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.
It’s like they’re daring me at this point.
I don’t want to leave this country. I was born here, my dad was born here, my dad’s dad was born here, etc. But, holy shit, this society is failing. It’s not failed, yet, but it is failing. I want to believe that things can turn around, but it gets harder everyday to hold onto that belief.
It’s especially hard because I feel like my proposals for how things could be fixed are actively, aggressively being fought against by many of my countrymen. Hell, we can’t even agree on the problems, let alone solutions. For a lot of Americans, there is no problem! This is all hunky-dory.
A nation is a shared idea. A nation exists when a group of people all agree that they are a nation. I ain’t in the same nation as these folks. They’ve got their idea of America and I’ve got mine, and they are two different things. I’m not a part of the shared idea anymore. It’s moved away from me. It’s become something that I don’t understand or agree with. I don’t think it’s moral or rational, or sustainable.
Frankly, I think the idea of America as a nation, as it stands right now, is doomed to fail. It’s far too tolerant of greed, ignorance and liars with malicious intent. A society like that won’t last. It will collapse.
It’s frustrating living in a state that is pursuing good values, and then we vote federally and lose to morons. What can I do? Move to these shitholes? There’s a lot of possible improvements to the system, but we need to cross a threshold to get over to get that done and IDK if we can. I have young kids and grapple with uprooting them. The next couple of years will be very telling.
{Awkwardly laughs in Minnesotan.}
NGL, I have thought far more frequently lately to move to Canada or see if Canada will adopt the whole state.