About 1,780 Americans living overseas gave up their U.S. citizenship last year, up from only 235 in 2008.
Many of the folks who turned in their U.S. passports were wealthy expatriates, many living in Switzerland, who don't like the blooming effort by the U.S. government to collect income taxes from our citizens, especially the ones who live with their money overseas.
I never knew any of these folks who have given up the rights of an American citizen. All of them were never going to be my friend. I hope they paid all of their taxes due before they handed over their passports.
I guess in some ways it's tough to be very rich, living overseas, away from whatever used to be "home"…….anyway, they're gone.
It happens that I think of these lines from Sir Walter Scott's "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" --
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand?
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