In this thread, I learned that the Ukraine strips people of citizenship if they reside outside the country for seven years without registering with their government. Hong Kong, too, has a “right of abode” clause, although as I understand it that is a separate issue from citizenship.
What other countries strip citizenship from people for living abroad or other comparatively minor infractions? By “minor” I’m excluding treason, swearing oaths of allegiance to foreign powers, criminal activity of naturalized citizens, and other policies that are common to most nations.
When I was in school, we had a teacher from Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. He was told that if he remained outside the country he could not retain Zimbabwean citizenship, and so he had to leave Ireland and return. This was in the early 80s.
[Edited to add:] He was white, which may be relevant in this case.
Here’s a PDF from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management concerning citizenship laws around the world as of early 2001. It’s somewhat out of date, and may not be complete — in particular, it doesn’t contain the Ukraine example that we were recently made aware of — but there are still a few interesting examples. Here are the countries that are listed as revoking your citizenship solely by living outside the country for too long:
[ul][li]Armenia: 7 years abroad (any citizen.)[]Belize: 5 years abroad (naturalized citizen.)[]Canada: 10 years abroad (naturalized citizen.) [Ed.: As a Canadian, I’m not sure this is accurate.][]Cyprus: 5 years abroad without government registration (naturalized citizens.)[]Egypt: 6 months (!) living abroad (any citizen.)[]El Salvador: 5 years living abroad (naturalized citizens; 2 years if living in their country of birth.)[]Indonesia: 5 years living abroad, or failing to declare an intent to retain one’s citizenship for 2 years while abroad (any citizen.)[]Lesotho: 7 years living abroad (naturalized citizen.)[]Libya: 2 years living abroad (naturalized citizen.)[]Lithuania: 3 years living abroad (any citizen.)[]Malawi: 7 years living abroad without government registration (naturalized citizens.)[]Malaysia: 7 years living abroad without government registration (naturalized citizens.)[]Mexico: 5 years living in country of birth (naturalized citizens.)[]Namibia: 2 years living abroad without government permission (any citizen.)[]Pakistan: 2 years living abroad without government registration (any citizen.)[]Paraguay: 3 years of “unjustified absence” (naturalized citizens.)[]Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: 5 years living abroad (any citizen.)[]Samoa: 6 years living abroad, if the citizen “shows no interest in returning” (any citizen.)[]Seychelles: 7 years living abroad without government regsitration (naturalized or registered citizens.)[]Singapore: 5 years living abroad (naturalized citizens.)[]South Africa: 7 years living abroad (naturalized citizens.)[]Sri Lanka: 5 years living abroad without government permission (registered citizens.)[]Sudan: 5 years living abroad without government registration (naturalized citizens.)[]UAE: 4 years living abroad (naturalized citizens.)[]Uzbekistan: 5 years living abroad without government registration (any citizen.)[*]Yemen: 2 years living abroad without government permission (naturalized citizens.)[/ul][/li]
And here are some grounds for revokation you might not have thought about:
[ul][]Bangladesh: it’s possible to become a “citizen by investment” if you invest a large sum of money in Bangladesh. If you then sell that investment, you lose said citizenship.[]Korea, South: citizenship gained by marriage is lost upon divorce.[]Libya (again): attempts to smuggle money out of the country, coversion away from Islam, “deserting the country”, refusing to return to Libya upon request within a six-month grace period (any citizen.)[]Madagascar: marriage to a foreigner and living abroad.[]Swaziland: citizenship gained by marriage is lost upon divorce (women only.)[]Tunisia: citizenship gained by marriage is lost upon divorce.[/ul]
I’d have to ask one of the professors in my department, who’s of Egyptian origin, if this is true. Of course he may not know; I don’t think he’s been in Egypt for a very long time.
I’m pretty sure that there’s a wide range of actual enforcement or non-enforcement of those rules among the various countries. That document says Taiwan will revoke the citizenship of anyone naturalized into a foreign state, which I know (at least in practical application) is not the case.
FWIW, Wikipedia agrees with you. I wasn’t able to find any government sources in the cites at the bottem of the page, but I didn’t look particularly rigorously.
I had a quick look through the current Citizenship Act, R.S., 1985, c. C-29; and under “Part II: Loss of Citizenship,” I found nothing that pertained to losing one’s naturalized citizenship after any period of time outside Canada. I gave the rest of the Act a quick glance, but I did not take the time to follow up on the cross-references to past versions of the Act or to other legislation cited in the text. At any rate, if it was ever possible in the past, it doesn’t seem to be now.
In the US, I believe it used to be the case (long ago, but within living memory) that a natural born female citizen would lose her citizenship if she married a foreign man. The reverse wasn’t the case, of course (why penalize a man for property acquired overseas?)
Fascinating. My American-born great-grandmother would have lost her citizenship in this way, since she moved to Canada and married a Canadian in 1916. Not that it would have made much difference: it’s not like women citizens had a lot of priveleges to give up in the nineteen-teens.
Do you really lose citizenship or is it just a possibility. Or perhaps you lose it but could get it back easily.
I don’t recall the thread the OP is referring to but the poster of that thread, could actually be an illegal trying to get the same advice under the “guise” of having citizenship revolked.
[QUOTE=U.S. OPM]
South Africa: 7 years living abroad (naturalized citizens.)
[/QUOTE]
As with the Canadian case, this is not true. I have just checked the South African Citizenship Act, and this is not one of the possible ways to lose SA citizenship. (It may have been true under previous laws, but it has certainly not been true since 1995, if not earlier.)
That was probably not a general rule, more likely part of the complicated process of unwinding the tangles of British Imperial nationality law. When colonies became independent, they had to decide which “Citizens of the UK & Colonies” would become citizens of the new independent country. There might have been a residence requirement involved in Zimbabwe, particularly if the person concerned or his father had not been born in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. (The Zimbabwe situation was particularly confused because of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, where the Rhodesian government regarded its people as being citizens of an independent Rhodesia, while the British government regarded them as continuing to be British subjects.)
Zimbabwe, now, does prescribe the loss of citizenship after seven years’ absence, but only for naturalized citizens (“citizens by registration”).
That’s certainly out of date. South Korea does not grant citizenship by marriage. One receives an immigrant visa for marriage and after a certain period and passing a rigorous exam, can be naturalized. After a certain number of years (I don’t recall off-hand what it is), one can retain the immigrant visa even upon divorce.