As many as 30,000 citizens living abroad have been unable to secure a ‘loss of nationality’ interview during the pandemic
Highlights
- He discovered that along with thousands of other US citizens living abroad, he was caught in a Kafkaesque trap.
- Grant, 30, feels ready to acquire German citizenship, but under German law he must let go of his US passport.
- “The US appears intent on preventing its citizens from exercising their natural and fundamental right to voluntarily renounce their citizenship,” it says.
- Some of the would-be renouncers are “accidental Americans”, having acquired citizenship because they were born in the US though they have lived elsewhere all their lives.
- For the past year he has been trying to get through to an official who will help him renounce his citizenship, without success.