The night of the election, the Canadian Broadcasting Company had pretty good coverage of what was happening. One of the locations they visited was a big gathering of Americans in Toronto who are Democrat supporters. They estimates there are 50,000 Americans living in Toronto who are U.S. citizens and able to vote in the U.S. election from Canada.
The American woman who organized the event
was a resident of Toronto for the last 30 years. My reaction to learning of these things, was "way to go". It was not "why the hell aren't you a Canadian yet?"
This expression by Chris is a flaw of the American psyche. It bugs many Americans if someone doesn't naturally want to become an American. Here is the news: the United States isn't the natural ruler of the world, nor is it the best country to live in. What country is the best to live in or be a citizen of can vary by individual.
There are many artists who have left the U.S. for the remainder of their life for a variety of reasons. Check out this wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriate#Famous_American_expatriatesWhat many of them have in common is being stuck with U.S. citizenship and wanting to be out of the reach of their home country.
In David's case, not having U.S. citizenship may have allowed him to travel to Cuba to work on their Luaka Bop label business without breaking U.S. laws. Given that he received a draft card in the 70's, I'd also understand that he may have wanted to keep the option of leaving the U.S. if conscripted and have the option to be a citizen of the U.K. without any threat of being sent back to the U.S.
In general, you never know what the future will unveil, and keeping a Plan B in your back pocket isn't a stupid thing to do.
If you still think American citizenship is the most natural thing to acquire, then ask yourself: why do tourists in Europe sew a Canadian flag to their backpacks?
Of course this could very well reverse in the future, if all of the hopes around Obama hold well. But it has never been like this since Kennedy.