The following is an excerpt from an article by Rich Tucker on The Foundry. Read the full article here.

Americans have always enjoyed the privilege of living abroad without losing citizenship. Think Hemingway and Fitzgerald decamping to write in Europe after World War I, or Gen. MacArthur spending decades in Asia around World War II. Expatriates remain Americans, and have generally been welcomed back to our shores with open arms.

But today there are at least 3,000 fewer Americans than there ought to be. That’s how many people live overseas and voluntarily gave up their citizenship in 2013 alone. And they won’t be coming back—at least not as Americans.

Their decision to become foreigners is being driven, in many cases, by changes to domestic laws. The United States is one of only two countries that attempt to tax money citizens earn while working overseas (Eritrea is the other). And two laws aimed at bringing tax revenue back into the U.S.—the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR)—are actually driving Americans away.

The United States has always been the exceptional nation, the land of opportunity, even if some Americans chose to pursue opportunities abroad. We’ve been able to lure the best of the best from all around the world to become Americans and help build our economy. However, if the federal government continues to pile on burdensome regulations, that may not always be the case.

You can read the rest of the article here.

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

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