The American Diaspora

The Ties That Bind… or Loose

I said at the beginning of this post that a large and engaged diaspora was an asset. They serve as informal diplomats, as business connections, as a hedge against unemployment during recessions, and many other functions. Furthermore, a large diaspora alters a nation’s ability to exercise political power abroad, simultaneously creating a liability, but also creating a base of soft power and a louder voice in foreign countries.

However, a large diaspora is only an asset if they maintain economic and social ties to the homeland, and carry a positive or hopeful vision for home. Furthermore, the diaspora, to be useful, needs a positive vision of home that jives with what those back home actually want. When diaspora-led governments came to power in Liberia and Haiti, the results were less than desirable, including civil war. Diasporas that harbor old grudges and grievances may even actively work against the political goals of their homeland’s government (such as Cuban-Americans in the US).

For the United States to benefit from its growing diaspora, there must be ongoing economic and social ties, as well as positive associations with the United States in the diasporan imaginarium. If Mexican-Americans moving to Mexico carry with them affection for their communities in the United States, democratic values, and transnational economic ties, then that’s very good. But if they bring home bitterness at deportation, frustrations due to ethnic or racial tensions, or separate themselves from friends and relatives still in the United States, then the US may not only not benefit, but the diaspora may actively sour ties between the US and, for example, Mexico.

So how does the diaspora see the United States?

The American Diaspora

Citizenship Renunciations Show Strained Diaspora Ties

One simple barometer of how the diaspora feels about the United States is to see how many of them renounce their citizenship. The Internal Revenue Service posts a quarterly bulletin of citizenship renunciations.

Since 2009, citizenship renunciations have skyrocketed. This despite the fact that the State Department raised the price of the renunciation paperwork from about $400 to over $2,000 in 2014. Yes, that’s right, it costs $2,000 to officially abandon a United States citizenship. The main reason for these renunciations is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) which places onerous tax burdens on Americans abroad. However, the fact that the proximate cause is tax-related does not reduce the relevance of rising renunciations: these individuals create norms among other diasporans, demonstrating the severability of ties to the US, and, in their own minds, rejecting allegiance to the US. Furthermore, the State Department often denies travel visas to the United States for diasporans who have renounced their citizenship, making it much harder to maintain social and business ties.

Voter participation has remained static or fallen as well. In the 2008 elections, 273,000 Americans abroad submitted overseas ballots. In 2012, that number had barely risen to 278,000. But the diaspora grew from approximately 2.4 million to 2.7 million people. It’s possible this growth was among children ineligible to vote. But it seems likely as well that a rising proportion of the US-born diaspora do not strongly identify as participants in American civil society.

Neither of these are very good signs for American diaspora engagement.

The American Diaspora

Oceans of Opportunity

Even as much of the American diaspora may be increasingly detached from American national identity, there are other signs that diasporans are carrying on a long-held American tradition. When times were tough in the “Old Country,” many early American migrants picked up and moved across the Atlantic to the United States. There is some evidence that young Americans today have followed that route in recent years as jobs were scarce, especially for entry-level work.

The number of young Americans studying abroad has tripled since 1991. The vast majority of these students will return to the United States, many with improved skills and connections abroad. While there is some evidence the rate of growth in study abroad fell during the recession, on the whole, a growing share of the US-born diaspora consists of students actively investing in their own futures and hoping to learn about their host countries.

More young Americans go abroad to work as well. Exact numbers aren’t available, but anecdotal accounts suggest that the number of Americans going abroad to teach English has grown dramatically in the last decade. I was unable to find any statistics on American English-teachers abroad. With tight job markets back home, these young teachers are another growing component of the diaspora. The number of Americans in the Peace Corps hit an all-time high over 15,000 in 2009 as well. The number of Americans receiving Fulbright English Teaching grants or research grants has likewise risen from under 1,800 in 2007 to over 2,000 today, especially in Western Europe and East Asia.

How many Americans are going abroad for work? It’s hard to say. But almost certainly a growing number: it’s worth pointing out that some of the fastest-growing diaspora communities were in the UK, Ireland, Italy, and Australia, all countries that are prime study-abroad locations, or Anglophone nations where finding work and getting a visa is relatively easy.

The American Diaspora

What Next for Americans Abroad?

The US-born diaspora is growing on all fronts, which, on the whole, is good for the nation. But it poses challenges as well. A growing diaspora, especially a working diaspora, means a sharper focus on US tax policy, especially the income tax. The FATCA in particular has enraged much of the American diaspora with its excessively high compliance burdens due to the United States’ outdated tax code. Americans abroad consume relatively few public services, and would prefer to face the same legal conditions as other foreigners abroad. As it is, the US-born diaspora is uniquely penalized by its home country.

Furthermore, recent changes in migration flows suggest productive policies for immigration and border control. Mexican migration is a shrinking problem, thus the real issue may be border control at Mexico’s southern border.

But the real change is this: American citizenship is globalizing. More Americans than ever before are abroad, and a growing number of foreigners are living in the United States. This trend is highly unlikely to change. It implies that, in the future, e-governance tools will grow in importance as a larger and larger number of citizens are far afield. Rationalizations of tax law to mitigate onerous diasporan tax burdens will eventually be necessary. If such measures intended to include the diaspora are not taken, we may find that more and more US-born diasporans truly live up to the “expatriot” name.

The American Diaspora

The Duty to the Diaspora

Furthermore, given that the US-born diaspora is one of the most widely dispersed diaspora in the world, the United States will face growing pressures to maintain a global diplomatic and security presence.This contradicts the hopes of some strategists who look forward to diminishing claims on US security guarantees. Although some countries have the luxury of only worrying about their diasporas in one or two countries, the United States is in a position of managing a diaspora spread through over 100 countries. Commonly enough, Americans view the rest of the world as the rest of the world’s problem. Unfortunately, in an increasingly globalized world, that attitude will lead to disastrously bad policy for Americans abroad.

There are between 2.2 and 6 million Americans abroad right now, and the path to 10 or even 20 million American diasporans is not hard to imagine. In other words, the diaspora amounts to somewhere between New Mexico and Maryland in size. Assuming there are 3 million residents, the diaspora would be 31st largest state: not huge, but hardly negligible.

However, the diaspora population has grown by 10.8% a year from 2010 to 2014. The fastest-growing state, North Dakota, has grown by 9.9%. In other words, the diaspora is outgrowing a massive migration-fueled oil boom at its peak. From 2000 to 2014, the diaspora has grown 31%, behind only Utah and Nevada.

With a rapidly-growing diaspora, American security and diplomatic obligations may become even more complex. Russia’s infamous “duty to protect” the Russian diaspora sounds ominous today. But many Americans may find themselves leaning on a similar argument if the American diaspora is threatened in Latin American countries where they represent between 1% and 13% of the population.

This problem was particularly highlighted by the plight of Americans in Yemen. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, a number of Americans are stuck in Yemen right now, and suing the State Department for not providing evacuation. Countries without diasporas don’t have these problems. But for the United States, a country where we treat diasporans as full citizens and have such diasporan citizens in hotspots worldwide, the globalization of citizenship will change how we do national security. Sometimes, that means that innocent diasporans complicate national security. In other cases, it means that American citizens adopt positions totally hostile to the United States, putting our nation’s security apparatus in something of a tricky gray area.

The point is not that the United States should intervene in countries with large or threatened American diasporas. Every case will be different. Rather, I want to emphasize how a globalizing citizenry will create new challenges and new demands on resources. The United States is not going to experience a diminishing demand for hurricane and disaster relief or for security guarantees, in no small part because it will be American citizens and American businesses these foreign operations increasingly protect and support. Nor will the War on Terror ever get simpler to prosecute, as a growing share of the nation’s enemies are likely to be its own citizens abroad, as many European nations are discovering in regards to ISIS.

What will it mean for us not only when a growing share of residents are non-citizens, but when a growing share of citizens are non-resident? It’s hard to say. It will be a world where many Americans have much wider opportunities for employment, education, and personal growth, but also a world fraught with security ambiguities and uncertain allegiances.

But a good start for now would be if the government could just start formally tracking emigration. In my next post, I’ll take a look at a country that tracks and reports migration data pretty well: Australia.

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I’m a grad student in International Trade and Investment Policy at the George Washington University’s Elliott School, and an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. I like to learn about migration, the cotton industry, airplanes, trade policy, space, and faith.

My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the George Washington University nor the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I do not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research.

Cover photo source.