In the US, I’ve heard that countries like the USSR and North Korea prevent citizens from leaving. Is this propaganda or do AES countries tend to prevent more people leaving than others?
The problem isn’t leaving, the problem is finding a country to accept you. You can have a passport but if you don’t have the visa, they’ll turn you away at the airport.
Let’s not also think that back in the day of the USSR it was easy to travel around the world. Schengen and the popularisation of air travel are relatively recent developments.
The big measure I can think of was in the GDR, but even then the “Berlin wall” was maligned. Imperialists created a problem and then mocked the only solution. They actually created two problems; the first one was dividing Berlin in two. https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Anti-Fascist_Protection_Rampart
This is not quite the same since it is not about freedom of movement but instead about economic control, but is an interesting comparison: the US charges its citizens income tax even when they are not resident in the US, and it is the only country that does this, IIRC.
If you leave the US and immigrate elsewhere, the only way to stop paying for the US’s militaristic imperialism is to renounce your citizenship.
you have to pay at least a $2530 fee to renounce US citizenship, if you somehow avoid all of the other hidden fees. and Allah help you if you mess up part of the application. cool country 👍
edit: i conclude it’s probably easier to lose citizenship by committing treason or joining a foreign military than doing the state department’s arcane (and expensive) rituals
I have not lived in the US for most of my adult life, and have been in the process of renouncing for a while now, as I need to to get my new citizenship.
I was interrupted by covid, because they just decided to not let anyone renounce during that time period, so I have started my application process over. You’re lucky if you only get the couple thousand charge, because the chances are very high that they will find some tax that you didn’t pay you suddenly owe now.
Honestly, paying income tax to the US for the rest of my life is probably the easier route. At least most people get it all returned.
Most of the time, I don’t think so. For the DPRK specifically thousands of people have permits to work and live outside of the country, while it’s the South that restricts people going north. The only actual example I can think of is in the GDR where they were dealing with the problem of people getting good free education and housing there but going to West Germany to get a higher paying job.
