I read Zoe Williams’ piece on Americans renouncing their citizenship with particular and personal interest (‘I don’t want to be part of a dictatorship’: the Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship, 28 April). The rot started well before Donald Trump was elected in 2016, though he and his hostile team and policies have exacerbated that.

Look back to George W Bush’s fight against terrorism following 9/11, one aspect of which involved tracking down terrorism funding by setting onerous reporting regulations on US citizens abroad, and on international financial institutions in which US citizens had an interest. Eventually some of those financial institutions outside the US decided they simply would not permit US citizens to invest in, bank with, or take out their products.

Born in the US but married to a Brit, and having raised a family and lived in the UK for over 50 years, and with dual citizenship, I took the decision to renounce in spring 2012. Yes, it was expensive (with a good immigration lawyer), and yes I had to swear before the flag as Zoe describes, but, unlike today’s renouncers, I didn’t have to wait too long for the appointment at the US embassy in London.

I doubt I shall ever regret that decision. The administration aspect of my life is very much simpler, though I have to remember to get an Esta (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) if I travel to see close relatives in the US. But very sadly the US is no longer a country to feel proud of.
Name and address supplied

Although the idea of Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship out of distaste for the current government undoubtedly appeals to the Guardian’s core demographic, the truth is likely to be very different.

In my many years of practising US immigration and nationality law in London – years which included Donald Trump’s first term – I never once had a renunciation client whose rationale was purely or even mainly political. In most cases the reason was simply convenience, avoiding the hassle that US citizens living outside the US face in carrying out the normal tasks of adult life, such as opening a current account or applying for a mortgage.

The motivating factor, as long ago as 2012 (when my colleague Kathleen Kavanagh and I wrote an article for the Arizona Attorney Magazine on the subject), was the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca), enacted in 2010, which made US citizens living abroad “economic lepers”, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, due to the reporting requirements that Fatca imposed on foreign economic institutions with US citizen customers. It was simply easier for an institution to rid itself of its troublesome customers than to comply – and institutions did so.

It is tempting to think that Trump’s odious policies have prompted an exodus of US citizens, but the real answer is likely to be much more mundane.
Susan Willis McFadden
London

I’ve lived in the UK for nearly 30 years and have dual British/American citizenship. I’m married to an Englishwoman who has no desire to live in the US and I find the current administration the embodiment of evil cruelty. Combining that with the tax and regulatory burdens on expat Americans, not to mention our virtual disenfranchisement when it comes to presidential elections, would all seemingly make me a prime candidate for renouncing my American citizenship. Yet I have never once considered it.

For all its considerable flaws, the US, specifically California, is now and will for ever be my home, and I’m not going to turn my back while it slides into authoritarianism. I might be only one voice and one vote, but renouncing my citizenship removes even those small levers of influence. I refuse to cut the final cord and simply abandon my friends and family, who do not have the option of living abroad, to their fate.
Name and address supplied

I have been in Norway for 20 years now, and renounced my US citizenship in 2011. I don’t regret a thing and haven’t looked back. One of my main motivations was the ridiculous tax law; I couldn’t see how the Internal Revenue Service had any claim on knowing anything about my non-resident non-citizen husband’s income. Fortunately,

I was also broke when I moved here so there was no need for a lawyer or to pay an exit tax. Unfortunately, my son is a dual citizen and is now 15; he has no intention of moving to the US and I’m not sure how the draft registration will affect him when the time comes. I can also apply for Canadian citizenship thanks to their recent rule change, which I am considering as a Plan B, but honestly, I’m living my best life in a country with peace and prosperity, and clean air and water. What’s to miss?
Shea Sundstøl
Lunde, Norway

Renouncing your US citizenship is not a guarantee that you won’t end up being “part of a dictatorship”. The far right is on the march in the UK and across Europe, and if you remain apolitical you may eventually be as responsible as the collective US electorate for allowing dictatorship to take hold. Many of the people who Zoe interviewed seem to lack a sense of personal responsibility towards the common good. So I would point out to them: don’t fight it here or don’t fight it there – your choice. Either way, you forfeit your right to complain about what your country is coming to.
Name and address supplied

I have three adult children who were “accidental Americans” – as in they have never lived or worked in the US, and have citizenship because their father (we are now divorced) was an American.

I have one child who has now moved to the US to be with his partner whom he met online, one child who has successfully and expensively renounced, and one who is in the long process of renouncing. It can be as hard on those with low incomes as those with higher incomes. Understanding how investments (even a small pension or a stocks and shares Isa) should be recorded for US tax purposes is tricky without accessing costly advice. It is very onerous.

But mostly as a parent I am sad that what I imagined as a gift to our children, the fact that they would have the freedom to live and work anywhere in the EU (until Brexit) and the US, has turned into a financial and administrative burden. And there is a sense of loss for the two who have chosen to renounce, as that was part of who they were.
Name and address supplied

As American citizens resident abroad, we are among a tiny fraction of the world population living outside the US that actually has the right to vote to stop the worldwide destruction being wrought by the Trump regime and its enablers. Please wait to renounce your citizenship until after you vote in the November elections, or consider keeping it just for this purpose.

US citizens living abroad have provided the margin of victory in critical races. We have a right to vote in all federal elections, and often in state and local elections if we say we intend to return some day. Some recent elections have been won by margins of just a few hundred votes or even by a coin toss. With all the myriad ways the Republicans are trying to cheat in the November elections, we need an overwhelming vote to stop the current authoritarian takeover in its tracks. American citizens, the world desperately needs your vote.
Irisita Azary
Heidelberg, Germany

While I applaud the conviction of US citizens going to the trouble of renouncing their citizenship, a part of me still cannot help but wonder … why?

As a US resident who plans to move overseas, permanently, after retirement, I too am frustrated and disgusted with the state of affairs in the US. But renouncing citizenship? I’d be giving up my Social Security income, which will be significant. After a working lifetime of paying retirement taxes, I am not about to walk away from that benefit. I assume the people in the article either don’t need the benefit, or simply will not be getting a large enough benefit to matter. Good for them. Their principled approach is admirable, but I can’t do that.

Our plan is to take our eight figures of retirement savings and move it offshore, where healthcare is better and cheaper than what’s in the US, even with Medicare. And then on top of that I am more than happy to let Uncle Sam send us thousands of dollars every month to spend (and benefit) a foreign economy. Will I still need to pay US taxes? Sure, but I am already used to that.

Like the people in the article, I too fear America is a lost cause, a democracy in name only. But I will happily take from it whatever remaining benefits it offers.
Name and address supplied

As a working-class American with not the remotest possibility of being able to afford to leave the US even if I wanted to, I have no respect or admiration for whiny rich people who act like they have to flee the country in response to what they must believe is the modern equivalent of the Nuremberg laws. I have endured listening to the constant lies of my government, being physically abused by police, and listening to both my own brother and my sister-in-law tell me that Democrats are simultaneously communists and fascists who “deserve to die”. My choice is not to stand down or be intimidated. I and the millions like me here have every right to make our voices heard in the same sphere as the constant drone of manufactured lies that dominate public discourse. If some are too privileged or triggered to stand up and confront evil, then I call them what they are. Cowards.
Name and address supplied