The Internal Revenue Service published 1,462 names on its latest quarterly list of U.S. citizenship renunciations for the first quarter of 2026. That's up 13.8% from the same quarter a year earlier and marks the second-highest quarterly total in the past year. The increase is notable because it occurred before the government lowered the fee to renounce U.S. citizenship.
Latin America has long offered Americans the most accessible second-passport landscape in the world, with Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Panama, Costa Rica, and most neighboring countries permitting dual citizenship without renunciation. The region accounts for the bulk of U.S.-citizen naturalizations abroad each year, including more than 125,000 Mexican-American dual citizenships granted in 2025 alone.
The State Department has reduced the cost of US citizenship renunciation from $2,350 to $450. A final rule published in the Federal Register on March 13, 2026 makes the change effective approximately April 12, 2026. The fee returns to where it stood between 2010 and 2014, before a surge in renunciation requests led the government […]