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bob dryfuss still smells a 'wi...,
2004-11-04 11:52:03
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friday rush blogging...,
2004-11-05 10:57:52
if you don't like it leave it:
as a longtime advocate of the free movement of labor it has pissed me off for just as long a time how hard it is to leave, as has been requested by neighborly conservative callers now and then:
Given how much the United States as a nation professes to value freedom, your freedom to opt out of the nation itself is surprisingly limited. ... The most serious barrier to renouncing your citizenship is that the State Department, which oversees expatriation, is reluctant to allow citizens to go “stateless.” Before allowing expatriation, the department will want you to have obtained citizenship or legal asylum in another country—usually a complicated and expensive process, if it can be done at all. Would-be renunciants must also prove that they do not intend to live in the United States afterward. Furthermore, you cannot renounce inside U.S. borders; the declaration must be made at a consul’s office abroad.
...despite the generous terms of NAFTA, our neighbors to the north and south are, like us, far more interested in the flow of money than of persons. Canada, in particular, is no longer a paradise awaiting American dissidents: whereas in 1970 roughly 20,000 Americans became permanent residents of Canada, that number has dropped over the last decade to an average of just about 5,000. Today it takes an average of twenty-five months to be accepted as a permanent resident, and this is only the first step in what is likely to be a five-year process of becoming a citizen.
Etc. etc. Maybe it's an issue we can all find some common ground on. Then again there's always leaving by an alternative route, the The Judeo-Christian Republic of America and the United States of Canada option. Or you can wrestle with that other question, why are democrats so unpopular.
:: posted by buermann @ 2004-11-04 12:41:01 CST |
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