reposted from citizenshiptaxation dot ca
An interesting conversation is taking place on the FB group American Expatriates. Journalist Serena Solomon from the publication VICE has requested stories from expats describing the emotional effects of renouncing. You might want to go over and take a read as many are quite interesting. It is a public group so I believe one can read without being a member; not sure if one needs a FB account.
Earlier today, there was the following comment, which forms the basis for this post:
Tom Paine A question for those in Canada: It appears that few or no renunciation appointments have been confirmed since January of 2016 when they switched to a centralized Renunciation system for all of Canada. Has anybody in Canada received a renunciation appointment in Canada who applied after February 1, 2016. If so, where was the appointment location? Again, I am asking about those who have applied for an appointment NOT those who had pre-existing appointments under the old system. For those outside of Canada, what has happened is that the demand to renounce in Canada is so great, that DOS has created a centralized renunciation system for all of Canada.
How to renounce US citizenship in Canada and other countries https://t.co/sbRUTf0Pyk
— Citizenship Lawyer (@ExpatriationLaw) July 12, 2016
The change to a centralized renunciation system for Canada occurred this past February. A detailed post describing the procedure can be found here.
Delays, costs mount for Canadians renouncing U.S. citizenship https://t.co/FemWd9ZMTw
— Citizenship Lawyer (@ExpatriationLaw) July 12, 2016
From the Globe & Mail:
“It’s very clear that there is no particular attempt to make it easier to get out – to provide more resources or expedite the process,” complained John Richardson, a Toronto citizenship lawyer, who has guided numerous Canadians through the complex process. “Toronto may be the renunciation capital of the world,” Mr. Richardson said.
A U.S. embassy spokesman would not comment directly on the reasons for the long wait times, but he confirmed that it currently takes anywhere from 45 days to 10 months to arrange a mandatory meeting, depending on the location. He acknowledged that the process is not meant to be easy, even as the embassy works to “refine” it.
“Due to the serious implications the decision to renounce U.S. citizenship carries, the process is intended to be deliberative in order to permit individuals to reflect upon their decision before returning to execute the Oath of Renunciation,” the official said.
Is this man serious? A 15 month wait is required to contemplate the seriousness of the action? Since only one appointment is now the norm, the wait is from application until the appointment. Sorry, but this is ridiculous beyond belief. The previous policy of requiring two appointments was designed to accommodate this perceived need to reflect. I originally scheduled my second appointment a week following my first. Seven days. Point being, there was no huge wait necessary before. What could possibly justify the difference between waiting a week and waiting 19 months for an appointment? Are there that many people renouncing and if so, why does the Federal Register not reflect those numbers? We know the Federal Register falls short of what is reported on the FBI’s NICs list. Something just doesn’t add up here (in more than one way).
The original attitude of the Toronto consulate back in the last quarter of 2011 was to try and accommodate the new surge of people applying. I remember phoning Mrs. Anderson at the Consulate for an appointment in late October and she told me it would have to wait until the 2nd appointments of those 22 people were finished. My first appointment was November 30, 2011.
An interesting comment from Kevyn Nightengale:
““It does not look good to have a lot of Americans renouncing their citizenship because of stupid rules – rules…” https://t.co/lrkbzJnUKD
— Citizenship Lawyer (@ExpatriationLaw) July 12, 2016
Over a year and a half before this change of procedure (November 4, 2014), Stephen Kish had a most interesting discussion with 2 members of the U.S. Consulate in Toronto.
I had conversations with the C-G and two Consular officials on the wait time to obtain a renunciation meeting in Toronto.
This evening I attended a Toronto meeting of students, Democrats, Republicans, and Toronto US Consular officials which was sponsored by the Munk School of Global Affairs. U.S. Consul General James Dickmeyer gave a short speech and I had conversations with the C-G and two Consular officials on the wait time to obtain a renunciation meeting in Toronto.
Consular Official “R” — I pointed out to R that there are many Canadians in the Toronto area with unwanted U.S. citizenship who need to renounce this citizenship. R advised that the wait time is now up to September 2015, in part because of a three week or so delay caused by the Pan AM games (yes, you heard that right).
C-G — I then spoke to the C-G, explained the situation that these unfortunate people need to get on with their lives, and asked that since he is the “boss” he needs to reorganize staff duties and shorten the time to a renunciation appointment as bookings are now in September. There was some confusion as he felt that I must have meant September past (I believe that he was unaware of the wait time). Once this was clarified he argued that the boss really does not have that much power and that I should go back and speak to R (apparently the man with the money) which I did (see below).
We debated a few points: C-G feels that citizen-based taxation is not “so bad” as taxes are never owed to the IRS because Canadian taxes are higher (I corrected this impression). C-G complained that Canadians are “only now” coming to renounce. I explained that many are only now finding out that the U.S. considers them to be U.S. citizens. I mentioned our FATCA IGA lawsuit and C-G responded by saying that we will just hurt the banks etc…
Consular Official R (second conversation) — Told R that his boss claims that R has the power to shorten renunciation wait times. R responded by saying that the renunciations are a low priority that do not compare with high priority activities such as passport renewals, and that there will be no change in priority. R advised that Toronto people should go to Calgary or Montreal to renounce. I asked R how would a low income person find the funds to do this.
IRS compliant American — Happened to get into conversation with American very proud of filing tax returns to IRS for 30 plus years and paying no tax. Feeling nasty I asked him what does he think will happen when he sells his expensive house that he has lived in for all these years (now he knows).
Dems Abroad — In a short speech Dems Abroad promised that Americans abroad should not worry about the safety of voting in an election because the information is not passed on to the IRS (I think the fellow was serious). One DA presented to R their approach to FATCA (modify but do not kill). I explained that the Alliance and Republicans Overseas want to kill the entirety of the beast.
There was nothing else for me to say, so I left.
Could an official’s personal perception (negative) have an effect on policy? We have seen before, that the State Department is sometimes slow to follow changes that they are legally required to make. One instance of this concerns the issue of CLNs for reqlinquishment via an expatriating act and intent. This affects thousands of Canadian citizens who relinquished in the late 1960’s – 1980 when case law began to include “intent” as a factor in whether citizenship was lost by performing an expatriating act. The difficulty is that those relinquishants were not advised to come down and apply for a CLN. Since at least the 1940 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the State Department was supposed to issue CLNs (see Section V Miscellaneous – Paragraphs 501 & 502-but this in no way amounts to a a relinquishment being valid only if one has a CLN).
Another post appearing on FB today:
Today (July 13) Just received an email from Milano Consulate saying to contact them in September for the 2nd appointment for renunciation. My first appointment was in April in Genoa – Her lame explanations were that they are backed up in Milano because of all the renunciations from Switzerland being handled and that there are 200 death certificates to handle.
Why such a difference time-wise? Yes, likely more Canadians trying to renounce but less than 2 months compared to over a year? What gives?
At what point would the actions of the State department amount to disregard for the law and the right of citizens to expatriate?
*****
To reiterate, the primary focus of this point is to determine if the State Department is shutting down/seriously limiting the number of renunciations in Canada by making it more difficult/longer to obtain an appointment. In order to verify that, we need to know/ask:
- Has anyone who has applied for renouncing in Canada since mid-February received an appointment (your application would have been processed through Vancouver via the email address: CanadaCLNInquiries@state.gov
- Has anyone who has applied for renouncing in Canada under the new system actually completed an appointment?
NB: We are NOT asking if anyone has actually renounced after this date because the appointment may have been made before these changes took place.
I applied to the Toronto consulate on May 11 and have not heard anything back yet. This is ridiculous.
They should just make it $25000. “Administrative costs are incurred during the thorough investigation required to ascertain that you are indeed eligible for renunciation”
And have a mandatory waiting period of 5 years. “Leaving the land of the free is unquestionably foolish. While foolishness is allowed, because this is the land of the free, we must at least make sure you consider your foolish decision carefully. And have time to save up for the fee”
Then you could have a fast track option. “For an additional $14,250 you may request expedited processing of your renunciation. Expect an appointment within 12 months”.
And make you taxable even after you have renounced. “10 years of full compliance is necessary after obtaining the CLN”
Maybe they should just make renunciation illegal. “You can NEVER leave your citizenship even by dying! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (psychotic laugh)”
I think we can assume that the US has no interest, intention or motivation to make any of this easier. Why would they act otherwise? We’ve been told that relinquishments are not a priority for State “Consular Official R (second conversation) — Told R that his boss claims that R has the power to shorten renunciation wait times. R responded by saying that the renunciations are a low priority that do not compare with high priority activities such as passport renewals, and that there will be no change in priority. ” .
At best the State Dept. could care less about us – and as reported to Stephen, we aren’t a priority, and they don’t intend to dedicate any resources to reducing the backlog or making the process faster/simpler. At worst they intend to continue to make it onerous, more costly, and more difficult to access – benefiting from this by generating higher revenues for State off the backs of renunciants (by first increasing renunciation fees from 0.00. to 450. to 2350. in a very short span of time, and then extending the fee to relinquishments as well) – and reducing/manipulating the numbers on the Federal Register by reducing the numbers who can even obtain appointments or who can afford to renounce – thus creating/maintaining the narrow bottleneck.
When they used to post the appointment slots on line at each Embassy/consulate in Canada, we could and did count and report the number of available slots monthly, and we could see the availability go up or down. For a while, it increased at locations like Toronto, and then it decreased. Now with this system it is not possible for the public to see how many slots they have set aside per month per location.
If they allot only a set max slots per month per embassy/consulate, they can cap the numbers who can renounce/relinquish annually, and artificially manipulate the totals reported on the Federal Register to make it look as if the numbers of expats renouncing formally are not rising.
I think they could care less about depriving us of the legal right to expatriate. There is no recourse apparently, and they probably feel that no-one gives a damn about people renouncing – and perceive that there will be no-one powerful enough to fear taking them to task.
@Fred, don’t give them ideas!!! 😛 I could see them raising the renunciation fee to $25,000 though, especially if numbers surge even higher.
Sorry, a correction needed to my comment above. The renunciation fees went from zero to 450. to 2350. It didn’t start at 100. USD
(I was thinking of the Canadian fee of 100. CDN to renounce Canadian citizenship).
@Badger, I suspect this is correct, that they’re not going to make things any easier. It’s appalling.
I had been such a patriotic child. I have grown very cynical about how the USG operates and especially the collateral damage it’s caused.
Why is anybody surprised by discovering that those wanting to renounce are “low priorities” for the US Government? The writing has been on the wall for several years already. I am not, THANK GOD, a US citizen, but I was married to one, who already renounced just over three years ago. We have a friend who sent an e-mail to the US Consulate in Frankfurt three weeks ago and received a reply, ten days later, that he should contact them again in September to “possibly find a date for an appointment” and that in the meantime he might want to look elsewhere, but was told that many consulates were no longer giving immediate appointment dates, but that the renunciant would have to wait (often several months) to find out if an appointment was even possible! It is clear that this is a new tactic to stop the the escape from the prison. Apparently, as the situation has grown progressively worse over the past year and most European banks are definitely not interested in dealing with US customers and with FATCA and no relief in site, thousands of Americans abroad are trying to renounce. So, what does the US Government do to resolve the problem for its own citizens? They complicate the matter in order to cause more suffering and more hardship. Each day my family thanks the Lord for being cut off from this terrible system that beats its own people down and tries to get as much money out of them as possible in the process. A true and great democracy!
@monalisa1776, contrast the threats and slander the US Treasury and IRS regularly issued against those living abroad, their mistreatment and abuse of minnows and taxpayers ‘abroad’ in the OVD programs http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/files/taxpayer-advocate-midyear-2016-fatca.pdf and the effective denial of the right to expatriate by the State Dept. (about the only limited recourse we have had against suffering more of the same abuse from the US government) with this report about the DofJ’s secretive decision not to hold a large US bank to account for ACTUAL moneylaundering/ BSA offences. Read: ‘TOO BIG TO JAIL: INSIDE THE OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S DECISION NOT TO HOLD WALL STREET ACCOUNTABLE; REPORT PREPARED BY THE REPUBLICAN STAFF OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, HON. JEB HENSARLING, CHAIRMAN, 114TH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION, JULY 11, 2016 http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/intfinlaw/2016/07/too-big-to-jail-internal-treasury-documents-reveal-why-justice-department-did-not-prosecute-hsbc.html
It makes me so ill. And, in its continuing obsession with persecuting ordinary people instead of going after US corporations or actual domestic US criminals, the US IRS/US Treasury has been freezing and denying the legitimate refunds of international students and compliant people, and effectively denying service to those outside the US;
See;
‘Taxpayer Advocate Mid-Year Report to Congress: IRS Implementation and Enforcement of FATCA Withholding Is Burdensome, Error-Ridden, and Fails to Protect the Taxpayers’ Rights’
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/intfinlaw/2016/07/taxpayer-advocate-mid-year-report-to-congress-irs-implementation-and-enforcement-of-fatca-withholdin.html
ex. the TAS says:
“….While implementing FATCA and similar international withholding provisions, the IRS withheld refunds from tens of thousands of U.S. taxpayers who were entitled to them. Much of the problem was attributable to the way the IRS attempted to match the Form 1042-S, Foreign Person’s U.S. Source Income Subject to Withholding, filed by the withholding agent against the Form 1042-S filed by the taxpayer with his or her income tax return. In one case, the IRS disallowed the refund claims of tens of thousands of foreign students at U.S. universities and colleges, most of who were fully entitled to those refunds…..”….
…………”The IRS’s enforcement-oriented approach to international taxpayers creates problems for taxpayers, representatives, and other stakeholders, and wastes precious IRS resources.
Limited Service Options for U.S. Taxpayers Living Abroad. The number of U.S. citizens living abroad was estimated at about nine million in mid-2016, and many non-citizens have a U.S. tax filing obligation, as evidenced by the nearly 642,000 Form 1040-series returns filed by nonresident aliens for tax year 2014. Yet taxpayer service options for these taxpayers are limited and continue to be reduced. Taxpayers located overseas generally cannot call U.S. toll-free telephone lines. Almost two years ago, the IRS closed the last four tax attaché posts abroad, eliminating face-to-face service as an option. For the 2016 filing season, the IRS eliminated its Electronic Tax Law Assistance program through which taxpayers could submit tax-law questions to the IRS and receive a response via email.
The report says: “The National Taxpayer Advocate is concerned the IRS is providing fewer options for international taxpayers even as the population of U.S. citizens abroad grows, and these taxpayers are facing greater challenges in voluntarily meeting their tax obligations, partly as a result of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) reporting rules, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).””…………
Note, in my comments re the article and report on the non-prosecution decision re HSBC and the Bank Secrecy Act (read the report – which includes emails and letters obtained by FOIA http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/files/07072016_oi_tbtj_sr.pdf ). Read through. HSBC is a UK based bank with branches in the US (and elsewhere in the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC ), not a US headquartered bank.
For those of us in Japan, this could be fatal to our family lives. I do not know the current situation, but do know it was very difficult to arrange an appointment not only to renounce but also just to renew a passport in Tokyo.
Once Japanese citizenship is awarded, the expat has two years to complete the renounciation process. Japan has recently anulled J citizenship to an US expat fir failing to meet this obligation. Which means that he is now again a USC without permission to be in Japan. Not a good situation to be in.
Child #1, who is 18, renounced last month in Calgary, having submitted the paperwork last November and two days later was given an appointment for early June 2016. Child #2, who is 17, submitted paperwork two weeks ago, figuring that with his sibling’s six-month wait for an appointment, sending things in before turning 18 would be prudent. He’s still waiting to hear back about an appointment.
And before reading this post today, we were strongly considering for Child #3 (14 years old) — a victim of youngest child syndrome, which meant I never got around to registering a birth abroad (hallelujah!) — getting a Tax ID number etc. in order to renounce so there would never be a problem to come back to haunt him. But now I don’t want to put another kid into a crazy system where the U.S. keeps changing the rules and moving the goal posts to suit themselves. Staying under the radar, as has been suggested before, is probably a better course of action with the current situation.
I’ve never trusted U.S. Consulates. I never will. This is just one example of why,
Is an effort needed to force Trudeau to call out the US Ambassador on this subject?
@badger
When we could see the appts before, it was for notarial issues and I don’t think we could claim ALL of those slots were for renunciation. I remember we had a figure of around 192 per month avg (or maybe it was 198). Maybe Pacifica remembers or maybe it is posted somewhere in the Consulate section. But we could not see what type of appt each in that category was for………
It is my understanding (and I cannot remember where I got this figure) that in Toronto, the maximum number of renunciation appts per week was/is 8. This was before the change in mid-February of this year but after the initial larger numbers, say within the last 2 years or so.
@ Tricia,
Toronto was making 144-192 appointments available per month from late 2011 (when I started checking) until Spring 2014, when they discontinued on-line booking.
As you mention, when you could book online, the slots were “Notarial and Other Services,” so we couldn’t see how many of these appointments were being booked for renunciation/relinquishment.
Some thoughts on that:
(1) When you booked under “Notarial and Other Services,” they didn’t know what you were coming in for until you showed up . The on-line booking didn’t say and the consulate didn’t contact you before your meeting. So, they wouldn’t have been able to limit renunciation/relinquishment appointments when using that system.
I’m presuming that was the situation (no contact prior to the meeting) throughout all the years in which they used the online booking system. But I have a question: Was anyone who booked on-line at Toronto for Notarial and Other Services contacted by the consulate prior to your meeting? If so, when was this?
(2) It struck me that renunciation/relinquishment was a growing service, as more people found out about FATCA/FBAR/toxic citizenship, whereas other services were likely to remain pretty steady over the years. So, as wait times for “Notarial and Other Services” appointments kept increasing, I suspected it was largely due to renunciation/relinquishment. Just a theory, of course.
(3) General info on Toronto wait times 2011-2014
I tracked Toronto pretty closely during their years of on-line booking. Following are some notes I made in 2015 regarding it. It jibes with your comment about them beginning to limit r&r appointments about two years ago.
It was pretty easy to get an appt within about a month at Toronto from late 2011 through most of 2012-2013.
In early 2012, wait time was around 2 weeks.
It crept up to around as much as 6 weeks or so by late Spring 2014, maybe a bit more if you had to wait for the next month’s sign-up chart to go on-line (they only had the current month and the following month’s sign-up charts available for use at any given time).
So wait time was increasing, which is never good, but it seemed to do so pretty consistently until late Spring 2014, at which time it was around 6 weeks. Then it jumped up big-time.
Late 2011/Early 2012 – a few weeks
2012-Late Spring 2014 – it slowly increased to about 6 weeks
August 20, 2014 – 5 months
August 27, 2014 – 6 months
October 1, 2014 – 7 months
October 7, 2014 – 8 months
November 2014 – 10 months
Edit (added 14 July) I forgot to mention the following when I posted last night:
After Toronto stopped booking renunciation and relinquishment appointments online through “Notarial and Other Services,” wait time for “Notarial and Other Services” appointments quickly went down to about 1 to 2 months and they cut the number of “Notarial & Other Services” appointments from 144-192 per month (when r&r was included) to 12-36 per month (after they stopped using it for r&r).
Note: I have only checked the booking site very sporadically since they stopped using it for r&r, maybe 4 times, but at widely spaced intervals and it seems to have been pretty consistent. Also you can see the schedule for several months, not just one, each time you look.
While this is not the first time some of you have seen this, it is worth remembering that the State Department is prohibited by statute from interferring/preventing citizens from their right to renounce.
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title8/pdf/USCODE-2011-title8-chap12-subchap III-part III-sec1481.pdf
p466 Right of Expatriation Section, R.S. §1999, is set out as a note under section 1481 of this title.
Right of Expatriation
R.S. § 1999 provided that: “Whereas the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and whereas in the recognition of this principle this Government has freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested them with the rights of citizenship; and whereas it is claimed that such American citizens, with their descendants, are subjects of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments thereof; and whereas it is necessary to the maintenance of public peace that this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and finally disavowed: Therefore any declaration, instruction, opinion, order, or decision of any officer of the United States which denies, restricts, impairs, or questions the right of expatriation, is declared inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Republic.”
Thanks Pacifica. I knew you would be able to get that out in a jiff! It’s not that I disagree that the wait times were lengthened by the number of renunciations. It’s just that we could not accurately give any sort of exact number from records we kept of those online bookings.
I wonder if this stuff is all related to the upcoming US election. After all, renunciations don’t look good on the Democrats. I recall vividly the fantastic drop in unemployment numbers that occurred just before the last election that re-elected Obama…..which were “revised” away immediately the month after he won.
It’s amazing how different the wait times and procedures are at the different consulates.
Wait time in Sydney (Australia) is very short at the moment. I emailed an inquiry in April, sent in required information on 22 May, received list of possible appointment times on 2 June and renounced 16 June.
Sydney requires only one appointment, while I believe there are still some consulates that require 2. If they reduce it to one appointment, doesn’t that reduce their costs? Maybe they should be reducing their fee!
And, the case in Milano mentioned in the post above was for a second appointment – she had already done a first appointment back in April and has been trying to get a second appointment for some time – so the wait for her is longer than 2 months.
@Tricia, you and @Pacifica are right; “…when you could book online, the slots were “Notarial and Other Services,” so we couldn’t see how many of these appointments were being booked for renunciation/relinquishment. We could only see that the number of slots waxed and waned until they stopped showing them online and changed their appointment system.
And, re the State Dept and;”…any declaration, instruction, opinion, order, or decision of any officer of the United States which denies, restricts, impairs, or questions the right of expatriation, is declared inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Republic.”…”.
Since there is seemingly no-one with the power, motivation or responsibility to oversee what they are doing and to stop them from raising the fees to an extortionate level, or no-one with the power or motivation to make them deal with the backlog or give it priority, or even fess up to the backlog and the true numbers expatriating, by default, the fees and the lack of appointments made available do indeed have the end effect of restricting and impairing the right of expatriation, whether it be “inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Republic” or not. If there is no-one tasked with taking them to task, then that prohibition is toothless.
@Pacifica,
“But I have a question: Was anyone who booked on-line at Toronto for Notarial and Other Services contacted by the consulate prior to your meeting? If so, when was this?”
Yes, I received an email from the Toronto consulate prior to my appoinment, stating I had to bring the email with me. I only had to show it to security. This was spring 2013.
Also, IIRC, something in the online booking process required me to inform them of the reason for the appointment.
A thought.
As we are under attack from many different fronts, the only possible route to victory is to open a new undefended front and fight back.
If State is under reporting the number of renounciations, where are the renounciation fees going?
If, for example, the Toronto Embassy processed 20 renounciations in 2015 but only reported 18 of these, where did the $4,700 (2350 x 2 unreported renounciations) go? If the fees have been properly reported, it still shows how sloppy their accounting is. If not propery accounted for then it is a case of fraud, waste or abuse. Either way, embarrassing for the party in power and for a certain presidential canidate under whom some of this may have gone on.
If this can be gotten out then there may be a power that State must reckon with.
I am stating the obvious here but before FATCA and all its ugly step sisters were in place, it was fast, cheap and easy to renounce.
My Swiss mother married my American dad in 1949 in Geneva, Switzerland. They promptly moved to the US where my dad began his career in the hotel business. His young Swiss wife was naturalized US citizen by 1952.
In 1965, they moved back to Switzerland. In the early ’80’s they bought a golf condo in Florida where my mom could spend the winter months golfing. Somewhere around 1983 the IRS started making noises about income taxes, US residence, etc., etc. The easiest way to take care of the ominous new situation was to give up her US citizenship and thereafter come to Florida on a tourist visa. She did just that, quickly and easily, with no drama on either her part or that of the State Dept.
Those were the good old days.
p.s. Not quite three decades later, the UBS bank in Geneva, doing the FATCA/FBAR bidding of the IRS and the weak kneed Swiss federal government, blocked my elderly parent’s bank account without warning. I suppose it was America’s special thank you to my Dad in his waning years for his service in the US Navy in WWII.
@Moderators, could someone do a post on Boris the new UK Foreign Secretary?
We need to bring this out in the open as I think the publicity will help our cause.
As UK Foreign Secretary he is in charge of the counterpart to the US State Department that issues CLNs.
Boris being Boris is likely not yet renounced and has not shown up on the patriot list.
The first inside page of my passport states “Her Britanic Majestys Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty……….” Well that SoS happens to now be Boris…..
Will the USA let him enter the USA on a UK Passport? If he has renounced will he need to show a CLN or pending a CLN a “receipt” that he paid the fee? Will Boris need to be interviewed of intention?
To be blunt, this is delicious for our cause…maybe @Eric can do some of his brilliant writing.