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Wonder what really happens at the consulates? Find out in the Isaac Brock Society’s Consulate Report Directory, currently 274 pages of first-hand accounts of renunciation/relinquishment appointments, arranged by consulate location, along with links to further information and the required Dept of State forms.
Reports are updated as consulate visit stories are posted on the website.
You can post here or elsewhere on the site (we’ll keep an eye out for them). Some comments may be excerpted or condensed slightly in the consulate reports. The original posts and comments remain on their threads are not edited.
Thanks to everyone for sharing your experiences…and keep ’em coming! It’s a new experience for everyone and your information is really helpful.
To change or delete your report in the Directory, you can post the change as a comment on this thread or e-mail Pacifica@isaacbrocksociety.ca
Click here for the Consulate Report Directory
2013.02.12. As of today, this discussion now continues at Part 2. Please click here to go to Consulate Report Directory (Brockers describe their Consulate Meetings) Part 2.
@Banany,
Congratulations. You must feel relieved and it is great that it was an easy procedure.
Must admit I am jealous – still waiting for appointment #2 in Vancouver. When I check online re appts., they are showing absolutely zero appointments for notarial services right through March/2013. I certainly hope they will contact me before March.
@Banany,
Congratulations from me too. I’ll add your info on the Relinquish and Renounce database.
Tiger, obstruction is what you and others are facing at some Consulates / Embassies. What a lot of added time for worry and stress it is causing — that there is not a Department of State standard of procedure followed by all Consulates / Embassies. Thus, the value of the Consulate Report Directory and the database we maintain and people have contributed to here at Isaac Brock.
Congratulations, Banany! Great way to spent Election Eve (US)!
@Banany
Great news! Very happy for you and that your experience there was as pleasant as mine.
The $20 hotel breakfast is unfortunate. Lots of excellent food around the US consulate at every possible price point, starting with the downtown Dundas/Spadina Chinatown, which is at least as much Vietnamese these days.
A bit up the scale is the restaurant strip on Baldwin St.. The Baldwin St. strip was a centre of draft-dodger activism during the Vietnam War, which gives the whole thing some historic resonance, if you want that kind of thing.
@Tiger
Your renunciation appointment will not be subject to the availability of an slot on the calendar. When my appointment was set up there were no appointments available for at least 6 to 8 weeks.
I don’t know if my case is typical but I received the phone call to set up the appointment 12 weeks after the first appointment, and the appointment was set for 2 weeks later.
@Just a Canadian
Thanks for the info above. I had considered the possibility that 2nd appointments would not necessarily be dependent on the online appointment calendar. I will try to be patient for 12 weeks or so.
*Good on you Banany, you must be relieved! Did the Consulate rep stick to the script (4079) or were there surprise questions like last US address?
*@CDN The staff did stick to the script. I couldn’t remember my last U.S. address but they said that was okay because it was a relinquishment not a renunciation. I drove all the way from Ottawa to Toronto to avoid the Embassy and its attitudinal staff. It was worth the drive and the $20 for breakfast. Thank you everyone.
*Congratulations, Banany! All the threats of fines, audits and jail time are now a thing of the past.
This reminds me. When I went to the embassy, the guard at the door asked me why I was there. I stated that I came to renounce. He let out a little grunt. However, when I left he seemed nice and friendly, maybe because I was chatting and getting along with everyone. Many people think poorly of renunciations, but that’s only because they don’t understand the circumstances of such. Since the US chooses to be extreme with renunciations, stating that one who renounces will never be a US citizen again, one would think that it would make a much greater effort to not encourage or pressure renunciations. It’s kind of unique to pressure one to renounce and to then oppose them for doing so.
@Banany,
Interesting re ‘the last U.S. address’. The clerk who I had to deal with in Vancouver, insisted that I did need to know the last U.S. address, although mine is also a ‘relinquishment’. Fortunately, although I had not lived at that address for 48 years and no one in my family has lived there for 38 years, I actually remembered it. Of course, as I have stated on this link before, the clerk I dealt with was obviously ‘newly trained’ and was actually consulting notes through the process.
@Tiger, yeah, that is really ridiculous for relinquishment. For some reason, there’s a line for last US address on the oath of renunciation (even there it doesn’t make much sense to me why, but it is there). But, as you know, there’s no request for it on the DOS forms for relinquishers at all, so no need for it at all.
*pacifica777, I put down my last address in Florida but that caused a bit of confusion when I stated that I had never lived there. I then stated that I lived in California but didn’t know the address and didn’t bring it with me, and that my address before Florida was Colorado since I basically lived there whenever I went on a vacation to the US. So, the Colorado “last address” is the one that got put down. I later remembered that I should have given them the more recent Colorado address. Afterwards, the US continued to call me until the day before the election to vote, so maybe the “last address” is used for voting purposes and didn’t work in my case, since I used the Florida address for voting purposes. I wonder if I should call them to explain to them that I won’t be voting since I’m not a US citizen? Otherwise, I might get a bunch of calls in 2016 trying to convince me to vote demorepublican.
*@pacifica777
” For some reason, there’s a line for last US address on the oath of renunciation (even there it doesn’t make much sense to me why, but it is there).”
Actually my copy ot the oath states “That I formerly lived in the United States at”
This need not be the last residence, with 3 possible choices, active address on a USAF base, home of record ( where the military sent my initial call to active duty), or my parent’s home. I chose my parent’s address as the most significant, it also the last place I held a US driving permit and was registered to vote.
This is sheer speculation on my part, but I can see why the State Department might want to know your last US address, for voting purposes. Since the US (unlike Canada) doesn’t have a non-partisan, government-managed federal electoral data base (Elections Canada) and voter registration is handled by individual states, I would assume that when someone renounces State would notify the last state in which they lived the person is no longer a citizen and hence cannot vote. That person’s name and any additional identifiers (like maybe birth date) would be noted as ineligible, so neither that person nor any other person could vote in future elections. That would make sense to me.
And actually, for relinquishment CLNs, it might make sense for the State Department to ask those people for their last US address (even though in the cases I know of they haven’t). It would be a lot easier for them to check your answer to the question on 4079 “do you vote in US elections” or however it’s worded, if they knew your last state of residence (which is where you’d vote if you got an overseas ballot, as I understand it’s supposed to work, at least in theory).
However, given the complexity and messiness of US voter registration in some, if not all, states, and the flexibility they seem to exercise sometimes in terms of what state you can claim for voting from overseas, this might not be practicable. Like a lot of US laws and regulations. But, in a pure ideal logical world, it would make some sense. At least to me.
Otherwise I don’t see the relevance of your last US address to your CLN, whether by renunciation or by relinquishment.
*In my case, I have no idea of my last US address since I left as a young child, but I’m wondering if the questions about a last US address have anything to do with previous ownership of vacation property and whether that might disqualify for relinquishment. The 4079 does ask if you currently own property in the US. I have a friend who was naturalized a year before me in 1971 and would otherwise pass all of the requirements, but her name was on a deed to her mother’s Florida vacation home for estate purposes. The place was sold sometime before her mother passed away. She thinks that having her name on the deed might hurt her case for relinquishment.
*My wife wants to renounce, but
a) she needs her Canadian citizenship
b) she has to run the gauntlet of 5 years of tax filing along with the requisite late fines and penalties, and we have NO investments whatsoever.
c) The threat of penalties is financially crippling to the point where we won’t have any money left at all. We make $35,000 an year in total family income. So where would we have the money to pay for $57,000 penalties if such penalties were assessed.
The fear generated has pretty much frozen us in a state of “Damned if we do; damned if we don’t?” So…what the hell to do???
@CDN, I don’think that owning real estate in the US would disqualify a relinquishment if no other US ties existed. Non-citizens can own real estate in the US, so real estate ownership isn’t an indicator of citizenship in the way that, say, voting in a US election is. The standard of proof for evaluating the case one presents on their 4079 is balance of probabilities. I don’t see this tipping the balance.
Once again, there is no balance in balance of probabilities, the official term being preponderance of evidence. The shady lady has her thumb glued to that pseudoscientific balance pan. There is no status for extraterritorials except guilty till proven (over and over again, and then subject to unending possibilities of retroactive legislation and interpretation) momentarily innocent. One smidgen of previous conformity with US law (passport to enter, required tax filing, etc) will tilt that phony “balance,” no matter if you never voted, no matter if you haven’t resided in the Beknighted Cesspool as an adult. You belong to the master, and you must pay up and suffer extended uncertainty (many months, if not years) to shed the shackles of servitude and compliance. Land of the flee, home of the grave. All hope abandon, ye who enter there (NB You can’t try to enter until you’ve left!)
@CDN I think your friend might speak with an experienced Canadian lawyer who is licensed both in the US and Canada and who has handled relinquishment and renunciation cases before. I know of at least one very experienced lawyer in Toronto. I don’t want to post the link here, because I don’t think we’re supposed to be advertising for lawyers (and I am not recommending the person, just presenting information that I know from various sources this lawyer does have experience and knows the law in this area).
register on our password-protected forum (see link upper right on home page), then find a post by me (I have several in the past few days) on that forum, click on my name and send me a private message via the website, and I’ll reply when I get your message (within half a day or so) with the link.
There is no certainty as to how the “preponderance of evidence” would play out, as usxcanada points out, but there’s a chance this lawyer or another one if you know of one, might have some experience or familiarity with like cases or with jurisprudence (for what that might be worth). Your friend might have to pay for an hour of billable time, which would probably be several hundred bucks. But it’s probably more reliable than anything I can tell you, or anyone else who posts here for that matter, and it’s probably safer than your friend going to a consulate and asking a consular officer point blank. They probably wouldn’t give a clear answer anyway without seeing a completed 4079, and then you might be committed. My gut feeling is that approach (going to a consulate) might be safe in Toronto, but I definitely would NOT recommend trying that with the embassy in Ottawa and I’m not confident about any other consulates. Toronto does seem to have some reasonable and relatively relaxed vice consuls who might actually give you an opinion, but maybe I’m engaging in wishful thinking. Or if you friend wants to pay a bit more in legal fees, your friend might see if a lawyer would be willing to pose the question as an intermediary and while protecting your friend’s identity, if the lawyer doesn’t have a clear answer. I’ve heard of a couple of cases where lawyers in Canada have done that on behalf of a client, with mixed results in terms of getting an answer they trusted or wanted to hear.
Unless someone watching this thread has gone forward with a relinquishment claim and does own property in the US, owned up to it on the 4079, and either got a CLN or was told the property ownership wasn’t going to be an issue and hasn’t had a rejection after waiting a couple of months after the application, I don’t see any other ways of getting a reliable answer to your question. (I don’t know of any such cases myself.) Even in these scenarios, I don’t know how much faith you can have that what worked for someone else would work for your friend, as I don’t think anyone knows how consistent or predictable these decisions are, either in the field or in Washington.
*Pacifica and usx, the state dept folks do seem reasonable in their approach to these things and if it were me, I would go for it. I suppose that if they really needed that info then the question would be more specific and would be brought up in the interview.
*Schubert, I am registered with the forum but forgot the password. Any way to find it? I remember it’s related o the name of the web site.
*schubert1975, to open a bank account in the US, an American abroad must provide a “last address”. BoA told me that it needs a “last address” for identification purposes. Without the “last address”, it cannot confirm who you are. So, the “last address” is used to identify if one as a US person. If one does not have a “last address”, then one must be physically present in the US with a US passport to open up a bank account.
*schubert1975, I renounced, am a dual from birth and I own property in the US. However, my net worth is around -500k and I live in Switzerland where one must renounce to refinance one’s mortgage as a US person, so we shall see how the US government defines the situation for those who end up paying more in US taxes as a result of renouncing.
*Duke of Devon, the password is here: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2011/12/12/how-to-join/