I am an American citizen whose father was a United States airman stationed in England at the time of my birth in 1978. We moved back to the states a couple of years later.
I used to fancy myself a dual citizen as a kid (and enjoyed showing off my British birth certificate) but then learned that the U.S. doesn’t look too kindly on dual citizenship.
So, should I have given up so easily? Is it possible I could still pursue getting an EU passport? Considering I never travel internationally (although I one day hope to), is there any benefit to my doing so?
It’s unlikely that you have British citizenship through birth. Prior to 1983 British nationality law was such that merely being born in the UK gave you citizenship, but an exception was made for children of visiting armed forces, which rules you out.
You might have citizenship of an EU country through some other means. For example, if your parents or grandparents were citizens of what are now certain EU countries, you might be able to (or you might have been able to, up until a certain birthday) assert your citizenship of that country.
You could also acquire dual citizenship by naturalization. This usually involves moving to another country, staying there a prescribed period of time (usually several years), possibly taking a language and/or civics knowledge test, and then applying for citizenship.
Researching this a bit, I’m not so sure this is true of American military personnel. The UK Border Agency site says the only exception to citizenship by birth “is if you were born to certain diplomatic staff of foreign missions who had diplomatic immunity.”
Can anybody find other documentation that fleshes this out?
I’m a dual US/UK citizen, through marriage to my English husband (I’ve lived in the UK for 17 years). In my circumstances at least, the US has no problem with it. http://www.americanexpats.co.uk/dual.htm
You may be wrong there. US used to be fairly strict about dual citizenship. Not any more. From http://www.richw.org/dualcit/law.html - "On 16 April 1990, the State Department adopted a new policy on dual citizenship, under which US citizens who perform one of the potentially expatriating acts listed above are normally presumed not to have done so with intent to give up US citizenship. Thus, the overwhelming majority of loss-of-citizenship cases nowadays will involve people who have explicitly indicated to US consular officials that they want to give up their US citizenship. "
How does the U.S. treat dual citizens with regards to treaties. i.e. Let’s say Arkansas arrests someone with dual American/German citizenship for murder. Under current treaty obligations, the U.S. is required to grant a German citizen access to his consul in such serious circumstances. However, will the U.S. treat him as a German citizen or as an American citizen?
I was also born in the UK. I check in with the UK embassy and I am eligible for a UK passport. On line there are conditions like if you were born before this year than that sort of thing. Check it out.
As far as I know, the US has always (well, for the last few decades, anyway) been OK with dual citizenship by birth, which is what you hope you’re dealing with.
Dual citizenship by naturalisation used to be a problem, but now it’s only a problem if you want it to be one. From the US Code on the Cornell Law site:
In other words, they only have a problem with you getting naturalised elsewhere if you do it with the intent of giving up your US citizenship. If you just want to go through the shorter passport-control queue in the EU, they’re good with it.
Each country of citizenship will treat you as their citizen when such a situation comes up. I am a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, and both governments make it clear (to all dual citizens) that if you get into legal trouble in the other country, “Hey, you’re on your own, pal.”
There’s a PDF document here that may be helpful - it’s intended as guidance for those who believe they may already be British citizens but don’t have the normal documentation.
Relevant section:
If one of your parents is a UK citizen, then things may be different, depending on which parent and whether or not they were married when you were born.
My general impression was that if you’re a U.S. citizen and are arrested in the U.S., any other citizenships you might hold are immaterial. It’s possible that the treaty obligations with Germany say differently, but I would have assumed that the treaty would have been written to let each country arrest and try its own citizens without interference from the other country.
A bit of Googling finds me South Africa’s policy on such situations: “Dual nationals arrested/detained in the country of their other nationality will not receive assistance from South African Consular Representatives.”
ETA: A little more Googling found me the Master Nationality Rule, which is apparently a general principle of international law (though, of course, “international law” can be quite flexible.)
That seems to be the final answer for my birth certificate being useful. I wonder why they don’t spell out the “armed forces” bit elsewhere on their site?
I suspect, because it’s intended as a broad guide, addressing the relatievely cases where uncertainty most often arises. The more detail you put in, and the more cases you cover, the less user-friendly such a guide becomes.
A wild guess, but the UK authorities expect that visiting forces stationed in the UK will already have been briefed by their own leadership on the consequences of a posting to the UK, and they expect that to have covered the question of the nationality of children born in the country of posting.
Here is a US government document collecting the citizenship laws of other countries. Note that this list apparently collects current law; the laws in any given country may have been different at the time of someone’s birth.