Nobody is saying or implying that American expatriates are, as a general rule, renouncing their citizenship. The issue is that a nontrivial number of American expatriates are being incentivized to renounce their citizenship, to the point where some of those feel they have no choice but to renounce. It's an unintended consequence of a law that affects a minority, and this is precisely what news media should be covering. To dismiss the article because "most citizens are happy," and to set up a straw man argument about immigration into the United States (a phenomenon completely unrelated to the reaction of non-US banks to US policy), would likely be seen as offensive to that minority which was forced to renounce citizenship.
Nobody is saying or implying that American expatriates are, as a general rule, renouncing their citizenship. The issue is that a nontrivial number of American expatriates are being incentivized to renounce their citizenship, to the point where some of those feel they have no choice but to renounce.
Numbers matter in public policy discussions. I understand your opinion that the numbers of Americans who have renounced citizenship for tax reasons is "nontrivial," but I hope I make clear, as an American who has lived overseas among many other expatriate Americans, and who still keeps up regular contact with many expatriate Americans who derive all their income from overseas work, that I think the reported numbers are indeed trivial. As an American voter and taxpayer who cares deeply about the future of the United States and who knows first-hand about the trade-offs involved in living and working overseas, I'm not seeing a crisis here. I'm not seeing the numbers here I would need to see to advocate a change in current policy, even if other people kvetch about the current policy.
