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?
Well, in the GDR, 20% of the population had immigrated to the west before the government started more strictly regulating emigration. Restricting who could leave was kind of a necessity at that point.
The GDR started allowing more travel to the west in the 1970s. You could visit if you were aged over 50 or had relatives in the west, and other people could also visit but they had to wait much longer and get an approval from the Stasi (most requests were approved). By 1988, millions of people legally visited West Germany each year and over 99.9% returned to the GDR.
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
