Confirming reports passed on by commenters at the Isaac Brock Society, DiploPundit points to a State Department interim rule just placed on public inspection for printing in tomorrow’s Federal Register, which raises the fee for renunciation of U.S. citizenship (but apparently not relinquishment) to US$2,350, more than twenty times the average level in other high-income countries. As they state:
[D]emand for the service has increased dramatically, consuming far more consular officer time and resources, as reflected in the 2012 Overseas Time Survey and increased workload data. Because the Department believes there is no public benefit or other reason for setting this fee below cost, the Department is increasing this fee to reflect the full cost of providing the service. Therefore the increased fee reflects both the increased cost of the provision of service as well as the determination to now charge the full cost.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality”, while the Expatriation Act of 1868 says that renunciation of citizenship is “a natural and inherent right of all people” and that “any declaration, instruction, opinion, order, or decision of any officers of this government which restricts, impairs, or questions the right of expatriation, is hereby declared inconsistent with the fundamental principles of this government”.
As of press time, the State Department has not yet commented on whether it sees “public benefit” in other human rights such as freedom of election or freedom of marriage, or whether anyone seriously believes that charging people a month’s salary to get a ballot paper or a marriage certificate would not restrict or impair those rights.
Practical effects
Because this fee hike apparently does not apply to relinquishments, ex-Americans who naturalise in most other countries will still be able to obtain a Certificate of Loss of Nationality from the U.S. government for no more than the cost of taking a day off work and driving or flying halfway across the country to the nearest consulate which isn’t backed up for months with renunciation appointments. (“Most other countries” means those which allow dual citizenship, like Canada and France, or those which forbid dual citizenship but allow new citizens to submit proof of loss of their former citizenship after the naturalisation ceremony, like Japan.)
However, Americans seeking to naturalise in countries which require new citizens to give up their former citizenship before the naturalisation ceremony, like Taiwan, or those who have been foreign citizens for decades or all their lives and never exercised any benefits of U.S. citizenship but now need to acquire a formal CLN (for example because their bank will discriminate against them if they don’t have one), will feel the full impact of the new fee hike, and also have to wait for months or even longer than a year for the State Department to give them a CLN before they can get on with their lives.
What changed?
The State Department has always claimed that processing renunciations has a high cost, but four years ago when they first introduced the renunciation fee, they at least pretended to take a very different attitude to the cost:
The CoSS demonstrated that documenting a U.S. citizen’s renunciation of citizenship is extremely costly, requiring American consular officers overseas to spend substantial amounts of time to accept, process, and adjudicate cases. A new fee of $450 will be established to help defray a portion of the total cost to the U.S. Government of documenting the renunciation of citizenship. While the Department decided to set the fee at $450, this fee represents less than 25 percent of the cost to the U.S. Government. The Department has determined that it must recoup at least a portion of its costs of providing this very costly service but set the fee lower than the cost of service in order to lessen the impact on those who need this service and not discourage the utilization of the service, a development the Department feels would be detrimental to national interests. See 31 U.S.C. 9701(b)(2).
They also note the per-hour cost they use to calculate the new fee:
The Department previously charged a consular time fee of $231 per hour, per employee. This fee is charged when indicated on the Schedule of Fees or when services are performed away from the office or outside regular business hours. The CoSM estimated that the hourly consular time charge is now lower. Accordingly, the Department is lowering this fee to $135 per hour.
This implies that they take about seventeen employee-hours to process each renunciation (assuming that none of the fee goes to other expenses such as travel or printing). Oddly enough, in their 2012 Paperwork Reduction Act filings on Form DS-4079 (which is filled out by both renunciants and relinquishers), the State Department indicated that the cost for processing the form was just $33 per hour. I don’t understand how these two estimates relate to each other.
To explain the new fee hike, the State Department point to procedures (such as the pointless and repetitive double in-person appointment system) which are required neither by the Immigration and Nationality Act nor the Foreign Affairs Manual, nor used by any other countries:
For example, consular officers must confirm that the potential renunciant fully understands the consequences of renunciation, including losing the right to reside in the United States without documentation as an alien. Other steps include verifying that the renunciant is a U.S. citizen, conducting a minimum of two intensive interviews with the potential renunciant, and reviewing at least three consular systems before administering the oath of renunciation. The final approval of the loss of nationality must be done by law within the Directorate of Overseas Citizens Services in Washington, D.C., after which the case is returned to the consular officer overseas for final delivery of the Certificate of Loss of Nationality to the renunciant. These steps further add to the time and labor that must be involved in the process.
As demonstrated by the experience of other countries, the State Department could greatly lower their costs by simplifying their procedures, but apparently such a common-sense step has not occurred to them.
But look on the bright side! 31 USC § 9701 says that “[e]ach charge shall be … based on … (A) the costs to the Government; (B) the value of the service or thing to the recipient; (C) public policy or interest served; and (D) other relevant facts.” Given how valuable a CLN has become these days, imagine how high a fee they could charge for it if they set the price based on its value.
Timeline for fee hike and comments period
The State Department ends with an excuse for why they can’t be bothered to tell us about the fee hike more than two weeks in advance, while keeping renunciants waiting for dozens of times that long to get the CLNs in the first place:
The Department intends to implement this interim final rule, and initiate collection of the fees set forth herein, effective 15 days after publication of this rule in the Federal Register …. The Department is publishing this rule as an interim final rule, with a 60-day provision for post promulgation comments and with an effective date less than 30 days from the date of publication, based on the “good cause” exceptions set forth at 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(3)(B) and 553(d)(3). Delaying implementation of this rule would be contrary to the public interest because the fees in this rule fund consular services that are critical to national security, including screening visa applicants.
You have until 4 October to submit a written comment on this rule. I will update this post with a link to the docket page on Regulations.gov once the fee hike is officially published.
@Don
Unless the CLN form has changed, they are not pre-numbered and do not bear a reference number:
http://www.nostate.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/certificate-of-loss-of-nationality.jpg
@Don
CLN’s do not have serial numbers. I Iooked on mine and checked.
john,
A change from “$0.00” to US$450.00 for renunciation came about in early 2012 I believe. I don’t think it was the case that anyone already booked for an appointment got a “deal”.
(Today that US$2,350 would be CA$2553.37.)
Gah. I booked as soon as I could, but the Toronto consulate (as noted earlier) is booking into January (or perhaps February by now).
Anyone interested in putting together some sort of mass relinquishment movement? Is there some sort of oath to the Queen and Country that we could organize whole groups to all take together, rather than face these outrageous renunciation fees?
Shovel — very good re-spelling of the old Obama motto.
@innocente Hogwarts – That’s today what’s stopping the USG from in future telling banks they can only accept new serial numbered CLNs and force you to ‘reapply’ for a new CLN forcing you to go to court to defend against the USG making former citizens to go through these hoops.
That’s what we’re dealing with.
Once again the U.S. tax laws are oblivious to compliance costs of those they insist should comply.
At least it is an acknowledgement of the surge in those wishing to ditch US citizenship.
Well that should put an end to the “they should all go and denounce themselves” comments.
It would be great if someone who already has a CLN would donate US$2350 to ADCS as a middle finger salute to this DOS diktat.
Raise to US$2,350 on benefit grounds. Very well, what is my benefit of the U.S. taxing my overseas pension in a punitive way?
As long as three years ago people were predicting it would become more difficult to renounce under these current conditions. This discussion was had including slowing down appointments, fee raising and making it more difficult all around to relinquish or renounce. We knew the U.S. would be alarmed by what was going on. The sane thing to do would be to find out what is going on that so many feel they must renounce or relinquish and fix that problem. Instead we have this back lash. They really do need to slow down those numbers now that FATCA is going into full swing. Perhaps this money can be used to hire more workers so a CLN isn’t taking a year or more to arrive. I really feel for people struggling pay check to pay check already for whom this process is expensive, arduous and painful enough as it is.
You know it might occur to someone that if they worked WITH expats and amended some of FATCA these numbers would drop like a stone. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen such a strange administration as this one. George Orwell world indeed.
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This just makes me ill… I plan to renounce in Nov, so I’ll face the new rates.
I just hope they won’t make it harder in any other way before then. Does anyone know of any other proposed changes in what they might require for the act of renouncing?
This is grotesque. The only upside is that it may make our plight newsworthy – finally.
Or not.
For some reason I’m reminded of a little ditty I used to listen to back in the 80s by a band called The Exploited. It starts with the F-word and ends with “U.S.A.” I think my mom might even approve of it now.
I have always wondered why a person could not go to some Canadian government agency and swear an oath of algenance , film it and send it in to relinquish with the US forms.
Ok, folks, what do you think about this? One of the 7 relinquishing actions is “(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years.”
What we could arrange to have a judge or justice of the peace (notary?) available, and a bunch of us gather together to publicly affirm our sole allegiance to Canada? We could film it, have a lawyer available to witness it, and produce solid evidence of a public and formal declaration of allegiance. Then we could each take those to our local Consulates to show our relinquishing acts of dis-allegiance to our former country.
Do you think that would count in the eyes of the State Department?
@calgary411 ok thanks. this is awful I cant afford that 🙁
hmm with this new fee (absurd) is it possible to get a part time government job in order to relinquish instead?
@IsabellaG
I hear that there’s a big shipment of fiery hoops on its way to US consulates. Wear asbestos clothing.
I agree, if this is to happen, it would prove disastrous for many of us.
OK. Bad guess. I hazarded a quintuple a few days ago. It’s only a quadruple-plus.
Time to get a double pool going on (1) next hike and (2) percentage of next hike?
A related point to my previous one about a public oath of allegiance: The Government of Canada supports what is called a “reaffirmation ceremony”, which includes a public swearing of the oath of citizenship. If we could get a federal government official (a local MP?) to participate, I wonder if that would be sufficient to meet condition (2) for relinquishing.
Have a look here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/celebrate/menu-reaffirmation.asp
This just gets crazier and crazier. I can’t keep everything straight. How do you know if you can relinquish rather than renounce? I was born in Canada to two US parents. They didn’t register me at birth but at some point (after I was 18) they did whatever was necessary to register me as a US citizen because it seemed like such a handy thing to have. 🙁 I hold a US passport but have not used it for travelling for many years – my Canadian passport has my Canadian birthplace on it so I’ve never had trouble with it. I went to the trouble of getting SSN a couple of years ago when the whole tax thing reared it’s ugly head and will soon have 5 years filed. So can I relinquish? Or am I stuck with this exorbitant fee hike on top of the thousands of dollars I’ve spent in accountant’s fees? I have also worked for the Canadian federal government for many years but did’t take the position or make any oaths with the intent of relinquishing, so I don’t think my job will help me get out of this nightmare.
This announcement by the State Department is indeed “just another brick in the wall.”
Time for some lessons from a history that America seems hell-bent on repeating:
Prediction: Loosey-goosey adjudication of relinquishment is a thing of the past. Back-dated “intentions” will come in for uniformly harsh scrutiny.
Evidence: Recent reports of consular “advice” to make-a-case relinquishers to do a renunciation while still cheap.
Speculation: Going forward, instances of clear-cut current/future acquisition of other nationality will amount to an insignificant drop in the flood.
Atticus, and do you remember how many times we were accused of promoting the scare-mongering that the cross-border professionals were doing? Overreacting. Rushing judgement.
Glad I listened to my gut.
Couldn’t be more relieved to be out.
How short-sighted.
Now they can’t say the tax on your RRSP is justified when you get compliant in order to renounce.
Because, after all, the cost of renouncing, until now, has been subsidized.
One more argument for the benefits of CBT enjoyed by expats— gone.