Three Exiles

We were three Exiles: my husband, former colleague and friend and me, sitting in a Geneva Indian restaurant. 

We all said that we would be afraid to go back to the United States, to risk going through American customs. We've had friends and business associates detained.

I suspect the three of us are more up-to-date about current American problems than many Americans living in the United States.

We each moved to Switzerland for different reasons and took the nationality to be full voting citizens. 

On 9/11 I checked the news mid afternoon as always. I ran to my colleague's office. We couldn't get updates from any American news source on the internet. He tried El Pais. I went home to watch various international channels telephoning  to the two Americans working in my office among a plethora of nationalities.

American air space was closed. 

That was the first time when I couldn't enter the U.S. An awful feeling. Not being able to have breakfast with my kid at Dempsey's, see the Make Way for Ducklings statue, look at the Massachusetts State House dome where my grandfather did some reconstruction engineering, walk on Bearskin Neck in Rockport, hurt.

My colleague and I followed American politics. We would contact Congress on various legislation.We may have left the States, but we had people we loved living there. We weren't traitors as many said we were.

The lies of nuclear threat from Iraq was followed by the U.S. attacking Iraq. We participated against it with the 10 million people protesting in over 600 cities. We were right. There were no nukes.

I had regular appointments with my bank. I was American. Americans all over the world were being denied financial services because of the American legislation FATCA. Banks spent millions identifying us so they would not be penalized by the American government.

Americans were too big a risk. The banks would be denied access to international services such as SWIFT and be heavily fined if they did not report all Americans doing business with them to the Americans.

The U.S. and Eritrea are the only two countries who tax their expats on world wide income. FATCA was designed to catch the tax cheats. Expats had bank accounts cancelled, jobs denied. Even local organizations such as sports clubs would have their banks accounts closed if their treasurer was found to be an American.

My bank gave me time to renounce my nationality, a gut-wrenching decision. Even so, the bank has called me in regularly since then to show my Certificate of Loss of Nationality.  

Chuck Schumer introduced legislation that anyone who renounced their American nationality would no longer be allowed to enter the U.S. Fortunately, it never made it out of committee. Still, it was the second time I might not be able to get to my stepmom and daughter if they needed me.

I remained a news junkie, comparing newscasts from several countries. My husband and I watched in increasing horror at the events in the United States. 

The horror of being the aggressor against other countries.The cruel treatment of not just immigrants but our citizens. 

We watch in amazement at the ignorance of our former fellow citizens, the willingness of some to ignore the cruelty and corruption, and the values that the country was founded on. Even if laws were sometimes ignored it was not the norm. 

The situation got worse and worse and once again I feel it dangerous to try and enter my birth country. Not because of my renunciation alone but because of things I've published, 

I am afraid to enter the U.S. This is different from my many non American-friends who do not want to enter the U.S. because of people they know who have had trouble or they are horror-strickened by what the U.S. is doing. 

Over our excellent Indian dishes, sitting next to the air conditioner, the three of us talked of many things, besides what we feel is the destruction of our birth country and frustration that people do not see the danger. Worse, far too many people agree with what is happening.