Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025 - A wakeup call for Dual-US citizens

Opinion on the “Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025” proposed by Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH).

If you are thinking about renouncing your United States Citizenship, this bill is a wakeup call.

This bill would make it illegal for US citizens to hold two citizenships at the same time.

The law would essentially give a year after passage to report renunciation of foreign citizenship, or of United States citizenship to the State Department, in writing.

Under the proposed act; If the State department knows you are a dual citizen and you do not submit in writing renunciation of foreign citizenship, the State Department will involuntarily revoke your United States citizenship.

The bill looks like it may be a performative one, to establish the Senator in the United States Senate- as he joined the Senate earlier this year.

The bill is very short, and lacks many critical tangential issues, such as consideration given to the severe tax consequences given to US citizens who involuntarily have their citizenship stripped.

The bill will have pushback from many sources:

• The bill could have pushback from the Trump family, as the First Lady, Melania Trump, as well as her son, Barron, have dual Slovenian-United States Citizenship.

  
  

• There is a Constitutional hurdle here as well, as the 14^th Amendment provides that United States Citizens cannot lose their citizenship unless they do so voluntarily.

  
  

• There are also legal considerations; as “Perkins v. Elg”, “Kawakita v. United States”, as well as “Afroyim v. Rusk”- which states that US Citizens cannot have their citizenship taken involuntarily. 

  
  

• This bill would also create a nightmare at both the State and Treasury Departments. Both departments, stripped of resources and funding to handle such a request- would be forced to process the immigration and tax statuses of millions of dual-citizens in the period of a year.

  
  

• With the lack of funding, and barrage of renunciations to process- errors would certainly happen. These errors could inadvertently cause you to face a lifetime ban to the United States, deportation, be subject to the Exit Tax, or become stateless.

Now the bill heads to Senate committee where these issues will come to light.

We believe it is unlikely that the bill will pass as is.

Importantly, while we believe that this bill will perish in committee- the intent of this bill warrants discussion.

The intent of the bill is to potentially redefine allegiance to the United States from allegiance defining the level of commitment to a certain country, to a singular one. A singular allegiance, where you are either “in or out”.  

This bill begins a discussion, and if there is a large enough of a majority of Congress which aligns with this bill- it could become law with a constitutional amendment.

Given the congressional makeup right now, that is very unlikely.

But in the future? Who knows.

If you choose to renounce now, you can do it an in orderly fashion, with well-set expectations and minimal surprises. If you wait- you may be lumped into a mess of millions of dual-citizen Americans who have to navigate a new law and potentially face an astronomically high tax bill.

As my father told me, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of problems”.