# Retroactive CLN for naturalized Canadians



## 416 (Sep 20, 2011)

Northof49 said:


> For US expats living in Canada who want to pursue the backdated Certificate of Loss of Nationality (CLN) option, it apparently is possible to obtain such a thing. Ms. Anderson of the US consulate in Toronto has agreed with my (somewhat expensive) US lawyer that on the basis of my affidavit evidence submitted to date and subject to appearing before her and explaining the situation, she sees no problem in issuing a CLN bearing a date in 1984, when I took the oath of allegiance to Canada in the belief that in so doing I was relinquishing and did intend to relinquish my US citizenship. It's not a done deal yet but they are not giving us an especially hard time. This solution will not apply to everyone. First, you must have genuinely intended to relinquish your US citizenship in taking up foreign citizenship. Second, all your actions since the date of that expatriating act must be consistent with that intention -- e.g, you have not traveled on or even possessed a US passport, you have not attempted to assert US citizenship for your children born outside the US to you when you were still a US citizen, you have not voted in any US elections, you have not filed US tax returns, your have not worked in the US or lived there for any length of time. All these are true of my situation, and I can honestly say that I did not consider myself a US citizen since 1984. I am not renouncing my US citizenship but instead asking for official confirmation of an historical fact that I lost it in 1984.


This raises a number of interesting possibilties. I'd be curious to know what they'd do with a pure accidental American who was born in the US, but wasn't until recently aware that they were a USC and have never done anything to assert US citizenship. Or said that when they signed an oath of allegiance to the Crown when they had a federal government summer job in 1981 they intended to renounce their US nationality, and belived they had.


----------



## 416 (Sep 20, 2011)

416 said:


> This raises a number of interesting possibilties. I'd be curious to know what they'd do with a pure accidental American who was born in the US, but wasn't until recently aware that they were a USC and have never done anything to assert US citizenship. Or said that when they signed an oath of allegiance to the Crown when they had a federal government summer job in 1981 they intended to renounce their US nationality, and belived they had.


A passport application asks you to solemnly declare that you are a Canadian citizen. I wonder if that would do? 



> Sec. 349. [8 U.S.C. 1481]
> 
> (a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality-
> 
> (2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or


----------

