While still engaged to Mom, Dad trotted off to the University of Washington to get a BA in Drama. Mom and Dad corresponded faithfully until one of Dad’s letters made passing comment on working in a sorority to supplement the GI bill.
“You mean a fraternity, don’t you?”, was mom’s reply.
“Nope”, dad wrote back, “I’m pretty sure it’s a sorority cause men don’t look this good in satin.”
My parents married that fall and my sister was born in Seattle the following year.
We always assumed because she lived in Canada since the age of 2, payed all her taxes in Canada and never claimed dual citizenship that she was, like, really a Canadian. Until she applied for her passport and was told she really wasn’t a Canadian…or American or, well, anything. It took a signed declaration by my father along with his birth certificate to prove he was a true stand-on-guard-for-thee Canuck and the intervention of a Member of Parliament to finally cut the red tape for a passport to be issued.
Now there is a fresh hatch of weevils in the flour and I’m not exactly sure what will happen to my big sister. According to the 14th amendment of the US constitution, a person born on American soil or on foreign soil but of American parents is a citizen of the United States of America.
More importantly, the only way to divest yourself of this accidental investiture is to go into an American embassy and there swear really, for truly, you renounce your citizenship. Sign here and here. Don’t forget on your way out the door to deposit all back taxes owed on every penny you have earned in your entire life to this point.
Yes, despite ignorance of your status as a citizen of the United States or your avowed lack of intention to ever exercise the rights of this unasked for windfall, the 
government of the United States is entitled to its tithe and tax of your income. It’s all here.
Now this is nothing new. Recently, however, Uncle Sam enacted a law requiring all banking and investment institutions in other countries to start determining who amongst their customers may be accidental Americans.
Phase one, coming to a bank near you in early 2012: get these records in order. Phase two in 2014: hand said info over to the same people who watched their own banking institutions implode, taking the world economy into the tank in the process.
So, if my sister happens to feel a yen to visit Disneyland, she can expect her Canadian passport (showing clearly her place of birth as Seattle, Wa.) to defend her honour as much as a set of plastic mouse ears will bring Prince Charming to her front door with a glass coffin and a pizza.
The best part is that even if she should now decide to go to her friendly neighbourhood US embassy to do the renunciation jig, she has to disclose all financial information and pay back taxes on everything she has ever earned, the cash value of all assets she possess and any dollars stuffed into her mattress or sewn into the hem of her coat. Then, sure, sign here and here and scram kid, you’re officially no longer a yankee. Doodle. Dandy.
