US Trying to Prevent Americans Giving Up Their Citizenship

Certification of Loss of Nationality (Wikipedia)

I haven't written in this blog for a while, but this story is too important to ignore. The US is trying to solve its public relation disaster of the massive increase in the number of Americans giving up their citizenship by throwing up as many obstacles to renunciation as possible.

The Background
First, Americans back in the US frequently have a distorted view of Americans abroad. In fact, we know from extensive expat research (my own polling, the research of Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, and many others), that most Americans move abroad for love, work, study, or adventure. We're not rich, we're just average folks who happen to live in different countries.

Many Americans back home think we're ungrateful, rich sods who've turned our backs on the US. As previously mentioned, most of us aren't rich, polls show that few of us moved abroad for political reasons and we don't hate America. We get up, go to work, hang out with our friends, mow the lawn, love our children, and so on. Not much different from back in the US, except that the food's different, the language is different, the culture is different, etc.

So why are so many Americans abroad giving up their citizenship? Most of them will tell you the same thing: FATCA, a law designed to force international banks to report US customers to the IRS. Thanks to this law:

• Americans abroad are often being denied bank accounts
• Americans abroad are being denied business opportunities (happened to me)
• Some overseas companies have simply stopped hiring Americans
• FATCA is breaking up marriages
• Americans abroad are now going into hiding
• People who didn't know they were Americans are being hunted by the IRS
• US Congressman have been trying to bankrupt US expats
• And so on ...

There are, at the present time, only two countries in the world who tax their citizens abroad: the brutal dictatorship of Eritrea and the US. Taxing Americans abroad was an old law instituted during the US civil war to punish Americans fleeing abroad to avoid the war (and paying for it via taxes). However, the law remained on the books but was largely ignored. Americans abroad were not told about it and they lived, retired, and died in blissful ignorance of this Civil War era law.

In 1970, the Bank Secrecy Act was passed and it contained the Foreign Bank Account Reporting provision (tell the IRS if you have a foreign bank about with more than $10,000), but this was a money laundering measure, not an attempt to enforce the Civil War law.

It was after the Great Recession of 2008 that the US government started searching for other sources of income that it realized it had largely been ignoring this old law on the books. Despite the complete lack of evidence that enforcing this law will work (the US Census Bureau doesn't count Americans abroad, despite repeatedly losing lawsuits over this), law makers are painting expats as billionaire tax dodgers living abroad to avoid paying taxes. Honestly, anyone who thinks I live in France to dodge taxes is an idiot, and as mentioned above, surveys repeatedly show that we're just a bunch of ordinary Americans — not wealthy tax dodgers.

Ironically, this move has been championed by many politicians who are themselves famous for dodging taxes. 

The Government's Solution

All of the above has led to the problem of record numbers of Americans trying to renounce their citizenship. Previously, it had always been free to renounce your US citizenship. Go to a consulate abroad, fill out your paperwork, and wait for your CLN (Certificate of Loss of Nationality). In 2010, the US started charging $450 for allowing Americans to renounce. However, US renunciations continued to skyrocket, though the numbers appear to be seriously underreported. There have been reports of increased waiting times for various countries as a result.

Rather than address the root issues, the US attempted to contain the damage by raising the renunciation fee by 422% to $2,350! This puts it out of the price range of many Americans abroad, particularly those in lesser-developed nations, or those living paycheck-to-paycheck. However, this still didn't work. In 2015, there was a 20% increase in the number of Americans giving up their citizenship. From 2008 to 2015, the number of Americans renouncing has increased 18-fold and, as mentioned earlier, this is probably severely unreported.

So again, instead of fixing the problem, the US government has found yet another "solution." You can't legally renounce without an appointment, so since January 2016, the US embassies in Canada are simply not scheduling renunciation appointments. People are reporting delays of over a year to get an appointment. In Germany, renunciations are now restricted to the US Consulate General in Frankfurt, despite there being an embassy in Berlin and five consulates around the country. Here in France, they've restricted this to Paris and Marseille, despite an embassy and six consulates. If you've ever had the misfortune of wading through the consulate lines in Paris or trying to get an appointment, you know what a high bar they've set for letting Americans abroad renounce.

You would think that a politician might ask the obvious question: why are so many Americans giving up their citizenship? But no, no one cares. Americans abroad overwhelmingly say they don't want to do this, even as they're filling out the forms to renounce. Something has to change.

Buying citizenship in Malta, a gorgeous Mediterranean island country

Now, for a mere €650,000 (~$880,000US), you can buy citizenship in Malta. It's a beautiful Mediterranean island now known to many as one of the settings of HBO's epic Game of Thrones series.

Malta
Photo courtesy of Thyes

Originally it was going to be a private sale, with people buying citizenship having their names withheld. After outcry from the opposition party, the government agreed to publish the names of those who buy Maltese citizenship.

I've written about Malta before because my wife and I investigated moving there. The climate is lovely, most people speak English, and prices are low. That being said, is buying citizenship a realistic option? I don't think so.

The Nationalist Party has promised, when they return to power, to revoke the the citizenship of anyone buying their way in. The Maltese Labour Party argues that selling citizenship is an excellent way of raising money for the country and attracting "high value" immigrants. While initial estimates suggest that the first year of this program would raise €30 million for the island, it's not clear that this will necessarily work. There is no requirement to be a resident or even invest in the island.

There's also the question of what citizenship really means. Is the right of citizenship something one should be able to buy, or does culture matter? I plan to apply for French citizenship as soon as I'm eligible. I live in France, my wife is French, our daughter is French-American, I speak French, and US and French cultural values are (on paper) largely similar. But does having that passport make me French?


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It's also worth noting that the Maltese government is targeting wealthy Russian and Chinese citizens. On one hand, this makes sense because these citizens often find themselves in the crosshairs of their government's ire. However, and not to put to fine a point on it, many other European countries may not be happy with this. You see, Malta is part of the Schengen area, giving its citizens the right to live and work in 28 different countries. The spectre of the "Russian Oligarch" or Chinese criminals is one that is popular in the news and it's impossible to ignore the potentially racist overtones of some objections, though the Maltese government promises to carefully screen all candidates.

As for myself, I continue to hold that people should be free to move to countries that they feel might be a better fit for their personal values. However, I realize that this is not going to happen and there are very practical reasons why it can't. I also confess that offering citizenship for the rich is disturbing.

Fortunately, if you really want to move to Malta, you can put aside those concerns and take advantage of several less costly routes. Then if you want Maltese citizenship, you merely need to wait five years to apply for naturalization. That should give you plenty of time to integrate into the culture.

How do you feel about citizenship? Should it be for sale?

Future Expats: Emigrating to Mars

Natural color image of Sol 52 on Mars
Photo courtesy of NASA

Forgive me for today's flight of fancy, but given that I love being an expat and I love science fiction, the two naturally converge from time to time.

There are currently two different companies who have long-term plans to colonize Mars. SpaceX, long-term, envisions a colony of 80,000 people on Mars. Mars One, on the other hand, plans to colonize Mars and use reality TV subscriptions to pay for it. With an increasing number of space-based companies, sooner or later someone is going to try to colonize another celestial body. As it turns out, expatriation to Mars has interesting social and legal consequences.

Mars One even has an official trailer to introduce themselves:


And if you want to learn more about Mars, you can explore it with Google Earth:


But what would happen if you moved there? First, let's forget about the perils of the months-long trip in a rocket to Mars as those are already well-known. And I don't think we have any historical guides to draw from: there are no natives to subjugate, nor would emigration be large-scale enough to really have fair parallels. There will be no "open frontiers" for people to settle. You'll be in a tin can along with everyone else. So what's going to happen? Well, we'll consider this in the context of the Mars One approach of sending four people every two years.

I've previously written about the Four Stages of Expat Life:

1. Honeymoon
2. Homesickness
3. Coping
4. Living

The strategies that I generally recommend for dealing with homesickness and transitioning to stage three aren't viable. You're not going to arrange a Skype call with your best buddy. There is no local culture to immerse yourself in. You won't nip down to the shop and pay double the price for that bag of Fritos, hoping to relax with "comfort food". Just going out for a stroll can kill you and you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to build a freakin' planet for others to live on. There will be no respite. There will be no turning back. And over 200,000 people have applied to emigrate to Mars.

Of course, while we're considering this, also consider that you're now a vegetarian, if not a vegan. Some people would be very frustrated by this. Utilizing animals for meat/food production is an incredible waste of energy and even though Elon Musk has made it clear that he doesn't care what you eat on Mars, it might not make a lot of economic sense to bring chickens (I would love to see a cow in a space suit). Since there's no native culture on Mars, those who move there will be creating one and I could easily see the entire planet growing up thinking that "meat is something Earthlings eat". And the cultural changes will stick! Sooner or later children will be born there and given that gravity on Earth is three times what they'll be used to, there's a good chance they can never visit. That will create a permanent cultural gap.

Here's another fun thing to weigh on future colonist minds: can you imagine being one of the first four to land on the planet and two years later, when the second four are launched into space, their rocket blows up and multiple lawsuits shut down the Mars colonization program? The legal mess would be heartbreaking, but it would be nothing compared to those already on Mars, wondering if they'll get more supplies or even colonists. "Forever alone" takes on a whole new meaning.

The horror awaits ...
Image courtesy Mars One, used under Fair Use (I hope)

And here's another fun thought, one that would make a very nifty science fiction movie: you're in the second group of four people heading to Mars and halfway through an eight-month flight when an accident kills one of the four already on Mars. And then another. And then a third. And you have one person left who is, in all likelihood, an insane murderer and he's waiting for you. You have four months to figure out how you're going to survive. Have fun! And there's not a damned thing anyone could legally do about it.

And presumably some nation is going to want to claim that Mars colony, but the 1967 Space Treaty, one which most nations have signed, explicitly forbids any national government from claiming a celestial body, claiming them as the common heritage of mankind (an international legal principle, believe it or not). Interestingly, under this treaty, any interplanetary exploration or colonization must be carried out for the benefit of all of humanity. Get enough people on Mars to make it economically self-sustaining and they're going to say "we weren't even born when that treaty was signed". And truth be told, it will be pretty hard to force them to change their minds.

Another thing which I find particularly curious is the idea of taxes. Under current US law, any US citizen who flies to Mars will have to file a tax return every year. I wonder how that's going to be enforced? I already suspect that well-known US citizens abroad, such as Boris Johnson, a British politician with an estimated net worth of $185 million are being quietly ignored by the IRS, thus possibly setting a legal precedent of "let's only pick on the easy targets". US citizens on Mars won't even be able to relinquish their citizenship because, legally, they have to do so at a consulate. A consulate is occupied by a consul and they're a political representative from one state to the territory of another. Under the 1967 treaty, it's unclear to me if the US could even legally set up a consulate on Mars and since the US recognizes jus sanguinus, meaning that all US citizens pass their citizenship to their children, could we wind up with a planet of tax dodgers? I'm looking forward to the first interplanetary tax war.

Legally speaking, is this a "celestial body"?
Image courtesy NASA

There is, however, one simple way to avoid the legal issues presented by the 1967 space treaty: read the damned thing. That's right, read it. It's very short. I'll wait. Once you read it and think about it for a while, you'll see multiple fatal flaws. For example, the beginning of Article 1 of the treaty reads:

The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.

Don't think "rational", think "lawyer". What would a lawyer do? They would ask "what's a celestial body?" and all would come crashing down. The term is never defined and that's fatal in law. Is the ISS a celestial body? If so, all current corporate plans to launch space stations are moot and strangely, no nation is arguing to shut down corporation exploitation of space.

But if that doesn't sound like a compelling argument there's another one. When you read the treaty's enforcement mechanism ... oh, that's right! There isn't one! It's all talk, no action. There is absolutely nothing in that treaty which can compel any nation to obey it. And you can bet your ass that if the US-based SpaceX corporation starts colonizing Mars, the US government is going to involved. Maybe there will be an IRS office on Mars after all?

Moving Abroad by Getting Married

Your author and his wife, married at Tower Bridge

Because I no longer live in the US, I've been called a traitor more than once. This is generally from people who probably give amusing definitions of what a traitor is. Were my French wife to live with me in the US, I wonder if they would call her a traitor too? Probably not. But at the end of the day, if you marry someone from another country, at least one of you is going to wind up living in a different country. Damned traitor.

In the years of writing this blog, I have never specifically written a post about moving abroad via marriage. Though it may come as a surprise to some, this lack has been deliberate. Not only did I assume that most people knew about this route, but I also didn't feel the need to write on some rather unsavory topics in this area, but I think the time has come to talk about it.

Recently I was contacted by someone living in the US who wanted a better understanding of the job market for IT in Europe. He has read my post about how to get a job in Sweden and as it turns out, he and his wife are particularly interested in the possibility of moving there, but they have a child, and a home, and he has a secure job. The concern expressed is that he is worried that such security won't last in the US. It's a common theme that I often hear from people contacting me (though to be fair, I hear this about residents of many countries).

After sending him a lengthy reply, he dropped a bit of a bombshell statement: his wife has Spanish citizenship, so moving to Spain is always a fallback position.

What? Hold on there! If your spouse has EU citizenship, things change dramatically! If your spouse is an EU citizen, you have the legal right to live and work anywhere in the EU that your spouse lives! Your children also have the right to public education. No work permit is required. No residence permit is required. You only have to go through some pro forma paperwork and bam, you're in! Of course, there is also an assessment of whether or not your marriage is a sham, but  assuming it's not (or you're good liars), you're good to go.

Even if your spouse is not a citizen of another country, they still might be able to claim citizenship via ancestry. Getting married doubles your chances of moving abroad!

Well, sort of. Countries are quite happy to find all sorts of restrictions. For example, if you've met the love of your life and she lives in a small town in Cumbria and you marry her, the British government may very well tell you that you're not allowed to move to the UK. That's because the UK restricts the marriage visa with financial requirements and she will have to earn, at minimum, £18,600 to allow you to live with her. There are many jobs in Cumbria which pay less than this amount (particularly if you live in countryside) and you can survive just fine on that amount. However, even though this restriction violates EU law, many UK politicians are throwing their toys of our the pram once they realize that joining the EU meant cooperating with other countries and thus said politicians are quite happy to ignore EU law. Sadly, real people are getting hurt by the UK marriage visa restrictions.

If you do find yourself falling in love with someone from another country, though, just remember that if you get married, you probably have the right to live together (though there are often severe restrictions for gay couples), but be careful if you decide to go looking for someone from another country.

Many years ago when I was still living in the US, I was on a dating Web site when I stumbled across the profile of a British lady who seemed interesting, attractive, and wrote that she desperately loved American men and wanted to settle down with one. I sent her a message. She sent me a reply. "Deposit $50,000 in my account for marriage."

Sigh. From the opening paragraph of the U.S. State Department's warnings on marriage scams:

U.S. citizens should be aware of individuals they meet on internet dating websites who feign friendship, profess romantic interest, and/or express marriage intentions over the internet. Scammers commonly claim to be U.S. citizens who are engaged in international business, requiring them to frequently travel overseas. In fact, these individuals are not U.S. citizens. Many scammers also claim some sort of connection to Europe. 

This is insanely common. Many people wanting to explore the world fall victim to this, though some voluntarily pay money for sham marriages. I was recently reading an article  (which I can't find right now) claiming that after the discovery that 100% of Tunisians marrying Norwegians ended their marriages after the Tunisians got permanent residency in Norway, the marriages dropped to almost zero after Norway made it illegal to pay for marriage. If you do choose to go this route, be careful. It's generally illegal and can easily get you deported and banned from a country.

That being said, the "mail-order" marriage route is still out there. Listverse has an interesting summary of some misconceptions, including the interesting tidbit that sometimes the brides are legitimate and want a husband to move to their country. Divorce rates for mail-order marriages also tend to be lower than the US average, something that would surprise many.

And then there is Cherry Blossoms. Once a print magazine for mail-order brides, it's now a Web site for them. There's considerable controversy around mail-order marriages, but so long as there is mail/internet, the practice will continue.

Getting married is certainly one way of moving abroad, but there are definitely pitfalls. You'll also have to consider the case of what happens if you separate/divorce too early. You may just get deported, so you had better read up on the law and make sure you understand it. And it's not a step to be taken lightly, so unless you're in dire straits or in love (possibly the same thing), I would not recommend it.

How to get a job in Sweden

Stotorget, Stockholm, Sweden
Photo by Mastad

Please share this post with any of your friends who would like to find a job in another country.

Yesterday I posted about a Swedish job site that was possibly a scam, but I know that many people would love to get a job in Sweden. For some reason, my 20 Things to Know Before Moving to Sweden is incredibly popular (in that it draws a lot of traffic), even though it's merely a link to another Web site, and I often get email from people asking me about Sweden. It's also well known that the Swedish people are very happy (as are Scandinavians in general).

So how would you go about getting a job there? Thanks to changes in the law in 2008, Sweden is actually one of the easiest countries in the world to get a job in if you're a foreigner.

In reading through the Swedish government's description of the law (warning: PDF), I'm pleasantly surprised. It's both pro-business and pro-worker's rights. On the business side, if you have trouble filling your your positions, you're allowed to hire outside of the EU. What's amazing is that almost every other country imposes a "labor test". This test requires that the business prove there are no suitable local candidates available to fill the positions. The labor test has been eliminated for Sweden. When evaluating the position, the government relies on the employer telling them whether or not they need a given position filled.

While this sounds great, warning bells immediately started going off in my mind. What's to stop business from importing cheap labor undercutting wages? Well, the government claims to check to ensure that this won't happen. Theoretically these safeguards are also in the US, but the US relevant agencies don't have the budget to verify this, so US companies are using H1B visas as a source of cheap labor. Knowing that the law and reality aren't always the same thing, I was concerned. However, in Sweden, they really do check and make sure this abuse isn't happening. In Sweden.se, the official "Sweden portal", their explanation of getting a work permit has this to say (emphasis mine):

If you have successfully applied for a job and been offered a position in Sweden, your future employer must provide you with a written offer of employment. This written job offer is important to the permit process; without it, you can't apply for your work permit. 

The written offer of employment, is an official document, that clearly describes the terms and conditions of your employment such as salary, insurance and length of employment. The offer of employment must be obtained by your potential employer from the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket). The employer then fills it out and sends it to the concerned trade union for approval of the offered conditions and then sends it back to the employer, who sends it on to you. 

Please note that the offer of employment must be signed by both employer and the concerned trade union and submitted along with your application for a work/residence permit.

In Sweden, trade unions are important and no, they don't let immigrant labor undercut their salaries. However, labor abuses do occur in Sweden and some immigrant groups do suffer lower wages than average. So while things are good in Sweden, they are not perfect and you'll still want to be careful.


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That being said, the OECD has this to say about the new Swedish labor immigration system (but read the entire article):

The Swedish government implemented [labor immigration] reform to better meet the needs of employers while ensuring safeguards for the local labour market. This has largely happened, reflecting both the contents of the reform and the co-operation of social partners in compliance mechanisms. 

So how do you get a job in Sweden? First, sweden.se states that the job must be listed on the EURES site. You can search for EURES jobs here. For a random search, "Hotel, catering and personal services staff", I found over 2,000 jobs listed in Sweden. Many of the job descriptions are in Swedish, so I would suspect that not speaking Swedish would be an obstacle, but English is widely spoken in Sweden, particularly in the major cities. Not speaking Swedish will limit your opportunities, but it's not an unsurmountable obstacle.

Goteborg, Sweden
Photo by Tiberio Frascari

Another important thing to consider is that if you're in Sweden and want to apply for a job, you usually have to return to your home country first ... unless you're on their labor shortage list. So what sort of jobs are on that list? There are the usual STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine), but also:

• Bus drivers
• Cooks/chefs
• Plumbers
• Roofers
• Taxi drivers
• Truck mechanics

... and many more.

And does this really work? From the OECD report mentioned earlier:

While labour migration to Sweden accounts for only a small part of the total, it provides a significant contribution to employment in a few occupations. Taking into account the duration of stay of labour migrants, inflows relative to total employment are significant in these occupations: 2.3% in food processing, 1.7% in housekeeping, and 1.6 % in computing.

It is now much easier for high-skilled migrants to come to Sweden to work and to stay. So far, especially in IT, most are short-term workers on intra-corporate transfers, but a growing number are remaining. 

The reform also led to increased recruitment in lesser-skilled jobs, especially in restaurants, hospitality and cleaning. These labour migrants tend to come to stay, with longer permit durations and higher renewal rates.

So yes, it's working.

Of course, actually getting a company to say "yes" is a different story, but if they do, the Swedish government won't be standing in your way.

Update: And I forgot to mention that all immigrants to Sweden get free language lessons. Also, lots of Swedish job postings and information here.

This Swedish Jobs Web Site Is a Bit tvivelaktig (questionable)

This is not Simon Nordin

Note: there is a company in Australia named Swede Recruit. This post is not about that company. If you really want to get a job in Sweden, I explain the process here.

There are many people desperate to find work in other countries. There are, sadly, many others who are all too happy to take advantage of this. You'll find plenty of "we'll get you an overseas job" sites with dodgy credentials and it looks like there might be a new one in Sweden, apparently run by one "Simon Nordin, CEO".

It seems "Ecothegeek" on Reddit had his CV on Eures, the European job portal, and a company contacted him saying that they'd like to find him a job in Sweden for the low price of €195. Ecothegeek was a bit concerned and asked about them on Reddit's /r/IWantOut community. Something didn't seem quite right to me, so I started digging.

Called swederecruit dot com (not linking to avoid giving them traffic) and claiming on their Web site to have been doing business since 1998, they registered their domain a few days ago and launched their grammatically-challenged Web site (my favorite is the "Get a Work" link). It's possible that they're simply a brand-new company hoping to make themselves look mature, or maybe they're established international recruiters who inexplicably forgot to get a Web site for 15 years.

From their About Us page (emphasis mine):

Swede Recruit founded in 1998 and since then has given people and businesses to develop by being a caring, responsive and solution-oriented agencies.

We offer solutions for staffing, recruitment and outplacement. Our clients are among both private and public companies and organizations.

We at Swede Recruit make it as smooth as possible for our graduates to find jobs that suit them perfectly and as easy as possible for a recruiting firm to find the right employees . We believe that everyone is the right person in the right place, anywhere in the world. It’s just about finding the right. Here we come in and help.

We have put a focus on being a helping hand to job seekers from other countries who are looking for work in Sweden. We provide a large number of apartments for our job seekers to make it easier to make the move to Sweden.

Swede Recruit connects right manpower for the job!

And here's their Apply page (emphasis mine):

Below you can apply for a job, an apartment and a work permit in Sweden that guarantees you an optional work and an optional home. When you apply for this you will receive a letter via email on how to complete your payment.

For us to be able to process your application, you need to pay the administrative fee of 195 euros. The process goes through a work permit, an apartment and a job for you.

Within three months, we will introduce alot of job alternatives for you and a nearby apartment. After you have decided which job and which apartment you want as we have suggested to you, you will get your work permit in Sweden. Then you are welcome to your new job and your new apartment.

If it turns out that you are not satisfied with the jobs and / or the apartment that we present to you within three months, we can at your request, keep searching or refund the full payment to you.

For your and our success, we provide only the work that is under swedish and union standard salaries. Swedish average salary is 29,000 SEK (about 3,100 euros).

Wow. That's pretty impressive. €195 (~$270 US) and they'll provide you with alot (sic) of job alternatives and an apartment!

So why do I think something is odd? Well, I've been researching expat issues for a long time and my wife and I run an international IT recruiting company, so I think I have some experience here. You generally don't just pay some money and get a work permit. Sweden is still struggling with unemployment, but as it turns out, under a 2008 change in their laws, virtually anyone can get a work permit in Sweden if they can convince a company to offer them a job. So maybe this site is legit?

So I dug into their Web site. First:

• Their domain was registered on October 28th, 2013.
• Alexa has no history for them.
• The Internet Archive has no history for them.

This is not a smoking gun and there could be explanations for why a 15-year company handling international recruitment would not have had a Web presence prior to a few days ago. But let's look further.

According to their Web site (/maria-moved-from-madrid-to-gothenburg/), Maria Gonzalez is a 34 year old Spanish woman who used their services to find work in Gothenburg, Sweden. They have a short interview with her where she explains how easily Swede Recruit found her a job and an apartment. Maria sounds very happy.

Except that the image they used is actually that of Rebecca Martinez, an assistant professor in Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Missouri.

Well, OK. Mistakes happen. Or maybe Maria didn't want her photo taken so they made do with what they could borrow from other Web sites. Or maybe they just lost Maria's photo?

And then there's the happy tale of Raila (/raila-got-a-job-and-housing-in-stockholm-via-swed-recruitment/). He struggled for two years to find a job in his native Kenya, but Swede Recruit found him a lovely job as a café assistant in downtown Stockholm.

Apparently they lost Raila's photo too, so Swede Recruit repurposed the photo of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, a film director from Chad.

Again, no smoking gun here. Maybe they just keep forgetting to take photos of the people they help.

So are their any real photos of people on their site? Sure! They have a staff page. I took a screenshot in case they accidentally lose these photos too.

Those people are:

• Simon Nordin CEO (A "Simon Nordin" registered the swederecruit dot com domain)
• Kevin Söderman
• Dennis Nyström
• Karin Friman
• Gustav Ek
• Petra Flykt

The real Simon Nordin?

And in the mother of all coincidences, it turns out that Guillaume Cailleux, Chris Carver, Adam Finck, Laura Walker, Zachary Barrows and Liz Allen, people who work for the charity invisiblechildren.com, are all dead ringers for them, right down to the clothes! Weird, eh?

Psssst, Simon: didn't you know how trivial it is to find out if an image on the Web is used on another site?

Oh, and Swede Recruit doesn't appear to be registered as a Swedish company. Scambook already has an entry for them and the company registry number that people claim Swede Recruit is using is false.

It appears that Simon Nordin, the "CEO", or someone using the name "Gustav Ek" (see above), was actively contacting people via Eures, the European Job Mobility portal. In fact, it looks like they may have mass mailed people on that Web site, trying to get people to pay €195. However, Eures is now calling Swede Recruit a fake company and under Swedish law, to qualify for a Swedish work permit, the job must be listed on Eures.

I contacted him under a fake name and said I couldn't apply because I didn't have a "Eures ID" (a "required" field on their "Apply" form). Someone named "Simon Nordin" replied:

Hi,

You need to register at our site and pay the administration fee to take part of our services. 

And if you do not have a eures id you can leave it blank

Best regards
Simon Nordin

Then when I checked the "Apply" page again, someone had removed the field requiring a Eures ID. I filled in my information and was sent a link to a PDF with Mr. Nordin's IBAN, and BIC/SWIFT information for transferring the money to his account. Strange that a 15-year old company would be using the CEO's personal bank details rather than their own (though I have to say, if this entire thing was set up just to make Mr. Nordin look very stupid, someone's done a brilliant job and I should be apologizing to Mr. Nordin).

Further digging turned up Mr. Nordin relatively quickly. He's probably a young man around 18 to 20 years old or so, possibly living with his mother. I found plenty of contact information for him and his family and a friend in Sweden offered to contact the boy's family for me, and he did. The boy's aunt and father have allegedly been contacted and from what I understand, the father said they'd get down to the bottom of this and go to the police, if necessary. I've made several attempts through different channels to contact Mr. Nordin to get his side of the story. Neither Mr. Nordin nor his "company" have responded to me. If you complete the "Apply" form, the Web site is still sending out "order confirmations" asking people to send him money.

I work hard trying to help people legitimately find work in other countries and it saddens me to see something like this. Perhaps Swede Recruit is simply a very unprofessional company that doesn't understand that misrepresenting themselves like this is wrong. I would suggest ignoring them and keep reading this site. I don't charge you a damned thing.

You Can Move to Pitcairn Island

Pitcairn Island Dock
Photo by Jens Bludau

On April 28, 1789, the crew of the HMS Bounty mutinied for reasons that are debated to this day. Some say it was harsh treatment by Captain Bligh; others claim it was debauched sailors attracted to the sexually liberal lifestyle of Polynesia. Whatever the cause, the mutineers split and some settled in Tahiti, while others settled on Pitcairn Island, perhaps the most remote settlement in the world. Today, over two centuries later, the descendants of the original mutineers still live there and they have a problem. With a rapidly declining population, they want you to move there.

Countries You Can (cheaply) Buy Your Way Into

Retire in Bangkok!
Photo by Mike Behnken

A few days ago I posted about countries that will let you live there if you show a modest income from abroad. I got curious and asked Reddit's /r/IWantOut community for more information. While many of the suggestions were unsourced, some provided references and they're awesome. Got $20,000 US? Are you 35 years old or older? Retire in the Phillipines via the SRRV program.  Hell, my wife and I could cash out our brand-new business and probably survive quite nicely in the Phillipines. (My wife would kill me for suggesting this, though).

Or maybe Thailand tickles your fancy. You can retired there on a roughly $1,500 a month income, though a large enough deposit in a bank around will get around this. Thai salaries appear to range around 300 to 800 a month, on average, so you could definitely survive on this, but everything I read suggests you'll need a minimum of $1,000 a month or more to get by.

Is Ecuador more interesting? They have a variety of visas, including a pensioner's visa requiring a minimum income of $800 a month.

Malaysia's My Second Home program was also mentioned. I've written about it before. If you have around $150,000 in the bank and can show roughly a $3,000 a month income, you can move there.

The jungle in Ometepe, Nicaragua
Photo by Thomas Frost Jensen

A mere $600 a month will let you retire in Nicaragua. The minimum retirement age is 45, but Nicaragua will waive that requirement if you can show a stable income. And assuming that income is from outside of Nicaragua, it's also tax free.

I also tried to find decent information about African countries, but as usual, it eludes me (other than a $1 million investment visa for South Africa). Still, for those looking for adventure and can figure out a remote income, you have many, many options. Obviously, some will be more "adventurous" than others, such as in Thailand, a beautiful country that can't quite shake the coup rumors, but if you're willing to accept a little risk, there's a lot of reward, too. I've a great life here in France that I wouldn't trade for anything, but were I single and not a father, I think I'd become a nomad and start exploring these places. It's a big world out there.

"Innocent until proven guilty": The US versus France

Charges were later dropped.
Used under Fair Use.

There are some people who read this blog who may know the background of what is below. Please do not post any links to it. At all. This post is not about the people I'm referring to in an anonymous manner, it's about the difference between how the French and US legal systems deal with the accused.

Move Abroad by Working Remotely

The view from our bedroom in
our home in La Rochelle, France

Did you know that many countries allow you to live there even if you can't work there? I've hinted at this when I wrote about moving to Uruguay, but this is a more widespread thing than you would realize.

It works like this (with lots of hand-waving because different countries have wildly different laws): you have residence permits, and work permits. You usually get the former with the latter, but not necessarily the other way around. If you have a work history of working remotely and can show a decent income, many countries will allow you to apply for a residence permit.


Despite having written on the topic of "how to become an expat" for years, I've not paid much attention to the remote working aspect of it. I've touched on the logistical problems of working remotely, but I'm kicking myself for not realizing that the practice of issuing residence permits for remote workers is more widespread than I realized. This blog post details one family's research into living in Europe with remote work, but it's short on practical details. I suspect part of the problem is one I've struggled with repeatedly: laws in this area are not well-publicized and change frequently.

After asking, I was pointed to this Spanish Consulate visa page which describes "Residence visa with Non-Lucrative purposes" (whatever the hell that means). It's apparently the visa process that allows you to live in Spain so long as you have sufficient income. It's complicated, takes about three months and, in the lovely words of the page: ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS MAY APPLY (their words and emphasis). One of the requirements is:

Proof/s that you have sufficient financial means for you (and your accompanying family) during the stay in Spain without the need to work translated into Spanish.

Ignoring the awful, awful grammar: what does "sufficient financial means" mean? Who the hell knows? According to the blog entry that tipped me off, Italy requires a €50K annual income and Spain is apparently less, but that's all I know.

Meanwhile, Forbes has an article about the best-paying remote jobs. I currently take contracts remotely, but I have a specialized background (mostly IT related). Medical transcriptionists need a bit of training, but not overly difficult. You won't get rich doing that, but with a salary between $30K (US) and $50K (€22K to €37K), you can earn enough to survive in most of Europe, so long as you steer clear of the biggest cities. Personally, I find the smaller towns more pleasant, anyway.

Anything IT related, writing and editing jobs, and even public relations people can work remotely. In fact, there are plenty of remote jobs available, with varying salary levels, If you target South America, Africa, Eastern Europe or many parts of Asia, you should easily be able to afford to live abroad. The hard part is navigating through the laws that get you a residence permit based on your remote income (in my experience, South America is the easiest for this, but I hear good things about parts of Asia).

Good luck and start looking for a new job! If you know anything about these types of residence permits, let me know.

Mailbag: A beginner's guide to moving to another country

Another mailbag post! A friend emailed me about someone about to lose her job and stated that she was interested in moving abroad, particularly Europe. Since she has no background, I decided to give her an overview of the process. I thought it might be useful to repeat this here. There's nothing in here that I've not written about before, but I thought a recap might be a good idea for new readers.

Public Domain Image

---

Hi Sally (not her real name),

I hope you're doing well and I'm sorry to hear about your current troubles.

[Redacted] mentioned you want to live abroad and he asked if I could give you some advice. I've lived in the US, Japan, the UK, the Netherlands (twice) and France. I've not only been doing this for a long time, but I've also spent years researching and writing a "how to become an expat" blog at overseas-exile.com. I've also started thinking about doing day seminars on the topic in the US. The good news: with enough determination, you can move abroad. The bad news: it takes work, sometimes hard work.

If you want to live abroad, it's hard to do, but there are several general routes (I assume you're not rolling in dough, so I'm leaving some options off of this. If you have a large pile of surplus money, there are investment routes you can take, but be careful, not all are legal):

1. Marriage/Civil Partnership
2. Citizenship
3. Work/residence permit or the equivalent

I assume option #1 is not open to you right now.

For option #2, citizenship, I would strongly recommend that you trace your family tree.

The reason for that is because many people don't know their family tree well and when they do research, they often find legal opportunities to move abroad that they were previously unaware of. For example, if you have an Italian ancestor dating from 1861

Duomo, Milan
Personal photo

(when Italy unified) or later, you may qualify for Italian citizenship. If you are of Jewish ancestry, many European countries have repatriation schemes for those of Jewish descent whose families were displaced in WWII.

There are other ancestry routes, but they're hard to find. The trick is to research your family tree and if you find any relatively recent ancestors from a foreign country, start focusing on that country's immigration laws (and don't rely on hearsay because these laws change frequently). Don't just start researching different country's laws at random (unless you have carefully targeted countries) because the laws tend to not be well documented and they change frequently. Plus, officials from various countries are often unaware of their country's laws, but a decent immigration lawyer (after you have a target country) can sometimes help.

So you've researched your ancestry and maybe you find that you could claim citizenship in [some economically depressed EU country] but think "but I don't want to move to [some economically depressed EU country]." That's OK. The great thing about having an EEA (European Economic Area) passport in one EEA country is that you can usually legally live and work in any EEA country. Fancy London? Another EU country's passport will probably get you there.

So do you family tree. ancestry.com is a good place to start.

However, let's assume the common case of not having anyone you can marry and not having a useful ancestor (dead ancestors are so rarely useful, the ingrates!). In that case, you're looking at the work permit/Blue Card route.

Before I explain those, it's helpful to understand immigration in general. This lets you reason better about your opportunities.

I live in Paris, France. Not only is Paris the number one tourist city on the planet, but France is the number one tourist country on the planet. As much as I would love for the word citizenship to go the way of the word slavery and see borders drop, it's not realistic. If France opened the floodgates, they'd see their social systems overwhelmed and they'd collapse (interestingly, the countries people are leaving might also collapse to due to what's called "brain drain", but that's another story).

But France does allow people to move there. The trick is to demonstrate that you will benefit the country more than you will cost the country. The best way to pull this trick off is to have a strong skill (and usually a degree) in a STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine). Those are very high value jobs (from an economic standpoint). A psychology degree, on the other hand, while certainly being a worthy degree, isn't a high economic value degree and typically doesn't get you anywhere. So, in short, you have to show that you provide a positive economic value that is in short supply. Doctors, engineers, and software developers are always in short supply. Sadly, project managers and hair dressers aren't (trivia: there was an interesting time when hair dresser was on the Australian skill shortage list and thus eligible for immigration).

If you think you might have skills that can get you a work

Kalahari Desert, Botswana
Photo by Winfried Bruenken

permit, start reading my five part series on how to get a work permit. That will give you a solid strategy
for improving your résumé/CV and finding and approaching employees.

Barring being highly skilled, you may wish to read the young person's guide to moving abroad. That explains multiple ways that someone with little money, education, and few internationally marketable skills can still find ways of moving abroad. (Note: having at least a Bachelor's Degree significantly increases your opportunities). One of the most popular routes is teaching English abroad, .

Oh, and if you're the entrepreneurial type, the Netherlands has a visa for you. The UK has an entrepreneur visa too.

Finally, start reading about the European Blue Card.

The Blue Card is Europe's attempt to create a unified immigration policy to attract skilled workers. Ireland, the UK and Denmark have opted out, but for the others, if you qualify, it's much easier to get to Europe. In fact, Germany's Blue Card implementation is so generous that they government assumes that if you have a job offer with a large enough salary (usually around €45K or higher), than you must be qualified and can waltz right in. You usually have to have at least a BA for this (they make some exceptions for IT, but many German foreigner's offices seem to have missed this part of the law and it's a headache). Once in Europe with a Blue Card, you usually have to stay in the country for two or three years and then you can live and work in other EU countries (except the ones who have opted out). So if you have a BA, start making contacts in Germany and see what you can swing!

I hope that helps and gives you a start on figuring out your options. Let me know how things go!

Good luck,
Ovid

Sixfold increase in Americans giving up their passports.

The ignorant view of renunciation
Image in public domain

Bloomberg has a gloomy article about a sixfold increase in the number of Americans giving up their passports. Unfortunately, it starts out with the following sentence:

Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship surged sixfold in the second quarter from a year earlier as the government prepares to introduce tougher asset-disclosure rules.

Expatriates giving up their nationality at U.S. embassies climbed to 1,131 in the three months through June from 189 in the year-earlier period, according to Federal Register figures published today. That brought the first-half total to 1,810 compared with 235 for the whole of 2008.

For those of us who following this topic closely, it's very frustrating reading this because it's not accurate. To be accurate, you would state that there's a sixfold increase in the number of Americans the Federal Register reported as having giving up their passports. We in the expat community have known for a long time that the Federal Register reporting is far lower than the actual numbers, but we've never known whether this is incompetence or a deliberate distortion of the data.

Heck, I reported over a year ago that far more Americans are giving up citizenship than reported, but it's hard to prove. However, after numerous FOIA requests from various people, much reporting of numbers that don't match the official tally, and the discovery of the FBI NICS index which gives a much better accounting of Americans who have given up their citizenship (because under US law, they can't own guns), we've finally started getting a better picture of what's going on and it may just be that the renunciation numbers being reported to the Federal Register are being quietly fixed to avoid the continual embarrassment, such as Swiss embassy renunciation figures alone suggesting that Switzerland had over half the reported renunciation figures worldwide, a figure that beggars belief.

However, from what I read on Bloomberg, Forbes, Reddit, and other sources, many Americans are saying "so what? It's such a small number." This shows a lack of knowledge about what's going on. For example, during my trip to Kiev, one American told me he tried to relinquish his US citizenship on the grounds that he took citizenship in another country. The US State Department denied him this because after he took that citizenship, he had to travel to the US and used his US passport. Using his US passport was considered grounds for denying his relinquishment. However, because the State Department hadn't yet approved his relinquishment, he was legally obligated to use his US passport. Now he's forced into the long, tiresome process of renouncing his citizenship formally (see the difference between relinquishment and renunciation). Thus, he's not yet counted as an ex-American.

Other ex-Americans are reporting that they're not showing up on any reports as having given up their citizenship, despite receiving their CLN (Certificate of Loss of Nationality).

On top of that, I've spoken to several Americans here in Europe who want to renounce, but are afraid to do so due to the heavy punitive damages the US often places on renunciants (and some Americans abroad simply can't afford the $450 renunciation fee or the exorbitant cost of getting their international taxes in order).

Then there are Americans like myself. I don't have plans to give up my citizenship, but I am painfully aware that there's a time in the future where I may not have any choice, due to financial considerations. Having expats like myself worried about their financial security due to US tax laws impacting us helps to turn an estimated six million Americans abroad from informal ambassadors abroad to walking advertisements about why you don't want American citizenship.

Another annoying aspect of that Bloomberg article is this misleading quote:

“With the looming deadline for Fatca, more and more U.S. citizens are becoming aware that they have U.S. tax reporting obligations,” said Matthew Ledvina, a U.S. tax lawyer at Anaford AG in Zurich. “Once aware, they decide to renounce their U.S. citizenship.”

While that may appear to be technically correct, it sounds like Americans are renouncing to avoid paying taxes. From my experience, this is generally not the case. Americans are renouncing due to the incredibly punitive nature of the US tax system vis-a-vis expats. For example, let's say you're trying to save for the downpayment for a home. You could well have over $10,000 in your bank account. Even if you've faithfully filed your taxes every year and paid all you owe, you could easily face five figure fines and possible criminal charges because you didn't know about FBAR reporting requirements. What's FBAR? That's the Foreign Bank Account Reporting act which was passed many years ago, but not well-advertised until a couple of years ago. Thus, many Americans are 100% in compliance with their taxes, but face huge penalties for not knowing about this law.

Or maybe you've been living overseas most of your professional life and you've been working for a non-US corporation which has no business in the US. If you have signing authority or significant shares in that corporation, under the new FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) law, you now have to file corporate financial reports with the IRS for this non-US company. I was rejected for one position here in Europe because the company in question didn't want the expense of preparing financial information for a country they don't do business in, but if I took that position and didn't report, I could be facing fines up to $50,000 and possible criminal charges.

I was also in Metz, France a few days ago and spoke with a lawyer from Luxembourg who told me that when he gets a potential US client, as a direct result of FATCA, he often turns them away, saying "I can't help you." With foreign banks now starting to turn away US clients, you have the problem of not even being able to have a bank account to pay your bills! In fact, many companies here pay employees via direct deposit; if you can't get a bank account, the company can't pay you.

Americans abroad giving up their citizenship aren't traitors. When I speak to them, they generally tell me they don't want to give up their citizenship, but they feel backed into a corner. Being denied bank accounts, jobs, or facing bankruptcy-inducing penalties for not filling out the correct paperwork (or making a mistake on said paperwork), is what's driving the renunciants I talk to. We still want to return to the US, visit our family and friends, perhaps even retire their one day, but then we face the harsh reality of US law and have to make a tough decision.

Bloomberg did US expats a disservice by not getting the real facts behind the renunciations.

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.