Border Visa Processing: Practical Benefits Diminished Earlier this year I had the privilege of co-authoring ILW.COM's 2009-2010 Edition of The Consular Posts Book, edited by Rami Fakhoury. Actually, "co-authoring" is a bit grandiose and exaggerated: I wrote the section on visa processing in Port Au Prince, Haiti. Still, it had been awhile since anything I'd written made it beyond the digital domain, so it was kind of cool when I received the book in the mail this past June.To my surprise – and I can only imagine what Rami and staff went through trying to get dozens of lawyers to actually meet authorship deadlines – the new handbook did not contain any information on visa processing in Mexico. While some more esoteric posts made the list (Armenia and Vietnam, for example), our neighbor to the south went un…
It’s Official: USG Crackdown on Employers, I-9 Compliance The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Obama's new chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced an intensified crackdown on U.S. employers who hire unauthorized workers. John Morton, new head of ICE (which is part of the Department of Homeland Security) told the Journal that the agency is "set to increase the number of companies it will audit and systematically impose fines on violators." He added that these violations — as most of my regular readers well know — can also lead to criminal charges.Folks, I am feeling less and less like Chicken LIttle and more and more like Nostradamus. I am not going to bore you by yet AGAIN quoting myself from blogs I've written since President Obama was elected, but, frankly, t… Continue Reading →
UBS AG Coughs Up Names of U.S. Account Holders So much for banking privacy at UBS: pursuant to terms of the Swiss-USG tax-evasion overhaul/settlement, the Wall Street Journal reported today that UBS AG will be handing over some 4,450 names of U.S. account holders. Both governements had cut the deal with UBS last week but the final settlement terms were not disclosed publicly till this morning.It probably gives investors little solace that, according to the WSJ, that UBS will most likely not pay any fines as part of the deal. While everyone agrees that tax "evasion" schemes are illegal, as someone who has been involved in international business for a very long time I know all too well that in the zeal for prosecutable examples, governments will too hastily label a legitimate tax-planning vehicle as "evasion"…… Continue Reading →
Nostradamus Strikes Again NOTE: The sole purpose of today’s blog is so that I can brag about my foresight, so skip it unless you are curious…I wrote this last November, when the surreal specter of propping up the private auto sector had reached a frenzy. My point was simple: let the consumers get the money and decide. While the $4500 “Cash for Clunkers” credit is far more generous than the modest $625 I proposed in my hypothetical, and while the ability to buy new foreign cars was more than I’d proposed, it is SOOOOO nice to see an administration in office which thinks rationally. What I wrote then:This one is simple, though the relevance to immigration is, uh, vague:-The government is giving the auto industry $25 billion dollars-There are about 200 million drivers in the U.S.-That breaks down t… Continue Reading →
How To Play Offshore Legally One of the funny things about discussing offshore investment is that we forget a very basic fact: not ALL Americans who invest offshore are up to shenanigans. Some U.S. citizens (and foreign nationals who are U.S. tax residents and, accordingly, taxable worldwide) in fact, make a great business of offshore investing…and the IRS doesn't blink an eye.I had an interesting chat with Fernando today regarding this and, as usual, his explanation was very enlightening.. (Fernando Reategui, for those of you who don't know, is the Managing Director of Private Client Insurance Advisors, LLC, my business colleague, office partner, and very dear friend.) I am currently looking at innovative tax planning structures for some high net worth individuals who have come my way, s… Continue Reading →
The Kidney Pie Test? Monday's new rules affecting would-be immigrants to the United Kingdom has been met with both praise and anger: praise from the large sector of the population which believes that government has done little to mitigate illegal migration; anger from immigrant and other groups which say the new rules will make it more difficult for talented migrants to move to the U.K.The Home Office has been under the gun for several years because of the heavy influx of African and Asian immigrants, and announced the new rules as part of the most significant changes to UK immigration regulations in the past half century. The new system assigns scores under various categories, and all inbound workers, students, or those migrating permanently to the UK must meet thresholds or be rejected admission. … Continue Reading →