My Certificate of Loss of Nationality (CLN) has arrived!

I received my Certificate of Loss of Nationality via Canada post (regular mail). It came with an accompanying letter from the Toronto Consulate. It asks me to sign and return the letter acknowledging my receipt of the CLN. The envelope also included my cancelled US passport.

I have some notes:

The Consulate seems to have made an error on the CLN: I lived in the United States from birth to August, 16, 1986, the day I left to study in Vancouver, Canada.
The CLN states that my date of self-expatriation was 02-28-2011. The accompanying letter says that it was on April 7, 2011, the day I informed the Toronto Consulate. The letter is wrong. Section 349(a) (1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 says nothing about the date that I inform the consulate, but concerns itself with potentially expatriating acts such as taking on foreign citizenship with intent to relinquish. This shows the utter confusion of officials the United States government and how the United States puts its former citizens through several stages of neither a citizen nor a non-citizen. I have maintained that I am not a citizen of the United States since February 28, 2011. This CLN only confirms that the State Department also recognizes my expatriating act. The letter indicates that my “file” says I expatriated on April 7, 2011, but the CLN makes it clear that the expatriating act took place on February 28, 2011: “That: he thereby expatriated himself on 02-28-2011 under provisions of Section INA 349 (a) (1) … ” How could it be clearer?
The stamp on the right hand corner of the CLN shows that the Department of State approved my CLN February 29, 2012 (as also confirmed by the letter). I assume this means that there is a huge backlog of cases, since it took them nearly 11 months to approve my case. Today, is 16 April. So the full process to receive a CLN took one year and nine days from the day I informed them of my expatriating act.
Now that I am no longer a citizen, I do not understand how the IRS thinks that it can continue to harass me. Yet there is an expatriation for tax purposes according to them, which creates an impediment to a fundamental right. These exit tax laws, in my opinion, could not withstand a court challenge. US expatriation laws contain too many contradictions.

99 thoughts on “My Certificate of Loss of Nationality (CLN) has arrived!”

@Bruce Newman .Good luck. I am still in planning stage:) But this is an important issue so will be keen to hear your or anyone else’s’ real experiences.

@alex: I renounced in February and I am flying over in three weeks. I have my CLN. I’ll let you know if they ask me for it and whatever else happens.

I was born in Canada, so it wouldn’t seem to matter. OTOH when I renounced in Toronto, I produced a pile of documents which included my Canadian passport. I wonder whether they created a data link between my Canadian passport and their records of my being an ex-US citizen and so forth. I guess I’ll have the opportunity to find out at some point.

@rodgrod Can’t get that “o” with the line through it on my keyboard:) please let me know when you go . and good luck:) btw- are you flying ?

@alex, type your reply in Word, where you can insert and paste foreign letters and symbols in your text, then copy and paste your response in the blog reply form. It is complicated, and takes time, but it can be done.

@alex. I traveled by car through the Ambassador Bridge (Detroit) at the end of October 2011. I had no problem at all. My husband (born in Denmark), my two adult daughters (born in Canada) and I (born in USA) put our four Canadian passports in a pile and handed them to the border guard. He flipped through them and did not say anything except to ask where we were going. I have been traveling with a Canadian passport for the past 10 years and have never had a problem.
I am planning a trip by plane in August, and am now worried. I am going to send in relinquishing papers soon and travel with my Canadian passport in August.

@alex. I was informed in the past week of two American born, Canadians entering the U.S. in the last month with absolutely no problem. One crossed at the Peace Arch land crossing between British Columbia and Washington state and the other one at Vancouver airport
@somerfugl: ‘I am going to send in relinquishing papers soon and travel with my Canadian passport in August.’ Are you mailing your ‘relinquishing’ papers/forms or are you presenting them in person at a U.S. consulate? I was not aware that not appearing in person was an option.

Ør if yøu use a Mac, just simultaneøusly høld døwn the øptiøn key while yøu type the letter ø – ør learn høw tø use the html entity cødes – either ø [ampersand-hash-248-semicolon] ør ø [ampersand-oslash-semicolon], take yøur pick. That Wørd “sølutiøn” really sucks.

@Schubert: You wrote on April 24…”If your relinquishment was no more than maybe eight years ago, you aren’t likely going to convince the IRS you don’t need to file..”
What do you think the odds are if you became a Canadian citizen 10 years ago and have done nothing to claim US citizenship including always traveling with a Canadian passport? I want to send in the relinquishment form, but I’m afraid they’ll come after me for 5 years of tax forms. (My income is low so I don’t owe anything.) Has anyone gotten a CLN without filing taxes in my situation ( Canadian 10 years or less)?

@usxcanada, I can also enable foreign keyboards on my PC, but that gets a little messy in remembering where the symbols are. I do so when I am typing in Portuguese or Spanish, and have templates printed out for these two languages to be able to remember which symbol is where.

@usxcanada: Gøød Ådvice 😉
@Alex: Yes, I am flying over from Denmark. I wish I had chosen an easier moniker than “rødgrød” but I guess I’ll stick with it since people know me by that now.

@ rødgrød
I like your moniker and it’s no problem on a Mac. I’m a quarter Danish so I have a soft spot for my grandfather’s country of birth. Hope your trip is completely uneventful at the border and then a big happy time afterwards.

I crossed the US border at the Thousand Island bridge just east of Kingston, Ontario in mid April after relinquishing my US citizenship in early November. (Still waiting for my CLN, by the way.) I took a photocopy of my oath of relinquishment with me but did not offer it when I handed the customs officer my Canadian passport. I was asked my citizenship and replied that I was a Canadian. No further questions about it were asked. In fact, it was the fastest border crossing I have ever experienced.

@Cornwall, It sounds from these several similar posts that so far there is not much attention being paid to “place of birth” indicated in Canadian passports, but I personally anticipate that with the current IRS Jihad against those with US citizenship living abroad, that we will be hearing about more and more cases when US immigration is paying much more attention to this than in the past.

@somerfugl
tks for info. I think traveling by plane might be different

@tiger
thanks for the info. the one at vancouver airport flew from there to a usa airport? or crossed by land?
@rødgrød i used copy and paste:) good luck on your air trip. we will wait to hear.
i have not decided yet when

@alex
They flew out of Vancouver airport to New York City. Had to go through U.S. customs at the Vancouver airport as is always the case when flying from Canada to the U.S.

@tiger Now I understand. interesting to hear from people who travelled by air directly into USA and went through immigration in USA without CLN yet. Hope to hear news

I haven’t traveled to the States since I visited the consulate to fill out forms for relinquishing. Others I know have and it was not an issue.

I think on a PC you can hold down the alt key and type 0248 on the numeric keyboard (not the numbers at the top of the keyboard and get that letter. I’ll try here: ø
Yup. It works.