Having been born in Australia and lived her whole life there, "Amy," as she wishes to be known here, had no idea that her life was about to be turned upside-down, and changed forever, in March, 2020, when someone from her bank said that they needed to ask her to fill in some details having to do with her citizenship.

Then suddenly, Amy says, her "OMG Moment" – as it's often referred to by accidental Americans, a group which Amy was soon to discover she was a member of – arrived... 

Over the last few years, thousands of so-called "accidental Americans" have quietly accepted the unexpected news that the U.S. considered them to be U.S. citizens, even though they had lived their entire lives as citizens of other countries, and as a result of this news, gone through the expensive business of complying with U.S. demands that they sort out their U.S. citizenship and tax situation.

Ronald Ariës is a 62-year-old Dutch citizen, who is retired from KLM, the Dutch airline. He is one of "dozens" of Dutch citizens who have been told that they "will soon lose their bank accounts" because they are "unintentionally American", but are resisting their banks' insistence that they formalize their American status by getting a Tax Identification Number, so that the banks will be able to comply with the U.S. tax evasion law known as FATCA, according to a report published last week by NRC Handelsblad, a major Dutch media organization, the website of which is NRC.nl.