The State Department has slashed by about 80% the fee for Americans to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship.
After years of legal battles with several groups representing Americans wanting to give up their citizenship, the department on Friday published a final rule in the Federal Register that reduces the cost from $2,350 to $450.
The new fee, which took effect on Friday, had been promised in 2023 but had never been implemented. The cost is now the same as it was when the State Department first started charging Americans to formally renounce their citizenship in 2010.
Part of the requirement for renouncing is (or at least should be) that you have established citizenship somewhere else. Otherwise you would be considered stateless, which causes all kinds of problems. Everything from being unable to access government benefits, to not being able to get an ID.
I say “should be” because the US is one of the few attending countries that refused to sign the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness
As an aside, it is this annoying thing with American exceptionalism in regards to certain issues that makes it anathema to the concept of a United Nations, despite it being a founding member-nation.