The Golden Door Swings Both Ways

                                                     

The Wall Street Journal reported last Wednesday that another 3,000 Americans have turned in their American passports and renounced their American citizenship.  The Journal further reports that this is a 30 percent increase over last year and represents a growing trend since 2009.  

The Journal wished to concentrate on the "wealth factor", the rich deserting the ever increasing taxes on the wealthy.  However, Numbers USA and other organizations cite the exodus of the middle class as well.  Departing citizens cited oppressive government and the growing government intrusion into their personal lives.  The Middle Class seemed particularly abused by higher local, state and federal taxes on the working man to pay for a growing dependent class and a corrupt hierarchy of government employees feeding unceasingly at the public trough.  

Why surrender citizenship?  America is the only major industrialized nation in the world that continues to tax citizens even if they choose to live elsewhere.  Being unable to escape the increasing tax burden the only alternative for these folks is to surrender their American citizenship.  Ironically, this seems to be the key reason for expatriating as most do not take up citizenship in their newly adopted country!

And there seems to be no particular age group who have opted to leave.  Seniors, citing the rise in health care premiums often flee to countries who offer good basic health care on a pay as you go basis.  They find the costs far more reasonable and drug costs that are often as much as 90 percent lower than drug costs in this country.

I found one personal testament that was particularly touching.  He cited the irony of growing democracies and expanded personal freedom breaking out around the world, even as America was rooting freedom out and destroying it with each oppressive government mandate.  He cited the Emma Lazarus poem at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty and said "sadly, we are learning that the golden door swings both ways and a lot of folks are heading OUT that door."  

My own personal standpoint on this issue has always been made quite clear..as the great Mexican invasion continues, and as explosive Latino and Black crime increases, the quality of life in America is sinking.  Our crumbling infrastructure cannot be addressed because nearly all tax revenue is being employed to feed the fifty percent of Americans who pay no taxes and take some form of government assistance, and feeding the Defense Department's need to fund trillion dollar foreign wars.

As far south as South America, as far East as Thailand and Singapore, these expatriate Americans are finding native students beating out American test scores by wide margins.  They are finding more civilized societies where they are safe in their home and in their newly adopted communities.

Though I'm saddened to see hard working, productive American citizens deserting their native country, I guess someone has to go to make room for those 30 to 50 million illegal Mexicans who are squatting here and refuse to leave until they have sucked the last drop of life from a rapidly crumbling American society.

Sad.  Damned Sad.