US Citizens living abroad are having increasing difficulty opening and maintaining bank accounts with US financial institutions. HELADA has taken the initiative in launching an information campaign towards US policy-makers and financial institutions informing them of this unfair practice. Please feel free to copy the text of the letter below and send it to your Congressional Delegation and to other people you feel should be informed. If you have questions or comments on this campaign, please contact Brady Kiesling. 

The Honorable Michael G. Oxley

House Committee on Financial Services

2129 Rayburn H.O.B.

Washington, D.C. 20515

USA

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We are writing as U.S. expatriates resident in Greece to call to your attention a serious problem affecting hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen taxpayers who reside outside the United States.  Banks and investment companies in the U.S have effectively ceased to accept new accounts from U.S. citizens resident abroad, unless they create a domestic trust or falsify their residence address.  Major U.S. corporations will no longer accept payment by credit card, even issued by a U.S. bank, when the billing address is outside the U.S.  The Greek branches of Citibank no longer accept accounts from U.S. citizens, citing the burden of U.S. law.

We are law-abiding Americans attempting to maintain our permanent roots in the U.S. while working overseas. These restrictions are an enormous burden and a violation of fundamental economic freedoms.  If U.S. law denies financial services to American citizens outside the borders, it is certainly unconstitutional, a violation of Americans' right to equal protection. 

Bankers tell us the Patriot Act and related financial regulations impose a prohibitive risk on U.S. banks and investment firms whose customers might involve them unwittingly in any international money transfer for criminal purposes.  The record-keeping requirements and open-ended legal liability thus make overseas U.S. citizens too expensive as customers.

The money we earn is still welcome around the world, but no longer in our own homeland. Decades-long U.S. banking relationships are no protection. Overseas Americans are being thrust into the arms of foreign banks, shifting capital offshore or channelling their U.S. investments through foreign-based investment companies.  Either way foreigners benefit at America's expense.  We doubt this was the intent of the Patriot Act.

The situation is perverse. America's economic security is utterly dependent on its continued ability to attract capital from the rest of the world.  The new regulations may well inconvenience terrorists as well as loyal U.S. citizens, but at the cost of undermining a pillar of the U.S. economy.  We urge you to act quickly to remedy this situation.

Sincerely yours,

(your name)