Almost no U.S. citizenship renunciation appointments left during 2016 in Dublin; other U.S. embassies also putting up various roadblocks

The website of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin (archive.org — archive.is) is stating that they have “no Renunciation [Sic] appointments available at the U.S. Embassy Dublin from 6th April 2016 until 5th December 2016″. Hat tip: @DavidSShaw13 on Twitter.

So I decided to see whether other embassies & consulates had any similar revelations on their websites, and made tables of the results. These tables cover 175 locations — at least one post in every country where the U.S. State Department has (or had) a permanent physical presence, though not all posts in each country are covered. According to the State Department, the U.S. has “more than 270 diplomatic locations around the world”, though some of these are missions to international organisations or otherwise don’t handle renunciations. These are divided into two groups:

1. A table of links to the renunciation information pages of U.S. embassies & consulates, along with any notable comments on those websites about their procedures (51 entries)
2. A second table of embassies/consulates whose webpages don’t contain any detailed information on renouncing U.S. citizenship nor any mention of how to make an appointment (124 entries, or more than 70% — including twelve embassies to European Union member states).

From my examination so far, Dublin is the only post whose website confesses to a renunciation backlog. However, others reveal they are restricting the supply of appointments to an hour a week or one half-day each month. The rest won’t openly admit their backlogs or scheduling restrictions at all (though we know thanks to Patrick Cain that Toronto has a similar 10-month backlog). And some are deliberately making things even more difficult & time-consuming by demanding a two-appointment process with a two-week wait or longer in between, or telling you to fill out unnecessary forms in quintuplicate, or other such absurdities. (And very few are clear about their procedures for non-renunciant relinquishers, or even mention the word “relinquishment” at all.).

The majority of posts instruct you to email or call for renunciation appointments, and state or imply that they don’t accept online bookings; I find it quite likely that these posts are also silently restricting the supply of appointments. Only a few (for example, Brussels and Seoul) explicitly indicate that online booking (under the “notarial or other services” category) is acceptable. It might actually be easier to get an initial appointment at one of the posts whose websites don’t mention renunciation: since they don’t mention any restrictions on appointments, they can’t object if you just go ahead and book under “notarial or other services”. These posts also probably perform so few renunciations that their staff will have to ask you to come back again for a second appointment so that they can read up on the procedures in the interim & check with their superiors, but at least they might feel too embarrassed to make you wait the better part of a year for the second appointment.

Also see the Isaac Brock Society Consulate Report Directory for first-person accounts of what actually happens during renunciation & other relinquishment interviews.

Table 1: Links to renunciation information pages

Table 2: posts with no renunciation information

The below table lists 124 posts whose webpages don’t contain any detailed information on renouncing U.S. citizenship nor any mention of how to make an appointment to do so.

Just because a post’s website lacks information about renunciation, it does not mean they don’t process renunciations. You can always try booking an appointment online under “notarial or other services” unless they specifically forbid you from doing so. For example, we know that René González renounced in Havana. It just means that that they don’t advertise the availability of the service nor tell you how to get an appointment. To be fair, many of those posts are in countries where there probably isn’t much local demand for the service — but keep in mind that people from neighbouring countries may have to take a renunciation vacation there in order to get an appointment within a reasonable period of time. (Also note: three posts in Table 1 above state or imply that they do not take renunciation appointments from people living outside their consular district.)

Links go to search results for the word “renunciation” showing no relevant results at the given embassy or consulate website. Only archive.is links are provided in the “archive link” column, as archive.org can’t save these search result pages. This table does not include countries where the U.S. does not have an embassy at all and relations are handled by a non-resident ambassador accredited to two or more countries (e.g. Andorra, Bhutan, Guinea-Bissau, etc.).

Conclusion

It’s worth quoting Victoria’s reaction from two years ago:

Now I’m just an old lady and I don’t pretend to be the brightest crayon in the box but if the goal here is to “break even” then they are looking at this all wrong. Read the outline of the procedure again. Does that sound efficient to you? Just the assumption that any US citizen showing up to renounce his US citizenship doesn’t really understand what he/she is doing and has to have it explained ad nauseum (intensive interviews?) and then be sent off to a corner like a little kid to reflect on it before being allowed to come back and do the deed, is just ridiculous. Right there I’d say just treating people like adults and assuming that they do know their own mind would save a lot of time, money and hassle all around.

And the narrative that will come out of this fee raise is not likely to focus on “cost recovery” at US consulates around the world but on what is going to be perceived as a punitive act on the part of the US government. It looks like they are so embarrassed by the renunciation numbers and the lines to renounce at the US consulates that they are looking for ways to reduce or slow down the demand. Think about that. Has the state of US citizenship in the world really come to the point where the US government thinks that Americans have to be actively discouraged from renouncing?

That is what people are likely to take away from this news. That the United States is trying to keep it’s citizens captive by finding quasi-legal methods to interfere with their right to expatriate under international law.

The State Department later claimed that all of the rigamarole they let each consulate add to the process, not to mention the obscene fee, “does not impinge, but rather protects, the right of expatriation”. What this really seems to mean is that State seized on a few examples of people who didn’t know what they were doing or who were trying to throw sand in the gears, and used that as an excuse to treat the rest of us like delinquent children and force us to subsidise the time spent on those other cases.

Don’t you love paying taxes & fines for this kind of “protection” from the United States?