A small update about my personal sovereignty.
September 05, 2009
– Comments (9)
Someone asked for me to post an update about my sovereignty on an earlier thread today. Things are in limbo right now and probably will be for a while.
Well nothing is official yet, but I may have hit the mother load as far as my passport goes! I am in talks to get a diplomatic passport, not from one nation, but a small alliance of nations. Citizenship in each of those nations would be included. While most of those nations do not have a ton of advantages for my sovereignty if I chose to reside there, a few of them are very Chris friendly if I wanted to live there. A sticking point is that 2 of those nations do not allow dual citizenship, but given that they aren't nations that are high on my list to live in anyway, it might work to my advantage. The lawyer working on this for me is using the fact that these 2 nations don't allow dual citizenship and the fact that if I chose to permanently reside in any of the alliance nations, they could exert influence that may not benefit the rest of the alliance. He is proposing that I would be a permanent citizen of the alliance and as such given special treatment from it's member states. We are proposing the following...
1) That I may reside in any state of the alliance as if I were a diplomat from another country. I may not be encumbered by any tax or obligation of a normal citizen, but would be expected to conform to any expectations of a visiting diplomat. (These expectations will be defined in the agreement)
2) Be given this status permanently. Once in agreement, a member state must continue to allow me this same status, once my service is complete with the alliance. Any variance after my service would be considered punishment by a member state and subject them to defined penalties in the agreement, enforceable in international courts.
3) Be given this status not only by the initial agreeing member states, but any future member states by their agreement to join the alliance.
4) Be given this status permanently by any member state, even if that state leaves the alliance or the alliance dissolves.
5) Be claimed as if I was a citizen by all member states if I'm ever stateless. This claim does not grant me citizenship, but does protect me from statelessness. All member states must protect me from statelessness and afford me all previously agreed provisions.
There is a lot more to it than this, but I picked out my favorites from the proposal.
A big plus in all of this, is that once the agreement is made, I would have to renounce my citizenship in the US, because they are currently not an alliance member and therefore could not have influence over me. If they ever joined the alliance, (and I think that politically they may have a reason to do so in the future) they would be bound by the same agreement. Even if they didn't join, I have a perfectly valid reason for renouncing US citizenship in international courts. Any pressure from the US after I renounce would be mediated internationally.
This is straying far away from the perpetual traveller plan that I have been working on, but it gives me better results. In the PT plan the first couple of steps were...
1) Get a couple of passports that are accepted by a lot of countries. Make sure these passports are from countries that leave you alone if you don't live there, but remember if things go wrong, you may have to live there.
2) Find a couple of places to live in that leave you alone as long as you're not a citizen. (I have found 2 places that I still plan on living in even if this does happen.) Having permanent diplomatic status in the alliance countries, just allows me a better safety net if things go wrong there. It also allows me privileges in any other country that I want to live in for as long as I'm a diplomat.
There are a lot more steps in the PT plan and I still plan on using all of them. Most of the other steps, just kind of make you invisible. An important part of the plan for me was to do everything legally, and I'm still committed to that, but being invisible makes it easier to move away when a nation suddenly changes what is legal.
At the same time that we are working on this, I'm actually working on a second plan that involves seasteading. I'm much farther behind on that plan, because it is way more complicated, but plan to make a post about it later. Even if I don't go that route, I think that it's not only possible, but almost certain that someone will do this. I do plan on writing books about both experiences even if they don't work. I have learned a ton and think that if I fail, I can give others enough info to succeed.
Like most of my posts, this is long and rambling, but I was really happy to put a few of the 10,000 things bumping around in my head in print. If you get some amusement, then that's great. If not, ignore it, don't rec it and move on to another post. There is still a lot of quality stuff here and I'm sure you'll find something that you are more in agreement with.
Chris
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