Formal Expatriations Spike Nearly 8 Fold Under Obama

Since Barack Obama took office, formal expatriations have spiked almost 8-fold, from a record low in 2008 to a record high in 2011. As part of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal government has been required to publish in the Federal Register the names of every US citizen who formally renounces his US citizenship. A count of the names on those lists reveals that in 2008, only 231 US citizens renounced their citizenship. But in 2011, the number of expatriates reached 1,782. But those are just the very few people who “formally” renounced their citizenship.

For every citizen who formally expatriates, many more citizens just drop out, becoming informal expatriates. In fact, this informal expatriation has become so common that those who take this route have developed their own term for it. They call themselves “PTs”. The term “PT “is a catch-all term that has a variety of similar meanings, including “Practically Transparent”, “Privacy Trained”, “Prior Thrall”, and “Permanent Tourist”. It is the nature of these definitions that tell us that PTs tend to be somewhat secretive. Therefore, it’s very difficult to accurately measure their numbers.

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