Do Americans Need a Second Passport?

People of means living in places where it seems civil war never ends, like the Balkans, home to the shards of the former Yugoslavia, or people facing continued political uncertainty, such as Hong Kong since the 1997 hand-over to Communist Beijing, obviously may need a safe refuge for escape. If besieged people enjoy the legal status afforded by a second nationality, their chance of safety is far more certain. In a time when threats turn into physical menace they simply head to their "other" country.

But what about American citizens? The "good old USA" has been the favorite destination of millions of refugees throughout its history, and remains so. The Statute of Liberty in New York harbor still welcomes those "huddled masses" and "wretched refuse" from other shores who want to become Americans. And millions do.

So why would any U.S. citizen need to acquire a second nationality, and the additional passport that goes with that expanded political status?

One very good reason: increasingly the U.S. government imposes highly onerous restrictions on the freedoms the nation's Founders set down in the U.S. Constitution. For people of wealth in particular, there is now a wide web cast to catch persons "the government" decides may be doing something wrong. And the current definition of "wrong" is so expansive as to be all inclusive in the mind bureaucratic mind.

Example: the very fact that one has an offshore bank account, creates an offshore trust or owns shares in an international business corporation - any and all of these innocent financial choices can suggest potential tax evasion in the jaundiced eyes of the IRS.