OAW serves as the focal point for AARO’s year-long advocacy efforts.
Since its founding in 1973, AARO has repeatedly gone to Washington D.C. for its Overseas Americans Week (OAW), an annual five-day “door-knock” campaign to bring our issues personally to the attention of Congressional lawmakers, government agencies and their staffs. We also meet with researchers, think tanks and other associations, exchanging with them on the issues facing Americans abroad. For the last several years we have been joined at OAW by our partner, the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO).
AARO’s long history of advocacy in Washington D.C. has included fighting for the vote for Americans overseas, the transmission of permanent citizenship to children born to overseas Americans, bilateral Social Security totalization agreements for the protection of retirement benefits, the successful defense against legislative attacks on the Section 911 Foreign-Earned Income Exclusion, as well as our efforts to eliminate citizenship-based taxation.
Primary Issues for Overseas Americans
Although we have remained focused over the years in the areas of voting, citizenship, taxation, banking, Social Security and Medicare, our priorities change from year to year depending on pending legislation (or the lack thereof). For example, we are still working hard to create an equitable tax system for overseas Americans and have more recently ramped up our advocacy in the tax and banking area, trying to address the lack of access to workplace retirement plans; the FATCA and FBAR financial reporting burdens and excessive fines; and the increasing numbers of financial institutions refusing service to Americans living abroad.
We will adapt our advocacy to meet the challenges faced by our members.
Position Papers
You can read here the most recent position papers outlining AARO’s positions on the various issues, which provide the basis for our communications at OAW.
OAW Reports and Videos
Click on the links below to see what AARO did at OAW for each year since 2014 (please note that we could not go to Washington D.C. in 2020, 2021 or 2022 because of the COVID epidemic).
