A record number of Americans want out—and now the government is making it easier

If you’re looking to leave the United States for greener pastures, that process is about to get a whole lot cheaper.

Starting next month, the cost of renouncing your U.S. citizenship will go down dramatically—a boon for people already shouldering the burden of paying for a major overseas move. Those wishing to formally shed their American citizenship are required to obtain a form called a Certificate of Loss of Nationality (CLN), and right now it comes with a whopping $2,350 fee. 

In April, that fee will drop by 80%, to $450, according to a final rule recently published in the Federal Register. The State Department says the change is designed to “help alleviate the cost burden for those individuals who decide to request CLN services,” and will bring the fee in line with what it was prior to a price hike in 2015. “A $450 fee is a significant decrease from the current fee that, when adjusted for inflation, represents less of a financial burden than the same fee did when it was first adopted in 2010,” the State Department wrote.

People seeking a safe haven from the current political chaos in the U.S. aren’t the only ones who might need a Certificate of Loss of Nationality. American citizens already living abroad might want to officially renounce their citizenship to avoid filing taxes in the U.S., particularly if they’ve never lived there or don’t plan on moving back. 

Like other paperwork gauntlets associated with American citizenship, obtaining the certificate needed to seal the deal can take many months or more. That process is complicated by a backlog of appointment requests and a steady rise in how many people are now moving out of the U.S. – with some looking to give up their U.S. citizenship for good.

More people are leaving the U.S.

Last year, more people moved out of the U.S. than into it, a phenomenon that hasn’t happened in almost a century. The U.S. experienced a loss of around 150,000 people in 2025, a number that factors in the roughly 2.6 million people who moved into the country during the same time period. Just two years prior, more than twice that many people were immigrating into the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security said in January that 675,000 people were deported from the U.S. last year, but also noted that 2.2 million were so-called “self-deportations”; however, both numbers are difficult to verify. President Donald Trump may be walking back his rhetoric around mass deportation ahead of the midterm elections, but it’s not yet clear that this administration plans to ease off on immigration enforcement.

The Trump administration’s aggressive, scattershot immigration policies can account for some of the country’s dwindling numbers, but more American citizens are decamping of their own accord, too. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Americans are moving to almost every corner of Europe in record numbers. Americans are flooding into countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Germany to live and work, leaving the U.S. behind. 

Nearly half of Americans have considered moving abroad, according to a Harris poll published last year. With cost-of-living woes ongoing and the U.S. diving headlong into an unpopular war, it’s unlikely those numbers will tip back toward the states any time soon.