The American Abroad Caucus will be hosting a meeting on Americans abroad tax and financial access issues on May 23rd, we'd like your help to get as many House reps to attend this meeting as possible. Unfortunately, it's not a public meeting, but it's a great opportunity to educate Congress on Americans abroad tax issues, and will get us one step closer to passing legislation that will provide the urgent relief we all need.
This action will only take *20 minutes* and will greatly help us advance our advocacy goals!
3 Steps:
1. Find your House Representative's Washington D.C. office phone number
- Click here and search for the last address you lived at in the U.S. (if you've never lived in the U.S., use the last address your American parent(s) lived).
- Go to your House rep's website, and scroll to the bottom of the page, it should list the phone number for your rep's Washington D.C. office (it will start with (202) 225-xxxx and then have 4 digits for the extension).
2. Call your House rep's Washington D.C. office during office hours of 9-5 ET
- If you don't have a usual method of calling the US, we recommend adding the minimum credit to a Skype account so you can call through any device connected to the Internet. This will greatly reduce your costs to make an international call.
- When the receptionist answers the phone read the following script:
Hi, my name is [insert your name here], I am a constituent living in [your country]. I heard that the Congressional American Abroad Caucus has sent your office an invitation to attend a round table discussion on American abroad tax issues on Monday, May 23rd. Can I please get the email address for the Congress[wo/man]'s scheduler so I can check their availability to attend?
- The person on the phone should then give you the email address for the scheduler, which is the person in charge of booking meetings for your House rep.
- Note: If when you call, the phone goes to voicemail or no one answers, try again another time. If you call up to 3 times and you don't have any luck email us on [email protected] and we'll see if we can help.
3. Email your House rep's scheduler to request they attend the meeting
Copy and paste this template email:
TO: [scheduler's email, which should look something like [email protected]]
BCC: [email protected] (important you BCC Democrats Abroad on the email that you send so we're aware that you contacted that office)
SUBJECT: Request for Congress[wo/man] [their name] to attend American Abroad Round Table on May 23rd
Dear [name of scheduler],
My name is [insert your name here], I am a constituent living in [your country]. I heard that the Congressional American Abroad Caucus has sent your office an invitation to attend a round table discussion on American abroad tax issues on Monday, May 23rd. I would really like my representative to attend this meeting. Are they available to attend?
It is very important to me as a constituent living abroad that my Congress[wo/man] attends this discussion to become educated on their overseas constituents. Many of the issues constituents living outside of the United States care about most are forgotten when legislation is drafted and this discussion will give Members an opportunity to ask questions and come up with practical solutions to fix the raft of issues constituents abroad face.
Thanks,
[your name]
After you've sent the email, be sure to check and follow-up within a few days if you've not received a reply (which will only take 1-2 minutes of your time):
- If you do not received a reply from the scheduler in 24-48 hours, send a follow up email asking if they received your email.
- If the scheduler confirms that your House rep isn't available at that time, ask if it's possible for a member of staff from their office can attend in their place.
- Once you receive a reply from the scheduler, either way, please forward the reply to [email protected] so Democrats Abroad knows who to expect to attend the meeting.
That's it! Thank you so much for helping us with this very important work. If you have any questions on this tiny action, please email us at [email protected].