Why thousands of Americans are giving up their citizenship | CNN

Within six months of arriving in New Zealand on a working holiday visa 10 years ago, Erin Klatt knew she wanted to make the country her home for good. Klatt was looking for “somewhere different to be” for a variety of personal and political reasons when she left the US in 2016. “So when I came to New Zealand, it just kind of all clicked,” she said. A decade later, at 34, Klatt officially cut ties with the United States. Earlier this year, just before the US State Department reduced the fee to renounce US citizenship by about 80%, Klatt paid the then $2,350 price and read an oath renouncing her US citizenship. She had experience with dairy farming in Wisconsin and found similar work in New Zealand, through which she got an essential skills work visa allowing her to stay longer in the country. It was through dairy farming that she met her English husband, who was similarly living and working in New Zealand. The two became New Zealand citizens together in May 2025. That was also when Klatt decided it was time to shake her US citizenship. “I never felt overly patriotic or connected to the country,” Klatt said, and she had long been dismayed by the direction of the United St