What constitutes &#39;taking an oath...of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof&#39;? I am an Accidental American, which would be fine if not for their insistence on imposing arduous Eritrean tax requirements. If filing pointless tax returns and risking double taxation ever gets too irritating, I would like to know my options for citizenship loss. 8 U.S. Code § 1481 provides 7 ways of losing one's citizenship. (5), ‘taking a formal renunciation of nationality before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state, in such form as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State’, is the simplest but comes with the catch of getting one included in some FBI records and barred from purchasing firearms (which is pretty serious for America, so presumably there would be other negative consequences if I later chose to relocate to the US as a non-citizen). As far as I can tell, (2)—‘taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years’—counts as relinquishment due to an expatriating act and therefore avoids the punitive consequences of voluntary renouncement (although one's name is still published by the IRS). The other advantage seems to be the ability to backdate one's loss of citizenship, presumably with subsequent impact on any tax liabilities (particularly if the event was pre-2004). That preamble out of the way, if I did decide to invoke (2), what would count and what would I have to provide as evidence? General advice welcomed, but for me personally I can think of three potentially-qualifying acts: would taking the oath of allegiance to join the University Officers' Training Corps (part of the British Army Reserve) count? would any oath involving swearing allegiance to the Queen (e.g., a Scout Promise) count as declaring '...allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof'? would my having gained UK citizenship count if it happened at birth, or would I need to be able to prove that I did so with an intention to renounce my US citizenship (and I wasn't that advanced as a baby)?
Gaining UK citizenship at birth would not count, the law stipulates "after having attained the age of 18 years", so it is explicitly ruled out. (Also, gaining UK citizenship at birth involves no formal declaration.) The scout promise would not count. It doesn't involve swearing allegiance to the Queen, only promising to "do your duty to the Queen"; and an American could argue they have no duty to the Queen. (Also, you might well not have repeated it after 18.) On the face of it, the Oath of Allegiance for the OTC would count - it looks pretty much exactly what the law-makers had in mind. On the other hand, the oath is almost exactly the same as that taken by Members of Parliament, and Boris Johnson took it first in 2001 - but didn't renounce his American citizenship until 2017. (Perhaps it wasn't until 2017 that he finally drew the American authorities attention to the fact he had taken the oath.)
The first step of a non-governmental debt collector would be to sue you and obtain a money judgment (if this debt collector is legitimate, something the comments touch upon). A tax debt is different, if this is a legitimate tax debt. There is usually an internal tax collection agency process that must be exhausted, resulting in an assessment of taxes which then results in a non-judicial imposition of a tax lien, upon which what is sometimes call a distaint warrant authorizing execution against assets pursuant to the tax lien is issued by a court in Oregon. Outside Oregon, the Oregon money judgment or the distaint warrant would have to be domesticated into California as a foreign judgment, which is a basically administrative process that might be possible to do without notice to you (I'm not a California law expert on these fine matters of procedure). Once there was a money judgment domesticated into California, your wages and bank accounts could be garnished, your property could be seized pursuant to writs, and liens in your personal and real property could be perfected and foreclosed upon. Of course, if this outfit is a sham, with a fake debt, this is unlikely to happen, and they might give up, or you might sue them for violating debt collection laws or engaging in fraud, or a law enforcement agency might do that based upon your complaint. It might take a civil action of some sort to set aside in invalid judgment, if it was invalid, but the process of setting aside an invalid foreign tax debt is very complicated even for an average small firm lawyer. Lack of notice of a lawsuit is generally a strong defense to a private sector debt, but is not always such a strong defense to certain kinds of tax debts (and the process for different kinds of tax debts is quite different).
The new decree of November 14, 2022 contains an amendment (bottom of p2) to the Federal Law 53-FZ originally enacted on March 28, 1998, concerning military service. The former version of the text contained separate provisions in Article 2 about different kinds of military service that could be performed depending on nationality. This allowed Russian citizens who also held another nationality, or foreign citizens, to serve in the Russian armed forces under contract, and only in non-officer ranks. Russian citizens without other allegiances were able to serve voluntarily, or be conscripted, and were additionally eligible to serve in the state intelligence apparatus and other bodies, as well as in the main armed forces. The amendment is slightly differently organised, but the key part is the text which extends service &quot;по призыву&quot; (on demand) to &quot;гражданами в том чсиле имеющими гражданства (подданства) иностранного государства&quot; (citizens, including those who have citizenship (nationality) of a foreign state). Draftees under this section are again only for the non-officer ranks of the regular armed forces. The option is retained for Russian citizens without other allegiances to volunteer, in which case they might become officers or serve in the broader military/intelligence establishment, or for non-Russians to volunteer for the regular forces. Russia's original law was fairly generous in exempting holders of other nationalities, as most countries with mandatory military service or registration do not make the distinction. For example, Israel and the USA are two countries where holding additional nationality is not a barrier. (Though in both of those cases, there are other exemptions which might be in play. The USA is also not currently operating actual conscription, just a registration system.) And there are plenty of countries without a draft at all. In the context of the overall pipeline from &quot;you are a regular person minding your own business&quot; to &quot;you are in uniform pointing your weapon at your country's designated enemy&quot;, militaries also have several opportunities to discard draftees or volunteers who they genuinely don't want, for whatever reason. It may be that even a country which obliges dual citizens to register and attend an assessment, would then choose not to make them train and fight. Or they may be channeled into different roles. It might depend on the conflict in question (e.g. you are a citizen of A and B, and A is at war with C, so you have to fight; if A were at war with B then your fate would be different). Regarding Why should they care whether someone also has citizenship of some other country? they may be anxious about you having divided loyalties, or about angering the other country. These concerns would be more acute if the country is engaged in an actual conflict. There are several treaties that allow multiple citizens to avoid having to serve multiple terms of military service in each country. The details depend on the countries involved, but the general idea is that if you are (for example) both Austrian and Danish, and live in Denmark, then you do your military service there and Austria does not mind. In that case, it's helpful that neither of those countries is at war, and certainly not with one another. What you cannot generally do is use both of your nationalities to cancel each other out, and avoid military service altogether. Equally, if you are Austrian and British (the UK has no conscription) then the government of Austria still wants you to do military service on their terms.
I think that the plain meaning points to (1). The &quot;other than an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence&quot; modifies who &quot;is admissible&quot;, in the present tense, i.e. at the time of seeking admission. It doesn't modify the departure. Also, if it were (2), there would be weird issues like, if the departure doesn't count as a departure for the purposes of this section, then what about the unlawful presence? Does it stay accrued until a future departure, or does it just get wiped clean with no consequences? If it stays accrued, then in some cases it may be worse than interpretation (1), because interpretation (1) starts the 10-year period earlier while it doesn't affect you while you are a permanent resident, so that if you lose your permanent residency in the future the ban will be over earlier. The only case I know where a departure doesn't count as a departure for the purposes of this ban is when you leave on a grant of Advance Parole, as ruled by the BIA decision in Matter of Arrabally. But the reasoning in that case was that Advance Parole was specifically granted to allow the person to travel abroad an preserve their eligibility for Adjustment of Status, which a ban would defeat. But this reasoning wouldn't really apply to the case in this question, because permanent residency isn't specifically granted for travel abroad, and a returning permanent resident isn't subject to this ban anyway, so interpreting it as a departure doesn't defeat the maintenance of permanent residency. The issue you are asking about is rare. In most cases, when people become permanent residents, they stay permanent residents or naturalize to become US citizens, in which case they do not have to worry about this ban after becoming permanent residents. Only if they lose permanent residency would this question come up. I am not aware of any guidance or case law regarding this case.
The legal requirement to hand over the returns is found in 26 U.S. Code § 6103: (f) Disclosure to Committees of Congress (1) Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Finance, and Joint Committee on Taxation Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request, except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure. Enforcement is found in 26 U.S. Code § 7214 (a) Unlawful acts of revenue officers or agents Any officer or employee of the United States acting in connection with any revenue law of the United States— ... (3) who with intent to defeat the application of any provision of this title fails to perform any of the duties of his office or employment; or ... shall be dismissed from office or discharged from employment and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both. The court may in its discretion award out of the fine so imposed an amount, not in excess of one-half thereof, for the use of the informer, if any, who shall be ascertained by the judgment of the court. The court also shall render judgment against the said officer or employee for the amount of damages sustained in favor of the party injured, to be collected by execution. These punishments are essentially identical to those in Section 7213, which describe the punishments for those who unlawfully release returns. I've seen that section quoted in some articles as the basis for punishing failure to provide requested returns to the Chair of the House Ways and Means committee, but I'm not really seeing how that section covers non-compliance. Non-compliance seems only covered by Section 7214, which requires the "intent to defeat" (or various other issues, such as not disclosing known violations to the Secretary, etc.). That may be hard to prove in this scenario, and part of the stalling by Mnuchin may in part because they are exploring if they can build a strong case that it wasn't his intent to defeat the title. The quote of his you note is particularly on point on this, as he explicitly says he intends to obey the law; he's just questioning the constitutional issues involved.
If the question asks, "did you do X" where X is or includes a crime that you could be criminally prosecuted for, you can invoke the 5th amendment in refusing to answer that. I have seen that done and seen that objection to the question sustained in court. However, if admitting to X would provide only civil liability, then the 5th would not apply. At trial, you may also have to take care not to give direct testimony on things that are so closely related that you "open the door" to being required to answer that question. For example, you can't say "I don't owe because I did X" and then expect to not have to answer "So just to be clear, did you do X?" Also, depending on context, invoking the 5th might cause a jury to view your testimony more skeptically (cpast points out that "For civil cases, adverse inferences based on pleading the fifth are totally okay"), and if that's going to come up you should ask your attorney about whether or not it'd be a good idea strategically.
There is arguably a legal right to non-citizen nationality either by statute or under customary international law, but the U.S. Constitution does not afford such a right and Article I, Section 8 grants Congress broad authority over the governance of such territories and over immigration and naturalization (i.e. to define citizenship beyond the minimum established in the 14th Amendment).
There are venue restrictions where political speech is restricted, such as on military bases; content restrictions (transmitting classified information to the world); you cannot defraud by saying false things in order to get something, you cannot defame a person, you cannot speak obscenely (though it's hard to tell what counts as "obscenity"). You cannot appropriate other people's property in speaking (i.e. copyright law is a restriction on speech). The type of speech restrictions seem to pertain to speech and violence caused by such speech. A classic limitation is that you cannot speak "fighting words" (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire 315 U.S. 568), which in 1942 meant calling someone a "damned racketeer" and "damned Fascist", which the court characterized as "inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction". The court subsequently refined its position on "provocative" speech. In Virginia v. Black 538 U.S. 343 a law against cross-burning was found to run afoul of the First Amendment as a restriction on political expression, but it would be fully consistent with The Constitution to outlaw "cross burning carried out with the intent to intimidate". This states may "prohibit only those forms of intimidation that are most likely to inspire fear of bodily harm". The current position is that you cannot incite to the imminent use of force. In Brandenburg v. Ohio 395 U.S. 444, the court stated that the First Amendment does not "permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action". There are myriad laws against threats, for instance in Washington you may not "knowingly threaten(s) to cause bodily injury immediately or in the future to the person threatened or to any other person", and you can't do that ("knowingly cause another to believe that the offender will cause serious physical harm to the person or property of the other person") in Ohio either. You can't get away with threatening "to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person" in California. This class of restrictions on speech seems to be quite robust. You may not induce panic in Ohio, e.g. shout "fire" in a theater -- I don't know if any other state has such a law.