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Comment by gee_totes | Hacker News Reader

What happens under this law if you are already living in the US and renounce your citizenship for tax reasons and have no other country of which you are a resident? Do you get deported to NULL?

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You can't renounce your citizenship whilst in the US. You have to do it at an embassy.

On statelessness: Persons intending to renounce U.S. citizenship should be aware that, unless they already possess a foreign nationality, they may be rendered stateless and, thus, lack the protection of any government. They may also have difficulty traveling as they may not be entitled to a passport from any country. Even if they were not stateless, they would still be required to obtain a visa to travel to the United States, or show that they are eligible for admission pursuant to the terms of the Visa Waiver Pilot Program (VWPP). If found ineligible for a visa or the VWPP to come to the U.S., a renunciant, under certain circumstances, could be barred from entering the United States. Nonetheless, renunciation of U.S. citizenship may not prevent a foreign country from deporting that individual back to the United States in some non-citizen status.

http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html

You cannot renounce your citizenship while in the country. The process requires you leave the US, enter an embassy or consulate and declare your intention to renounce. File some paperwork and you're no longer a citizen.

The catch is you'll probably want to do this in a friendly country or one you're already a citizen of.

They are dozens of countries that will give you citizenship if you pay, like the US does(If you have money you become citizen).

Is there a list of these countries somewhere? The only country that I know of that sells citizenship was Sealand (they don't anymore, but they were offering passports as a fundraiser).

http://principality-of-sealand.eu/faq_e.html

Actually, the above website may not be from the REAL Sealand... long story.

At the moment there's only two countries left that formally and openly grant citizenship with zero years of required residency in exchange for cash: St. Kitts and the Commonwealth of Dominica. In the 1990s there were a lot more (Grenada, Belize, Marshall Islands, etc.). Montenegro used to do this too up until recently but they came under pressure from other European countries to stop. Austria is rumoured to do it under their "contributions to national interests clause" (the one that other countries usually use to naturalise soccer players) but the price tag is in the 7 or 8 US$ figure range.

http://ciu.gov.kn/

http://www.dominica.gov.dm/cms/index.php?q=node/678

https://www.henleyglobal.com/countries/austria/citizenship/

On the other hand, dozens of countries will give you a visa in exchange for an investment; there's nothing unusual about the US in that regard, contra what forgottenpasswrd tries to imply. In some cases the "investment" is just a purchase of government bonds; in other cases it means an actual business that is capital-intensive and generates good jobs for locals. After you get the visa, you still have to actually live there for some period of time and show evidence of integration (like speaking the language) to qualify for naturalisation. The amount of money and the period of time range from four or five figures and a couple of years (Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Dominican Republic) all the way up to seven figures and the better part of a decade (Hong Kong, Germany).

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