a Greek passport by having at least one Greek grandparent. Of course, if you're a male aged 19 to 45 years old, you'll have to deal with mandatory military service in Greece.

I pointed this out to one person and they immediately said "why would I want to move to Greece with their unemployment levels?" You could ask a similar question for Spain, Portugal, or many other countries, but you have to remember that they're part of the European Economic Area and a passport in one country gives you access to all of them. Don't be foolish and discount a free passport just because you're not interested in the target country.

So my advice: research your family tree and if you find an ancestor from another country, start researching that country's immigration laws. You may be in for a pleasant surprise.

Many people are aware of ancestry.com, but there are many other online resources for tracing your family tree. The Mormon Church also offers a free service for tracing your family history.

The Ugly American

"The Ugly American"
American tourist in 1950's Batista-era Cuba

I'm sure that you've heard the "ugly American" stereotype before. It's prominent enough that it has its own Wikipedia page. Booming voices, plaid Bermuda shorts, mocking the locals. In fact, I've witnessed this abroad (down to the Bermuda shorts) and people are more likely to remember Americans who stand out like that. I still vividly remember standing in line at a store in Amsterdam and having a pair of American women yelling at a cashier because the women were mad that they had to weigh their own vegetables. Sadly, the "ugly American" stereotype can apply to expats as easily as tourists.

Exceptions like those yelling women aside, the stereotype is not only a bit unfair, but on those occasions that it is fair, it's not always entirely the American's fault. The US is a rather insular culture. It's expensive to see other cultures firsthand so we don't get this experience except by television or movies — and no, watching every episode of Monty Python or Dr. Who doesn't count. And it's not entirely the US media's fault, either. Strange things (other cultures) are challenging and don't drive as much revenue to the profit-maximizing entertainment industry.

So, relative to other countries, you have a rich, isolated culture whose people are often completely unprepared for the outside world, right? Well, not exactly.

A Grab Bag of Expat Related News

Angkor Wat
Photo CC by Sam Garza 

There's a building going up near us. They workers have torn down an old, crumbling building and they're putting up a new, shiny building. And cutting a cable to our building along the way. One of these things is not nice.

So for the past couple of weeks, I've been limping along with little to no internet service. It's unclear who actually owned the cable that was cut, but our (former) internet provider, free.fr, insists that our service is working fine and no, they have no record of a repair request from us. In fact, our entire building is almost completely without phone, television, or Internet access as those services tend to be bundled together and there's a lovely note on the front door saying "please be patient, no one knows what's going on, no one is sending repair people and please keep hassling your ISPs."

For us, this is the fourth extended outage we've had in 18 months and while it's not free.fr's fault this time, they're response has been so consistently awful that we've cancelled our contract. As one friend of mine with a phone contract from them once said: with free.fr, you'll never be late for a meeting because you'll never be able to call ahead and tell your colleagues.

And so, I've had precious little to say on this blog for a while, so here's a few tidbits to help you pass the time.

The Wall Street Journal, despite turning into a bit of a rag now that Murdoch has gotten his slimy little paws on it, has an excellent essay about how FATCA is hurting Americans abroad and has this paragraph to explain the underlying problem:

[Imagine] this: You were born in California, moved to New York for education or work, fell in love, married and had children. Even though you have faithfully paid taxes in New York and haven't lived in California for 25 years, suppose California law required that you also file your taxes there because you were born there. Though you may never have held a bank account in California, you must report all of your financial holdings to the State of California. Are you a signatory on your spouse's account? Then you must declare his bank accounts too. Your children, now adults, have never been west of the Mississippi but they too must file their taxes in both California and New York and report any bank accounts they or their spouses may have because they are considered Californians by virtue of one parent's birthplace.

That, of course, is how US expats abroad are treated.

The article goes on to be pretty scathing about FATCA and if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know what FATCA is. For those who don't, here's the executive summary: the US government has demanded that all foreign financial institutions (FFIs) in the world turn over records of their US account holders or face potentially massive financial penalties.

Not only is this a gross violation of national sovereignty for the US to demand that foreign institutions submit to the IRS, it's also in violation of the privacy laws of many countries. Worse, the US did this unilaterally without bothering to ask other nations if this was OK. How would the US feel if roughly 200 countries returned the favor and started demanding that US banks turn over records of all their citizens to all the countries on the planet or face penalties? You have to be very, very stupid to not understand why that's a problem.

And what a problem it's turned out to be! The US demanded that all FFIs begin turning in this information starting January 1st, 2014. The world's FFIs asked a very interesting question: "how?".

So the Treasury has pushed the FATCA deadline back six months while they try to figure out an answer to this question. Awkward.

Meanwhile, proving the old adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Senator Rand Paul, paleolibertarian extraordinaire (paleolibertarians are liberterians who embrace misogyny and bigotry), has called for an end to FATCA.

Meanwhile, the US is continuing its crusade to bankrupt Americans who are so unpatriotic as to live abroad.

On a more positive note, here's a lovely story about what we can all learn from expats. Of course, that's an Australian Web site. The US still seems to hate us.

Buying A Second Passport

Over at avaaz.org, there's a charmingly naïve online petition for the UN to start issuing a "globally recognized world passport". It claims it needs a million signatures and as of this writing, it has a whopping 310 of them. I'm not sure what impact anyone thinks such a petition would have. It's not just that governments would ignore the idea: citizens of most countries wouldn't want that passport if it acted as a real passport and allowed the holder to live and work in the country (in this case, the world) that issued it. Can you imagine how many major country's social services would collapse under the weight of unlimited immigration?

As it turns out, there are plenty of "second passports" schemes out there.

Our trip to La Rochelle in Photos

The waterfront at La Rochelle

Click on any photo for a larger version.

Last weekend my wife, daughter and myself visited La Rochelle, on the West coast of France, with a sea port opening to the Bay of Biscay. We might move here. We're considering moving outside of Paris, but we've decided to stay in the country this time (Malta, Belgium, or the UK were our most likely destinations). The village is absolutely gorgeous and prices are much more reasonable than Paris. Since we've started a company that, amongst other things, does international IT recruitment, we find ourselves in the luxurious position of being able to move.