As we all know, sort-of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who now owns a bit over $3 billion in Facebook stock, renounced his U.S. citizenship from his new digs in Singapore. Whether he did this to avoid paying U.S. taxes on his windfall is a matter of dispute. I suppose it is possible that the timing was coincidental.

Not everyone is buying it, though. Two senators have introduced a bill, cleverly (if awkwardly) titled the Ex-PATRIOT Act, that would build on existing immigration law that makes people who renounce their citizenship to avoid taxes inadmissible to re-enter the country. The bill would create a presumption of intent to avoid taxes if a person with a net worth above a certain amount renounces citizenship.

There may or may not be constitutional problems with that, and while I’m not thrilled with the bill itself, I’m far less thrilled with Saverin’s defenders. Americans generally enjoy the freedom to travel where they will (thank you, U.S. Supreme Court). The thing is, if you renounce your citizenship, you are no longer an American, by your own choice.

That’s what makes Bill Bonner’s piece at the Christian Science Monitor, in which he extols the basic human right to travel, so unintentionally hilarious. He thinks that we should leave Mr. Saverin alone, and he cites various important historical statements of rights to support the thesis that Mr. Saverin should be able to go where he likes. Regardless of the provisions of the Ex-PATRIOT Act, this is absurd.

He quotes the Magna Carta of 1215:

It shall be lawful to any person, for the future, to go out of our kingdom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the kingdom: excepting prisoners and outlaws, according to the laws of the land…

Emphasis added, for reasons that I will make clear soon if you can’t figure it out for yourself. Continue reading →