More accurately, China does not recognize dual citizenship. Not quite the same thing. My daughter is a dual citizen of both China (by birth) and the US (one parent being US citizen).
There is a proportion of Taiwanese that go to the US to give birth, and there are private hospitals in the LA area that cater to this crowd. I personally know of several cases. That said, 1/3 of all pregnant Taiwanese is just a slight exaggeration:rolleyes:
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If a child is born in the USA and then, within days of its birth, is adopted by foreign parents and taken to their country, is the adopted child a US citizen? Can the child one day sponsor its adoptive parents to live in the US?
Thanks
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Prerequisite is being born in the US. That child may have to prove being born in the US such as a birth certificate. The conditions are either born in the US (regardless of parental nationality or legality of residence in the US), or born of at least one US citizen parent and registered as such (for example, certificate of foreign birth issued by a US embassy or consulate).
So, China Guy, Scarlett and Jett, my daughters, have Chinese birth certificates and passports. Are you saying that they are Chinese citizens–as well as US–but the government doesn’t recognize it? How can one be an unrecognized citizen?
In any case I’ll have those birth certificates and passports locked away in case the Chinese government changes its collective mind some day!
Many countries do not recognise dual citizenship, but that does not mean it is not possible to hold it.
The difficulty would be getting citizenship of a country that did not recognise dual, as you would probably have to renounce your former citizenship to get the new one. HOWEVER, if you were American-born, what is to stop you getting that citizenship again? It is your birthright after all. (Or does renouncing it once permanently negate your right to ever hold it again?)
The easy thing is to get citizenship of a country that does recognise dual nationality, even if the country of your original citizenship does not. They won’t necessarily find out about it.
It is also very easy - even as I understand it “tolerated” in this part of the world, to “lose” a passport, get a new one, and keep the old one. Businesspeople travelling to many countries in the Middle East including Israel often need two passports.
Depends. I haven’t gone through foreign adoption so there may be some things I don’t understand. That said, how did they leave China? did you go to the US consulate and get an American visa placed in their Chinese visa and leave on their Chinese passport?
If that is the case, then the last official immigration bureau record of the Chinese government is that your daughters left China on a PRC passport. Then in the eyes of the Chinese government, they are Chinese citizens.
If you go to the Chinese embassy in the US and say they are now US citizens, the Chinese embassy will try to impound the Chinese passports (remember passports belong to governments and not individuals). If you come back for a visit to China, do not go to the Chinese embassy and say you’ve got two passports. :o
If your daughters have since become naturalized US citizens, then they have US citizenship. If you haven’t informed the Chinese government, then the Chinese government doesn’t know this.
Now to get complicated, if you come to China using the Chinese passport, they will be considered Chinese. To leave China, they will require an official visa. To leave China for the US, they will require a US visa. The US can not grant them an official visa because they are already US citizens. Catch-22.
The consular officials can issue a “pro-forma” visa, which is essentially a fake visa issued by the US government to facilitate leaving China and can not be used for entry into the US. In other words, your daughters can not get a visa to enter the US on their Chinese passport.
If for some reason your daughters are in China on a Chinese passport and require the intervention of US Consular officials, then the US is powerless to intervene. There have been cases of traffic accidents and the kids needed an emergency airlift and could not leave China because they did not have a valid visa in their Chinese passport and couldn’t leave on their US passport because they didn’t enter on a US passport. (trust me, I’ve heard this lecture about 10 times now from the consulate.)
If your daughters enter China on their US passport with a valid Chinese travel visa, then they are considered US citizens and the US consulate could in fact intervene.
To be 99.99% sure of being treated as an American citizen in China, you should officially renounce the Chinese citizenship at a Chinese embassy or the entry/exit bureau in China.
There have been numerous cases of Chinese born businessmen gaining foreign passports and entering China with their Chinese passport. Then getting into sometimes dubious business disputes and going to jail. The foreign countries have not been able to offiically intervene. James Peng of Australia was a famous case about 10 years ago.
So, to answer your question, unless officially informed otherwise, the Chinese government considers your daughters Chinese if they travel in China on their Chinese passports and do not know about their US citizenship.
The US for example tolerates dual citizenship. I’ve started a pit thread or two about my adventures with that toleration…
The 14th amendment is still in force, of course, but there are some politicians who don’t like it. The Federation for American Immigration Reform want to see it changed - the proposed bill seems to have sunk without trace though.
Here’s where it gets weird… current legal practice in the US holds that merely taking an oath of citizenship in another country, even if that oath includes renouncing previously held citizenships, does not result in American citizenship being revoked! So you don’t have to get your US citizenship back… you never lost it.
For more than you ever wanted to know about the US and dual citizenship, but which some of us need to try to comprehend, see Rich Wales’ excellent Dual Citizenship FAQ.