Promoting the Americans Abroad Caucus was the key focus of OAW 2007.  The Caucus was launched with great success and celebrated at a cocktail party organized for current and prospective members of the Caucus and their staffs, covered by the International Herald Tribune.  During OAW, numerous members of Congress either joined the Caucus or expressed an intention or interest in doing so.  Several fruitful discussions were held with various members of the Caucus.  Here is a sample letter to get your congressman to join the Caucus.

Overseas Americans Week 2007 included all five days of the week of June 18^th and the first two days of the week of June 25^th.  Twenty-five representatives of American Citizens Abroad (ACA), the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO), the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO), Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad made up the total delegation.  We owe a big thanks to these volunteers who paid their own travel and lodging expenses and gave their time to promote the interests of Americans residing overseas.

Eighty-four meetings were held in Congressional offices and research institutes. Many meetings were organized to include staffers of several Congressional offices from a particular state; hence the outreach on the Hill was even more extensive.  Particularly intensive contacts were made with offices of representatives from Ohio, South Carolina, Connecticut, Maryland and Idaho.  Other than Congressional offices on both sides of the Hill, appointments included the National Foreign Trade Council, the Urban Institute, the American Chamber of Commerce, AARP, the National Association of Secretaries of State, the US-Mexican Chamber of Commerce, the United States Council for International Business, the Peterson Institute of International Economics, Program Manager of the Foreign Resident Compliance office of the IRS, the Consular section of the State Department, the Federal Voting Assistance Program and the Election Assistance Commission.

The meetings touched on the key issues of concern to Americans living abroad – Voting Procedures and Voting Rights, Citizenship, Medicare, Social Security and Taxation.

On the voting issues, we anticipate progress as we learned that legislation is soon to be introduced into Congress proposing to amend the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) to ensure that registration and voting forms downloaded from the internet will be accepted by the State voting offices and to allow Americans who have never resided in the United States to vote in the last place in which their parents were domiciled before leaving the United States.  We look forward to working with the Americans Abroad Caucus to support this legislation when it comes forth.

Citizenship is another issue where we hope the Caucus can play a positive role.  Today, it is possible that a child of an American citizen born overseas will not be able to obtain American citizenship, due to the residency requirement for his parent(s).  All Americans should enjoy the same right to transmit US citizenship to all of their children at birth, including all children born to or adopted by a US citizen abroad.

The concern with Social Security is that the Windfall Elimination Provisions (WEP) section of the Social Security law penalizes overseas Americans simply because they also receive a foreign source pension.  Fortunately the Social Security Fairness Act of 2007 was introduced in January 2007 in both the House (H.R. 82) and the Senate (S. 206) with a substantial number of co-sponsors.  This act, if passed, would eliminate the WEP from the Social Security Act and would solve one of the key discriminatory issues faced by Americans who have contributed to US Social Security and who have worked overseas.

Medicare is not available to Americans in foreign countries. Americans abroad who are eligible for Medicare benefits in the US should be able to receive equivalent benefits while abroad.  In several meetings, OAW delegates highlighted the fact that enabling Medicare benefits overseas could in fact represent a cost savings to the Medicare system, as medical treatment in the US is far more expensive than elsewhere in the world.

On the taxation issue, meetings were held with staffers of many members of the Ways and Means Committee, the Finance Committee and the Joint Tax Committee.  In the context of PAYGO in Congress today, there is a danger that legislators seeking revenue compensation measures may attack Section 911 once again.  Therefore, we must both push to protect the existing foreign earned income exclusion and attempt to have the cap on the exclusion eliminated.  To do so, it is important that we make members of Congress and their staffers understand that these reforms are in the best interest of their constituencies, not just abroad, but back home as well.  Facilitating American companies’ ability to send workers abroad to promote products produced in the United States and exported overseas is good for jobs back home and important for the U.S. economy.

Several meetings reconfirmed the fact that general tax reform would not come back on the table until 2009 at the earliest.  Many consider that all tax laws – corporate and individual – which touch on the international field are in need of major reform.  Organizations representing overseas Americans will continue to work with their contacts in Congress and in various research institutes to make our cause heard in this general reform context.

OAW delegates are convinced that their coming to Washington once a year to exchange information with staffers and to present our point of view is not only necessary but highly useful.  Through our efforts, the Americans Abroad Caucus is becoming a reality and will be an important forum for spreading the word on our issues.  Many staffers thank us for our educational effort. And OAW provides the opportunity for members from the various overseas organizations to meet one another and to create synergy for the cause.