The Heroes Act of 2008 was passed in, well, 2008, to increase ben­e­fits for Vet­er­ans. Can’t argue with that, can you. How­ever, there was a pro­vi­sion of the bill that taxes you on your prop­erty value if you change your cit­i­zen­ship, as cap­i­tal gains, regard­less of you sell it or not. To quote the Chicago Sun Times

But Richard Kohan of Price Water­house­C­oop­ers drew my atten­tion to one sec­tion of the act — the por­tion that states any­one vol­un­tar­ily giv­ing up his or her cit­i­zen­ship will be taxed on ALL of his assets as if he or she had sold them — pay­ing cap­i­tal gains on assets that have increased in value, even though they have not been sold!

That’s right. While every­one in the media is focused on keep­ing aliens out of Amer­ica, Con­gress has voted to lock its cit­i­zens — or at least a good por­tion of their assets — into — Amer­ica! Maybe they’re think­ing that patri­o­tism won’t be enough to keep the smart money from rec­og­niz­ing the com­ing increases in the tax burden.

So our gov­ern­ment doesn’t want immi­grants com­ing in, nor do they peo­ple leav­ing.   I guess you have to pay for that debt some­how.    But Seri­ously, WTF?