For example, they give Malaysia 50, the highest score while giving 30 to France. Don't get me wrong, I love that country but it has rigged elections, no real freedom of press (Malaysia Kini an opposition website was censored during some of the elections by blocking their DNS), politicians from the opposition are imprisoned on spurious charges (Anwar for example) and corruption is endemic.
Japan which also has 50 is not a shining example of Press freedom, it's a country where innocent until proven guilty doesn't really hold (more than 99% conviction rate) and where police can detain someone for 3 weeks without charges being filled.
That said, I agree that France doesn't deserve the top score either due to new surveillance laws following terrorist attacks and due to the state of their prisons compared to the rest of EU but they shouldn't be ranked lower in Freedom than Japan and Malaysia.
Here's the text of how they describe how they calculate the Freedom Index they use for their ranking:
The ability of citizens to live freely is responsible for 10% of each country’s total
ranking. We believe that freedom of speech and of the press is a good thing, and
imposing laws on non-resident citizens is generally a bad idea. This index relied on
data regarding mandatory military service, government spying programs,
incarceration rate, and laws targeting non-resident citizens (such as the United
States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), as well as the World Press Freedom Index
and Economic Freedom Index to determine how free citizens of each country are,
particularly non-resident citizens. Each country was assigned a score from 10 to 50
based on our proprietary blend of these factors, with 10 being the least free and 50
being the most free.
I thought this particular freedom index only related to travel, e.g whether coming and going is easy, whether you are taxed for income earned abroad and so on?
They have multiple factor in their ranking. One of them is the freedom index which is described as:
The ability of citizens to live freely is responsible for 10% of each country’s total
ranking. We believe that freedom of speech and of the press is a good thing, and
imposing laws on non-resident citizens is generally a bad idea. This index relied on
data regarding mandatory military service, government spying programs,
incarceration rate, and laws targeting non-resident citizens (such as the United
States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), as well as the World Press Freedom Index
and Economic Freedom Index to determine how free citizens of each country are,
particularly non-resident citizens. Each country was assigned a score from 10 to 50
based on our proprietary blend of these factors, with 10 being the least free and 50
being the most free.
"The U.S., by comparison, taxes citizens’ income no matter where it’s earned."
This is a common statement I see pretty often on the internet, often in the context of bashing the US. However, there's a big asterisk there if you look the rules up. If you're not making over 6 figures, you still have to file I believe, but you don't pay taxes. So the vast majority of Americans abroad are not paying taxes back to the US ($100800 / year is the cut off by the looks of it)[1].
I'm not saying it isn't annoying still to file with the IRS or there aren't people who are over the threshold getting burned, I just feel it's often a glossed over detail that puts the US in an unnecessarily harsh light, considering, again, most people won't be penalized financially here.
This is true but the situation is substantially more complex than you suggest, including things like PFIC treatment of retirement plans in the foreign country (where you need to pay unrealised capital gains every year), differing treatment on capital gains of housing, Affordable Care Act penalties if you're in the US more than 30 days. Not to mention any use of the foreign tax credit means you need to calculate AMT.
Not to mention none of paperwork you need is nicely collected and presented in US Dollars for you. God forbid you live someplace like Australia that uses a July-June tax year.
I have to file my US taxes every year and the "cost" is usually $400 to $800 to hire a tax preparer who knows what they are doing and takes a fair amount of my time every year.
Thanks for the first hand account. I'm not from the US and was just mainly pointing out that a lot of details are clearly left out on news site articles when they try to sensationalize this stuff.
I guess at the end of the day the entire situation is very complicated and can't be summed up in a small article. I still don't think it's very accurate how they're portraying it though, nonetheless. The article doesn't mention your situation really at all, it just makes a generalization and moves on.
I think you pay US taxes only on 108K, plus taxes on whatever tax jurisdiction you're in. Which is kind of a bummer.
For the first 108K, AFAIK, you just pay taxes to wherever you earned the money. If you made 100k a year selling widgets from Columbia, you're only subject to Columbian income tax.
I don't think there's any such thing as a free lunch - you'll have to pay for one set of taxes no matter what. The US double taxes over 108k.
However, you can choose to take the foreign tax credit on any amount of foreign income which has not been excluded under the foreign earned income exclusion or the foreign housing exclusion.
So it isn't a double tax, the US credits the foreign tax payments.
Thanks for the link. I looked it over but I am a bit confused on 108K figure now. Is the 108K additional credit you can take whether a local exclusion has been taken or not? Is that correct?
It is an annoying burden though. My wife is American and doesn't earn anything like that amounts, but really hates this thing. You easily end up in a situation where you didn't know you were supposed to file and you get get worked up because in typical American fashion these forms are filled with dire warning and threats of harsh punishment for making mistakes.
That is what I don't like about the US. They are not very accepting towards honest mistakes. The legal system frequently disregards intent when ruling and punishment for even small infractions can be quite severe in the US.
It is not a good thing when citizens are frequently genuinely afraid of their own country.
>"They are not very accepting towards honest mistakes. The legal system frequently disregards intent when ruling and punishment for even small infractions can be quite severe in the US."
Can you give examples of people being "severely punished" for a minor infraction? I am curious to hear this since as you say it happens so frequently.
The U.S is not perfect by any means but it is certainly not a place that is vengeful towards its citizens. Your comments just read like America bashing.
How do you define "severely punished"? A quick Google search will turn up folks impacted by this taxation law in very severe ways. Sure, not death penalty severe, but being fined huge fines is severely punished to me.
The largest penalties the IRS levies are for failure to file which is 25% but there is absolutely no reason to incur this as you can always file for an extension, it can be done online. Penalties are generally you pay the difference and interest on that difference. The IRS doesn't make up arbitrary fines for people. The penalties are well documented and published.
Yes the tax code is absurdly complex but the overwhelming majority of people in the US have no trouble with the IRS. The majority of people file a 1040[1] and get a small refund every year.
Further the IRS is more than willing to work with people to resolve issues and will create an installment plan or payment schedule that will work for people's finances even if it takes years. There is no "pay this on the spot" or we will throw you in jail. That simply doesn't exist. Tax evasion on the other hand is something entirely different as that constitutes criminality in the eyes of the IRS.
> The legal system frequently disregards intent when ruling and punishment for even small infractions can be quite severe in the US.
Is this actually true? I'd like to learn more about if it is. My personal experience has been that all of my honest small mistakes were accepted as honest mistakes, occasionally with a small fine.
The US incarceration rate was at 750/100k about 5 years ago, which is 1% of the adult population, and significantly higher than everywhere else on the planet. South Africa during the height of apartheid was 'only' 540. The rest of the western world is sub-200/100k, with most of them at 150 or lower. The US is more than five times more imprison-ey than pretty much any of its contemporaries, and ten times more than select examples like Norway or Germany.
Unless Americans are ridiculously more criminal-minded than other humans, the US is doling out more punishment than others for the same misdeeds.
The US has significantly more misdeeds, e.g. ~5 times as many homicides as most West European nations. This is a result of very many things of course.
But U.S. is improving, though; 25 years ago the difference was more like 10 times. Some countries in Europe (like Sweden) have actually stopped improving, so eventually the U.S. will catch up. Then it will have less homicides, which is likely to also bring less incarceration.
Sometimes I think that the European style is not necessarily better. E.g. yesterday I read about two cases in the local newspaper crime news section. There was 5.5 years prison sentence given to a hamburger restaurant owner for tax evasion done over the course of 6 months, and 90 hours of community service plus conditional imprisonment for an aggravated child molestation over a period of 7 years. This ratio doesn't look right to me, but it's what we do to get the low incarceration rate.
25 years ago was when the US incarceration rate was ballooning. The 80s and 90s were the start of a massive surge in incarceration[1], up from the baseline. The idea that the US is improving and other nations have 'stopped' is only because the US departed so significantly from the pack in the first place. Similarly, while the US has a ridiculously high homicide rate, most of the people in prison are not murderers.
The way you're phrasing it is like saying "The A+ student has stopped improving, whereas the failing student is still failing but improving[2]. One day he'll catch up to the A+ student"
As for the odd sentences you mention, you can cherrypick weird sentences in any system. In Texas, for example, there was a black 14-year-old who punched some and they died, and he got ten years for it. There was a wealthy white 16-year-old whose reckless driving killed four and injured seven, and he got no jail time for it. The defense arguments included 'he never learned to say sorry because he was brought up wealthy - you sent money instead of saying sorry'. The kicker about these two sentences? They were issued by the same judge [3]. In California, another serious case ended in a significantly reduced sentence because the judge thought that the defendant's wealthy upbringing meant he wouldn't be able to 'survive prison as well'. And New York is replete with stories of people being incarcerated for years without a trial [4]. Then there's the famous 'pizza-slice' felony, where three-strikes laws sent a man to prison for life for stealing a slice of pizza [5].
The point here is that you can find all sorts of oddities in sentencing - what really matters on a national scale is the aggregate. You mention the sentence for that single child molester - is that happening for a large number of such cases?
The US system is ridiculously fucked up, and it has to improve a lot before it can join its contemporaries. Given the general American public's bloodlust towards punishment, it ain't gonna happen.
edit: sorry for the waffle, I just find the US incarceration system both fascinatingly and horrifyingly out-of-the-ordinary.
> The idea that the US is improving and other nations have 'stopped'
When mentioning improvement, I was referring to homicide and violent crime, not incarceration. In crime statistics, the U.S. improvement is clearly visible. U.S. was for a long time oscillating somewhere around 10 homicides per 100 000 pop per year, the peak was in 1991, and after that it started to do gown and is now around 4.
Incarceration rate in the U.S. is somewhat following this. It increased from 1970 until about 2007, and has since then turned slightly downwards (see figure 5)
No this isn't true. I was a CPA focusing in Tax before transitioning to the tech world. I couldn't count the number of IRS notices I have had to address and respond to for my clients over the years. It's a real simple process. You write a letter addressing the IRS notice that was sent to the client explaining the situation along with what you have done to remedy the situation (here is the tax I owe along with penalty and interest and/or here is why you are wrong). That's it. Issue solved and problem resolved.
Now if you are suspected of tax fraud, that's a whole other ball game but that doesn't come about from small honest mistakes.
>You write a letter addressing the IRS notice that was sent to the client explaining the situation along with what you have done to remedy the situation (here is the tax I owe along with penalty and interest and/or here is why you are wrong). That's it. Issue solved and problem resolved.
That's great if you actually made a mistake. What if you didn't?
My wife got a notice for her 2013 tax form. They challenged her education credits and were saying we owe taxes + interest + penalty. Respond within 30 days or pay up.
I called them up and asked what they wanted for proof. They weren't accepting the university's 1099 form (or whatever it is), because they said all it shows is the amount she was billed, not the amount she paid.
Umm.. OK. What if I show bank statements that show payments to the university that match the timeframe and amount?
"Sure!"
Reasonable people, I thought.
So we hunted down 3 year old bank statements and sent it to them.
Another letter: They don't accept the statements. "Why?" I asked. "Well, all it shows is you made payments. We need proof these were for education purposes and not, say, parking fines."
"But you said last time it'll be OK!" Their response was the formal equivalent of "Whatever, we don't care"
So I contacted the university. They said "Just mail them the 1099!" Had to explain that it didn't work. University said it's the first time they've heard it not working. So they dug up the old billing statements that itemized the charges.
In reality, it wasn't this short. We had about twice as many back and forths with the IRS as I indicated above. The process took 6 months.
Yeah, they try to put the fear of God into you at the outset, but the IRS is actually pretty lenient as long as they think you're acting in good faith.
You must continue to file, claiming a foreign tax credit. Then there's the double-taxation issue, in that unless the country you're living in has a tax treaty with the US, any income over 100,000 has to have taxes paid in full to both countries, and there aren't that many tax treaties.
Then you have to file FBARs with FinCEN because likely you have a bank account with more than $10,000 in it, subject to forfeiture of 50% of the balance if you don't.
Then there's FATCA which is onerous enough that in many countries, banks will not do business with US persons in the first place, which will poses a challenge.
Then there's the fact foreign brokerages cannot have accounts for the benefit of US persons unless they're regulated by the SEC.
Then if you own a business abroad that you're the sole proprietor of you may well have a controlled foreign corporation (IRS 4.61.7, form 5471), have fun.
That's how it works if the country you're in has a no-double-taxation treaty with the US, and what's included/how it's calculated depends on how the treaty works. Many do not. [1]
If you live in a country without a tax treaty, like the Bahamas for instance, you must pay both taxes separately with no offsets/credits. [2] IANATA though so always worth double-checking with this kind of money on the line. My experience with this is moving to the US from Canada, so I dealt with both tax treaty income and dual-status returns.
In the top-right corner of every US tax form, there is an OMB control number. It stands for estimated annual burden imposed on the public. The estimated burden consists of time spent multiplied by implied hourly cost. These estimates may appear innocent but they actually have a direct impact on the government, such as agency head count and budgets. The estimate for Form 1040 is as follows:
> [0] The average burden for taxpayers filing Form 1040 is about 15 hours and $280
If I add up my time as well as the tax accountant's time and fees to file taxes, this is quite underestimated. However, this is anecdotal evidence. What would be great is to have two fields on these forms where tax payers can enter the actual amount of time and expenses required to complete them, as part of the feedback. The agencies can then use the median to update their assumptions and act accordingly.
An American couple I know, ordinary people with ordinary lives and nothing special level of income, who live in Canada pay ~$5000 in legal fees every year to do their non-resident U.S. tax return and stay in compliance with U.S. law. They pay zero U.S. tax. But saying that filing the U.S. tax is merely "annoying" doesn't cut it. I would say $5000 per year can be described as being penalized.
Yes that does not sound right. My wife is a US citizen, we live in the UK, I prepare her US tax returns every year myself. It takes about a Saturday afternoon every year and it costs me $0. It's rather complicated, but not paying-someone-else-five-thousand-dollars-every-year-to-do-it complicated. Your friends' tax advisor is taking advantage of them.
1) Their income level is low enough that this is legitimately the case. If so, they can save $4900 per year by switching from paying 'legal fees' to buying a copy of 'Turbo Tax Deluxe'.
OR
2) They (legally) ought to be paying some US taxes, but they're paying fees to someone to help them evade taxes. If so, then perhaps it's worth $5000 per year to them.
But perhaps they'd rather pay $5000 than spend a day with Turbo Tax? If so, then that's their choice.
I very much doubt that Turbo Tax Deluxe can do dual-country U.S./Canadian tax returns and take care of nuances of cross border tax issues (how U.S. pension/401K/IRA is treated under Canadian law, how a Canadian RRSP or tax free savings account is treated under U.S. law) and special reporting requirements for non-resident U.S. citizens.
Why would you do that? Maybe it's a weird question and it's coming from someone who doesn't see upside to having a US passport in the first place, but why keep it if it's that painful?
There's a renunciation fee, plus a renunciation tax that requires you to pay the IRS taxes equal to the tax burden due if you'd disposed of all of your US possessions on the date of disposition.
In addition, they will not allow you to renounce if it would otherwise leave you stateless.
That's incorrect and misleading. There are two things here: US law, and what the State Department does, which are sometimes contradictory. Current US law says citizens can renounce citizenship regardless of tax obligations, although it does not remove these obligations - the IRS could still take steps to get their money back. In practice, the State Department slows down or blocks people renouncing citizenship for all kinds of reasons (tax reasons, they may be under duress, age, lack of second passport, etc etc.) This does not change the law, and ultimately if you're wealthy and persistent enough to go through the enormously complex procedure of renouncing citizenship, you will be able to get it renounced despite tax obligations.
Once that happens (rich person is no longer a citizen & owes taxes) they'll face many consequences, and the two largest are 1) the IRS will take steps to get their money and 2) they will be barred from entering the US if their renunciation was for tax purposes. Note that in 2) the Attorney General must state that your renunciation was for tax purposes, so if the AG is busy with other things, you're not high-profile enough, or nobody cares, you will probably be able to return to the US.
In reality, of course, things are a bit more complex: the State Department officers are usually unfamiliar with renouncing citizenship and mess up with one or more steps. Some people are never put on a list of renunciants and some do not have their US passport taken away or cancelled. Even some high-profile renunciants have not been put on the list - or were not put on the list until people complained.
If anyone wants to read more, this [0] is mostly factual and pretty well researched.
I am not a lawyer, I am not a renunciant (and never will be), and if you make any decisions about renouncing your citizenship based on this comment you are insane.
Sidenote: renouncing citizenship is not a right everywhere (many countries don't allow it.)
Banks and brokers can't hold/manage/transact securities (stocks and bonds) for a US taxpayer because of an SEC -- unless they are SEC regulated, which almost no one outside the US is. Therefore, us taxpayers are also much less profitable for them even if the FATCA requirements are all satisfied.
I've not had that issue. The worst i dealt with was that one bank wanted paperwork from my bank in the US, which had been closed before moving (around 9 months living with only cash). The other bank didn't act like it was an issue.
Also, you get Foreign Tax Credit for income tax paid abroad, which means that even if you earn more than the Foreign Income Exclusion Threshold ($100,800 in 2015) in practice you will only pay the IRS any income tax if you live in a country where the income tax rates are lower than the US federal income tax rates, which is not common (although state income taxes sometimes make this a bit more complicated).
In practice this means that US persons living abroad typically only pay US income tax if they make decent money and the local taxes are lower than those in the US and even then they only pay the difference.
You still need to file your tax returns every year though.
> if you live in a country where the income tax rates are lower than the US federal income tax rates, which is not common (although state income taxes sometimes make this a bit more complicated).
That only applies to a subset of countries that the US has an agreement with.
The situation is way more complicated than what can be discussed in a HN comment. When it comes to things like social security taxes, the taxation of US-sourced income etc., double taxation treaties can help a lot, but generally speaking no tax treaty is required to claim foreign tax credit.
1. I would assume it's still annoying to file. I'm Belgian, and if I were to move abroad, I would have to file nothing with the Belgian authorities.
Heck, I have filled out US withholding tax forms in the past, and they suck.
2. If you do make more than +- the $100,000, you do obviously end up paying significantly more. There's no clean and reasonable way to exit for (wealthy) americans, if you would want to.
3. I think people should, in general, be able to move away from their home country if they want to without too much additional burdens. Definitely not the case for americans.
The problem is that compliance is complex and enforcement random. Currency fluctuations can change your circumstances overnights.
Also lots of catch-22 situations. People who are American by virtue of birth can but never live here can get into trouble when they coke to the attention of the tax authorities. Renunciation is also difficult and creates other issues.
I don't believe so, my last sentence mentions I acknowledge filing forms to a different country is annoying and an additional burden. It's certainly not the US only who penalizes people for not filing legally required tax forms on time.
freddie_mercury bellow touches most of it, and there are other issues: a friend of mine who lives abroad but maintains a mailing address in the us, has a yearly dance taking hours of calls, faxes and writing letters to explain that he does not need to file state taxes and that the state should not, in fact, put a lien on his assets.
Also, the filing requirements (fbar and fatca in addition to a lot of stuff on the "regular" form) are insanely onerous. The tax code essentially assumes that any financial activity a US taxpayer does outside the US (even if that's where they reside) is done with the intention of tax evasion.
When FBAR was created, it covered a few hundred to a few thousand presumed evaders. Now it covers millions to ten of millions with the same presumption of evasion.
Naturally European countries will be the most open; the point of the EU is to provide a federalized government and reduce divisions.
It's not unlike the federalized state created by the American colonies in the 18th century: no taxes on inter-state trade, no inter-state immigration restrictions, standard docs, etc.
The values in the original PDF don't really add up [1]. It doesn't really change much, but it's still weird. If you apply the formula in the PDF to the listed values, they're all 1-5 points off:
Each country’s value in each category is given the indicated
weighting to achieve a country’s total score using the formula
((Visa Free Travel x 0.5) +
(Taxation x 0.3) +
(Perception x 0.1) +
(Dual Citizenship x 0.1) +
(Overall Freedom x 0.1)).
What's the "most desirable passport" depends on how many want to get citizenship to the country issuing it (which for the US is quite a lot), not on how other countries receive it's owners.
> how many want to get citizenship to the country issuing it (which for the US is quite a lot)
You're right that for the US it's a lot, though in my experience that's just because Hollywood is the best marketing agency on the planet, not because people make a well-reasoned decision on where to live.
I spent two years all over Latin America, and have now been in West Africa for 6 months. I meet people every single day that say they want to live in America. When I ask why, they say "because life is perfect there. Everyone has lots of money. Life is easy. There is no disease. There is no poverty. Everyone has lots of food. Everyone has a huge house with a beach view." etc.
When I explain that there are homeless people, people that lose their jobs, and people who struggle to make ends meet while working huge hours, people are completely disbelieving. They think I'm lying, because the TV told them otherwise, and of course people believe the TV more than some random guy.
When I suggest there are tons of other great countries (Australia, Canada, Scandinavian countries, etc.) they could live, they just shrug and say "I want America".
Hollywood has done a very good job of marketing America, but like all marketing, a lot of it is smoke and mirrors.
>You're right that for the US it's a lot, though in my experience that's just because Hollywood is the best marketing agency on the planet, not because people make a well-reasoned decision on where to live.
Well, that's one reason.
Another reason is plain business opportunities, and an (often misinformed, depending on the industry) idea that it's easy to make it big, money-wise in America. In some fields, of course, this is truer than others.
Of course Americans also overestimate the degree to which other people in the world want to get into America -- judging from pre-WWII immigration from rural Europe (which most of it was), or from modern-day immigration for developing countries.
People from already developed countries (e.g. western Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, etc.) don't particularly care.
I remember when the now wife (from a South American country) came to visit the UK when I was living in a city in the north. She was shocked "wow, you have poor areas and poor people too".
She literally had the idea, the UK was all quaint little villages with roads made of gold populated by Hugh Grant types.
I was saying there are homeless people in London, and he refused to believe me. After a lot of talking around, he said.. "oh, yeah, but they're black, aren't they".
He refused to believe there are white homeless people in London.
That's correct. What this ranking is about is "world's most valuable passport for an individual who wishes to live and work in multiple countries around the world".
Still a valuable ranking, but it's a very specific one for a very specific type of person.
Traveling in Vietnam, I met a woman with three passports. She sounded English, considered herself Dutch, but traveled on her US passport. Why? Because when you get into trouble in a foreign country, the US consulates like to flex their muscle, whereas most others, UK included, tend to just say "well, that was stupid of you".
They don't seem to have taken that kind of thing into account in their rankings.
I travel a lot and 'only' have two passports (Dutch/American.) I usually travel on my Dutch one because of visa restrictions, and I doubt using my Dutch one would at all prevent the US consulates from helping me.
That said, I get your point - it can be nice to know "if I get into serious trouble, the US will probably work hard to get me home safe". That's not to say the Netherlands won't, and I admire the foreign policy positions of the Netherlands, but ultimately "annoy the US" is a lot scarier than "annoy the Netherlands", and it's something valuable to keep in mind.
The US has a well-known policy of not paying ransom for kidnapped citizens abroad, and apparently doesn't even allow families to pay ransom [1]. Other governments huff and puff about it (nobody wants to encourage terrorist kidnappings), but by and large tend to bail out their citizens.
Furthermore, if you get in trouble with terrorists, I think the US passport is probably among the worst to have.
With law enforcement, I'm not sure. But, if you get in trouble with law enforcement in Iran or China or Vietnam, you think they'd be more inclined to be helpful to US citizens?
Either way, one would have to look at statistics and detail to make an informed decision, but at first approximation I think she'd be better off traveling on her Dutch passport on that score.
Interestingly, Portugal (13 on the list) would jump to number 1 (with a score of 115) if they factored in the NHR scheme which gives new residents a 10 year tax break on foreign source income (though admittedly there are some strings attached to this - more info here: http://info.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt/NR/rdonlyres/D0C80C76-3...).
They don't seem to have taken into account the propensity of certain governments (mostly the US and UK) to undertake extreme measures to get their citizens out of trouble in foreign countries, up to and including mass evacuations and clandestine military operations. That's a feature Luxembourg doesn't offer.
Are there any examples of this? Where Americans got rescued but people of another country were left behind? I only have vague recollections of articles of people complaining of the massive bills the US charges for rescue operations, and that Anthony Bourdain Beirut episode where the Americans were some of the last out, after such military powerhouses such as Sweden.
Wouldn't a country like Luxembourg have an agreement with an ally? You have countries where the US has no diplomatic presence - e.g. the US doesn't have an embassy in North Korea, and Americans have to use the Swedish embassy if they need protection.
One example would be the tepid responses of most governments to having ships flying their flag hijacked in the Gulf of Aden. The first time a US-flagged ship was hijacked, well, the result became a Tom Hanks movie because the US government responded with overwhelming military force.
Pretty much any instance where the military has been sent in to rescue a country's nationals abroad is limited to the countries that have that kind of military capability, the ability to deploy it rapidly and the willingness to use it. Examples:
Is this to say that the US or UK will always rescue its citizens abroad? No. But there are types of rescues that only the US, UK, France, and maybe Russia are capable of mounting.
>the propensity of certain governments (mostly the US and UK) to undertake extreme measures to get their citizens out of trouble in foreign countries
In Hollywood movies. In real life, from a lot of accounts I've read over the years, the local embassies/consulate/etc are not much help and not very eager to help either...
During the collapse of the communist regime in Albania, the US airforce was airlifting both US and UK citizens (and may be others, I only know about those two for certain) out of the country by helicopter. I know a British family of missionaries that were based out of Tirana who were evacuated that way.
I'm sure US citizens who have been trapped in Yemen for years without any assistance from their government will beg to differ.
The USG's propensity to help its own citizens abroad is a function of local power politics and the ability of the petitioner to create waves in Washington. Tread carefully before getting into trouble abroad.
Yes they do. In small countries the situation is even more personal and usually the PM himself is involved every time a citizen is caught behind enemy lines.
Happened quite a lot when the US started messing around with Gaddafi. Lots of Europeans working there were very reluctant to leave and then they returned there immediately after and had to be rescued again.
Do many small countries have the ability to project power like that in the first place? It's not the will to do it that is a problem - it's the infrastructure to generate a suitable force and put it on the ground that requires a very long tail of people, equipment and money on permanent standby, and of course you also need the expertise and experience to do it.
If you're a citizen of somewhere like Luxembourg they just don't have the capability to reach across the world into somewhere like Syria and rescue you like the US or UK would attempt to.
I believe most of these situations get resolved diplomatically. That doesn't work with IS, but the vast majority of cases are criminal rather than terrorists, or the result of general instability. A country like Luxembourg can usually find someone who has their money in their banks and is in a position to resolve the situation. There's also quite a lot of European solidarity in such cases.
Mass evacuations usually get several governments involved and they all contribute proportionally, or France sends a few planes and basks in the glory.
Regarding military operations to solve such situations it seems to me as if it's a matter not just of capability but of willingness as well. Europeans tend to think 50 cents to the foreign ministry is a better investment than $1 to the military, and that approach carries over in crisis. Empirically, my impression is that military action has about a 33/33/33% rate of success/dead hostages/"we just scared a grandma and couldn't find any hostages". Diplomacy has a higher success rate but it can take years. That's the sort of trade-off I don't envy politicians for.
Watching episodes 3, 4 & 5 of Captive on Netflix may disabuse you if that notion. Sure, if you end up in a situation that's politically advantageous to get you out of, and/or your family has good connections or can market your case well, you may get some state assistance. But it's far from a sure thing.
The US has a well-known policy of not paying ransom for kidnapped citizens abroad, and apparently doesn't even allow families to pay ransom [1]. Other governments huff and puff about it (nobody wants to encourage terrorist kidnappings), but by and large tend to bail out their citizens.
Furthermore, if you get in trouble with terrorists, I think the US passport is probably among the worst to have.
It would be very interesting to get some hard facts on this from international insurers or so that deal with these things. It's unclear to me whether that eigenvector's (fairly prevalent) opinion holds water outside Hollywood movies.
One of the odd upsides to being Northern Irish is that everybody here gets both a British and an Irish passport if they want one.
With the Irish passport, you will have an easier time getting into and travelling between many countries, but if things go south, the UK passport may help in getting out of the Country.
This will become more prominent after Brexit, as Northern Irish citizens will still be able to move and work freely throughout the EU with their Irish passport, whilst retaining the benefits of their British one (unless a United Ireland happens).
That cuts many ways. The US and the UK has also been rather quick to ditch your citizenship and drone their own citizens to death abroad. Doesn't make their citizenship very dependable. Also with an American or UK passport you are more likely a target by baddies, and should there be a hostage situation you have the problem that the US typically don't negotiate.
If being a US citizen was such an advantage, Americans wouldn't be traveling the world with Canadian flags sown onto their backpacks.
To the title: not so, and not because I disagree with the sentiment, but because desirable has neither a comparative nor a superlative. So I parse it as not desirable at all, which the article sure won't claim. (but I aint gonna read it; too busy arguing semantics)
Only 10 points for dual citizenship for the Netherlands? Okay, it is not allowed by law, with exceptions, but when about 10% of your population holds dual passports, you could say it isn't enforced.
Ten percent of the Netherlands holds dual passports? That sounded high to me (dual Dutch-American citizen) so I looked it up, figured I'd post the stats I found:
The Dutch population is 17.1MM, there are 1.3MM people with dual Dutch nationality [0]. The majority are Moroccan (321k) and Turkish (312k) people who acquired both Dutch and Turkish/Moroccan citizenship upon birth. Another 270k or so are EU citizens, plus a handful of Asians. Depending on the country, between 30-70% of people will have a passport, so my estimate is that 60% of dual citizens in this case will have two passports (may be lower as Turkish citizens can enter Turkey on another passport.)
If 80% of dual citizens have both passports, then 6% of Dutch citizens own two passports; if 60% of dual citizens have both passports then 4% of Dutch citizens own two passports.
Also worth noting there can be some very strange situations here - for example I (a Dutch/US citizen) moved from the US and lived in the Netherlands for almost a year before acquiring a Dutch passport.
That wouldn't be that hard, really. Norway doesn't allow it... but there are exceptions.
Currently, many folks from the US don't have to give up their American citizenship because the fee is considered a burden if it is over 4% of income (2% if one has children). Some countries find it treasonous to get drop their citizenship, and some just refuse to do things or take so long the regulation is a burden.
The main downside of Brexit, practically speaking, is that you can no longer randomly move to an EU country and get a job (I'm very much pro-remain). The ranking seems to only weight visa-free travel, which will almost certainly remain after we leave the EU. We would probably lose out in the perception score, but I suspect that's more "Are lots of terrorists from your country?" than "Boo, you left the EU".
The exceptions that people are most likely to encounter are Russia and China. The remaining countries are largely in unstable parts of Africa and the Middle East. The differences between the top countries is mostly statistical noise. Oddly enough you can travel to Mongolia without a visa if you're a German citizen, but not if you're British. Germany also gets visa-free access to Iran, which the UK doesn't.
The title should be "The Most Desirable Passports on Earth Don’t Include America’s", or if you must "The Most Desirable Passports on Earth Don’t Include America’s Passport". Visa doesn't make sense here.
I know many people in tech from non-US countries who went through a lot of trouble to get hired on H1B visas. The power of the US passport (for engineers) is the ability to work legally in the US.
For example, they give Malaysia 50, the highest score while giving 30 to France. Don't get me wrong, I love that country but it has rigged elections, no real freedom of press (Malaysia Kini an opposition website was censored during some of the elections by blocking their DNS), politicians from the opposition are imprisoned on spurious charges (Anwar for example) and corruption is endemic.
Japan which also has 50 is not a shining example of Press freedom, it's a country where innocent until proven guilty doesn't really hold (more than 99% conviction rate) and where police can detain someone for 3 weeks without charges being filled.
That said, I agree that France doesn't deserve the top score either due to new surveillance laws following terrorist attacks and due to the state of their prisons compared to the rest of EU but they shouldn't be ranked lower in Freedom than Japan and Malaysia.
Here's the text of how they describe how they calculate the Freedom Index they use for their ranking: