Love It or Leave It

Surely the most heart-wrenching human-interest story in the press recently was a cover article in Forbes magazine titled "The New Refugees." These miserable souls are not fleeing conventional forms of oppression, such as the famine, dictatorship, torture and murder that have caused millions to seek haven in the U.S. through the generations. These are rich folks who, according to Forbes, are giving up their American citizenship -- the very status boat people by the thousands are risking their lives for even today -- because (according to one quoted legal expert) they "can't pay the federal tax rate and live in the style they want."

Poor babies! To be sure, these are not exactly your classic "huddled masses." Whether they are "wretched refuse," though, is a different question.

As a "trend" story, "The New Refugees" is a bit of a stretch. It turns out that only 306 Americans gave up their citizenship last year. Somewhat desperately, Forbes characterizes the number of expatriates as enough to "practically fill a Boeing 747." But out of 260 million citizens, the number is pretty small.

Nevertheless, Forbes -- a conservative publication, ordinarily not averse to a bit of flag waving -- brings enormous sympathy to this tale of Americans abandoning their country. It seems that "victim chic," ordinarily decried as a left-wing phenomenon, knows no bounds of reason or ideology. These people, after all, are less like traditional refugees than they are like the Americans who went to Canada during the Vietnam War. They are fleeing the draft -- of their wallets, not their bodies. It's a smaller imposition, some might think. Those who fled in the 1960s were motivated, at best, by principled opposition to a government policy and, at worst, by a desire to save their own lives. The "new refugees" merely want to save money. And these financial draft evaders are not even barred completely from our shores. Under the rules, they are allowed to spend 120 days a year in the country they decline to support.

The "new refugees" aren't going to Canada. Nor are they going to Britain, France, Germany or Japan. These grown-up nations all have tax rates roughly equivalent to those in the U.S., or higher. Mostly the "new refugees" are going to island pseudo countries with names like St. Kitts and Nevis or Turks and Caicos. The U.S. says, "Give me your tired, your poor." These tax havens say the opposite. They are places of Third World poverty where the well-to-do, in exchange for some investment, are invited to shed the normal obligations of citizenship in the developed world.

One of those obligations is the defense of freedom. Forbes notes, without irony, that "the end of the cold war means wealthy Americans can live in many developing nations safely." How long would that be true if it weren't for the American defense structure, paid for by the American taxpayer? The Turks and Caicos Islands, freedom loving though they may be, are not exactly in the forefront of the protection of that freedom.