I wonder what happens if you have dual-citizenship and are in the military and your two countries go to war with each other. Are you required to beat yourself up?
[Jim Carrey] I’m kickin’ my ass![/Jim Carrey]
I could be wrong, but I thought the US required people to give up their old citizenship when they became US citizens…and I thought most other countries did to. I thought the whole dual citizenship thingy was mostly for people who’s folks are one nationality but are born in another country (or similar scenario), and that they usually have to give up the dual citizenship and pick on or the other nation when they turn 21.
-XT
Does the US accept dual citizenship legally, though? I know that line about “renouncing loyalty to any other country” (rephrased) is the main reason quoted by Spaniard expats I met in the US for not requesting citizenship.
I don’t know if this used to be true a long time ago, but I am 100% sure it is not true now. I also strongly suspect that the huge number of people obtaining United States citizenship each year are not revoking their old citizenship.
On the other hand, I just noticed that technically my South African citizenship would be automatically revoked upon becoming a United States citizen.
Perhaps other countries have similar provisions? It doesn’t appear that the United States cares either way, and it appears I could retail my dual citizenship if I felt strongly about it.
As an aside, a colleague who used to be Zimbabwean was telling me that Zimbabwe had a rule that if you left the country for five years you would lose your citizenship. Five years is not always long enough to become a citizen elsewhere, so there was a very real possibility of becoming stateless.
It doesn’t help that Dubai isn’t a country.
Not the US, if the info on my passport from 2004 is true:
(Underlining mine)
See above. Because of the risk of espionage, I doubt the U.S. would let you serve in a foreign army or government for long before revoking your U.S. citizenship. Not to mention that it would be pretty tough to uphold military obligations to two countries at once without eventually getting kicked out of one or thrown in jail somewhere (the UCMJ is serious business). I know you were probably kidding, but it’s an interesting question anyway, I think.
If you become a US citizen the US does not require you to renounce your other citizenship. However, it does require you to travel on your US passport when entering or leaving the US. My wife was a citizen of another country and got US citizenship about 15 years ago or so, and the other country would still consider her a citizen if she traveled there. (Which she is not going to do anytime soon. Because it is Iraq. :eek: )
I do not know what any other countries do.
In the specific case of dual citizens completing required military service in countries friendly to the US, the US does not consider that joining the army is the same as voluntarily revoking US citizenship. A young man I know with dual Norwegian/US citizenship has served a tour of duty in Afghanistan as a member of the Norwegian armed forces and still has his US citizenship, as well. So there are some circumstances in which it’s acceptable.
In the event of a country at war with the US, as in the original question, all bets are off. If you joined up voluntarily you could well be risking assorted criminal charges (see: John Walker Lindh).
Re what CookingWithGas said about passports: our dual citizen kids are supposed to enter and leave the US on their American passports, and enter Norway on their Norwegian ones. Technically they should leave Norway on their Norwegian passports, too, but when flying to the US we usually show their American passports when checking in at the airport in Oslo. This helps avoid a world of hassles further down the line. Exiting Norway for trips anywhere else in the world, we use the Norskie ones.
Maybe we don’t agree on what’s easy or not… that’s the same site that I was referring to. According to them, I have no problem if I were to immigrate into Canada, without counting Canadian relatives (I know I have some, but I don’t really know them).
On a side note, I lived in Canada for a year working for an American company there, but that was work. I was most definitely not an expatriate American; I was a business traveler. Yeah, even for a year. Specifically I was a NAFTA business traveler, but I got a work permit just to make crossing the border easier.
Similarly I have lived (not currently) in Mexico cumulatively close to three years, again, always as a business traveler, and the last time with a resident visa. I’ve met lots of expats, know at least one illegal immigrant (American living in Guanajuato Capital), and been to at least three expat-dominant towns. In no case was just working in a country the same as being an expat. I could see myself being an expat in Mexico some day, though. Maybe I’ll run into Paul in Saudi when/if he makes up his mind.
Wow, how did you find this? My googling didn’t work, but this is pretty much what I was looking for.
My question about Mexico being #1. Is it Mexican-Americans returning “home”, or people just moving there to emigrate, including other races?
This must have come up before: serving in the US military is one way of earning (or at least getting a very favourable hearing for) US citizenship, isn’t it?
It seems so.
(Warning PDF)
From the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website:
Members and certain veterans of the U.S. armed forces are eligible to apply for United States citizenship under special provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). In addition, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has streamlined the application and naturalization process for military personnel serving on active-duty or recently discharged. Generally, qualifying service is in one of the following branches: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, certain reserve components of the National Guard and the Selected Reserve of the Ready Reserve
Fair enough. Having grown up with parents in the intelligence community, I suppose I have a stricter idea of this–I in particular probably couldn’t join a foreign army without putting my family through major headaches.
As for immigrating to Canada: you need 67 out of 100 points to qualify for a Skilled Worker permanent resident visa, and I already have 46 despite having no four-year degrees, no full-time work experience, no guarantee of employment in Canada and few to no relatives in Canada (the relation is uncertain). If I were to pick up a rudimentary level of French, get a master’s degree, work a year or two in full-time employment in my field, and get a job offer in Canada before turning 50 I would have 83 points, enough to pass with a comfortable margin. That’s not an unreasonable list of things to get done in the next 29 years, and I was planning to do it all anyway. I could get another 5 safety points by spending two years as a full-time student in Canada (which I’d like to do anyway), another 3-5 by having a spouse or common-law partner with an education, another 5 by working in Canada for a year, and another 5 if one of my Minnesota Democrat cousins moves, what, a couple hundred miles north?
It all requires a certain amount of dedication to becoming Canadian, but it doesn’t sound hard at all to do. Not to mention that you don’t even have to get the 67 points if you can convince a Canadian bureaucrat that you’ll probably be able to support yourself there:
I just Googled “u.s. citizens abroad population” (without the quotes). The spreadsheet was the first result, and a little lower in the results was another page that linked to the gubmint document.
The U.S. policy on this subject has changed over the past thirty or forty years, which may be why some people believe this to be true. Most of the laws that called for automatic loss of U.S. citizenship under certain circumstances were struck down after the court cases Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) and Vance v. Terrazas (1980). As of 1990, State Department policy (as outlined in this memo) was also that any U.S. citizen who becomes naturalized in another country will not be presumed to be relinquishing their U.S. citizenship by that act, even if this requires a “routine oath of allegiance” to a foreign state. Similarly, certain foreign countries don’t recognize the renunciation of foreign powers made during U.S. naturalization as binding on their citizens; in such cases, the State Department will generally turn a blind eye. There’s lots of information available on this at the Dual Citizenship FAQ.
MikeS (dual Canadian/US citizen since birth)
There are lots of Brits and South Africans in Dubai… probably 100,000 Westerners, but only 10,000 or less are American. Dubai has gotten very expensive recently and lots of folks are leaving - many to Bahrain and Qatar.
I am an American farang living here long-term with my Thai wife.
Oh, and the king of Thailand is my utmost top-notch hero in this and every other possible universe, and the 15-year prison sentences for lese majeste that are swiftly handed out here have no bearing on that opinion whatsoever nosirree.
Some countries, such as Thailand, do not allow dual citizenship, but many Thais have it; they just never inform the Thai government. But many people do give up their previous citizenship. I guess it all comes down to circumstances; which country you’re coming from etc.
Apologies for the triple post, but I just found this staff report by Bricker.
I’m sure there was also a report by Cecil on this, but I cannot find it. Perhaps it was a secondary item inside a main article. But I do remember Cecil pointing out the case of dual US-Israeli citizenship. Israel requires military service of all its citizens; the US is okay with that as long as you do not serve as an officer in any country you are also a citizen of.
You’re probably thinking of this article, which started out as a primer on how to renounce one’s citizenship, but subsequently added a section on the dual citizenship situation.
Thanks. I saw it in my list of Search returns but for some reason did not think that was it. But it is.