Some of my relatives have Turkish citizenship besides American. They mostly just use it for passports I believe (better to be captured with a Turk passport than American). Personally, I think it is a good idea for children of mixed nationalities but once they reach 18 it should be time to choose one.

The State Dept. sees no problem with dual citizenship. The former INS does. So when you enter and depart the US, only use your US passport or you may your documents confiscated.

A family member of mine (dual national) fell afoul of this recently when they tried to re-enter the country on a foreign passport. They managed to escape INS detention in New York, but only because they happened to have a Social Security card on them.

In any event, this is how dual citizenship works anywhere in the world. As long as you are in a country of which you are a citizen, your other citizenship is ignored.

I’m kind of glad that the US hasn’t sunk to the lows of Japanese nationality law. If a child is born to a Japanese parent overseas, they have to be registered within a few months… or else their Japanese citizenship is GONE! On the other hand, the Irish government didn’t know about my existence until I was 22, and I still got a passport.

I’m American by birth, Southern by grace of God =)

However, my kids will be dual citizens when I have them. In such cases, I do believe its justified. Having to choose at 18 is ridiculous and considering most 18 year olds don’t even know what to study at college, what nationality they want to be seems outrageous to ask.

After that, the issue usually works itself out as the dual citizen would most likely marry someone of a single citizenship (probably one the person shares) and thus their kids would most likely get that ending the issue.

I think the issue is different for immigrants. If you move to Canada or the US you should be forced to give up any other citizenship. You either want to join another country or you don’t. You can’t play for two teams.

Chirol’s comment touches on ways that people can acquire citizenship in a country – by birth from a parent (jus sanguinis), by naturalization, and by birth on a country’s territory (jus soli).

One main principle in a country’s citizenship law which is considered a good practice is to draft them in such a way as to avoid statelessness – usually through a combination of jus soli and jus sanguinis.

I am, myself, Canadian by jus soli and jus sanguinis, and even though my parents are both immigrants, they came a long time ago and had to renounce their former citizenships to become naturalized back then. As far as I know, I would not be entitled to any foreign passports, unless I decided to apply for residence as an immigrant and become naturalized of course. To be honest I don’t mind one bit.

I know, and I looked into it for Germany (my father), but he was naturalized in 1952, and from what little I was able to find out, Germany had some rule at that time that he ceased having citizenship when he acquired the new one. Anyway, I didn’t pursue it much further as it was starting to look complicated, and I approached it as one of those things… I know that if it were the UK, for example, it would have been simpler to establish as a UK citizen (I know people who apparently were able to claim it based on their grandparents being British).

Younghusband, as a former dual citizen, I’d have to say that having to decide for one passport didn’t really make sense. Having both was almost always an advantage (be it only that you can buy land in both countries). When I recieved the German citizenship, one teacher asked me how different I “felt” about being German. Heh. How I felt different than the day before? It didn’t even matter at that time (I was 15~), so it’s like it’s your birthday and somebody asks whether you feel older.

One downside with being a dual citizen: You’re asked to serve military duty here and there (but as far as I know, this is regulated by agreements on the national level now). To come to the point: The citizenship doesn’t change who you are, just what rights you have. Being able to have both was great, having two mother countries, what could be wrong with that? For the individual, it’s indeed a very positive thing, but I see your point: Two countries have to share responsebility for one citizen, but sharing doesn’t mean the burden is halved.

I hope that when my kid turns 18, he’ll be able to apply for European citizenship. This idea with borders and nation states in Europe wasn’t quite the good idea it seemed in the beginning.

How about Japan, you have to choose when you become and adult (or when you turn 22?) which nationality you want to keep, right?

My girlfriend and her family left Russia before the wall fell. Once they left, they were in fact stateless, because to leave the Soviet Union was to renounce citizenship. They eventually made it to the U.S., where the parents naturalized and now they are all citizens.
However, one of the children is eligible for dual citizenship. Her brother was born in Rome, during the 1.5 year interegnum they were stuck in Europe before coming to the US. I think he’s eligible to apply now that he’s 15, but I’m not sure.

Many of you talk about the personal benefits of dual citizenship, but I am thinking more from a national perspective. Historically I think dual-citizenship was a way of handling decolonization. Now it is a side-effect of globalization. But is there any benefit for a government to let it’s citizens take on other citizenships? For example, the US requires it’s mono/dual-citizens abroad to pay taxes. But does that justify having to protect citizens in zones like the Levant?

As I see it, here are our choices:

1. Maintain the status quo
2. Nations renounce dual-citizenship
3. Replace nation-state citizenship with some sort of “global” citizenship
4. Reduce the obligations of a government to it’s citizens

Thoughts?

Sonagi: I agree, you need to be mor ethan just born here to be an American. Can’t believe we haven’t fixed that by now.

YH: Good questions. THat’s the perspective I was taking too, that of the state not of the individual.

Chris N and Dr. ARW: Perhaps I need to clarify. When I say immigrants should have to choose. I mean immigrants. If you want to stay a legal resident forever that’s fine too. But if you want the citizenship, then you want to be American, not something else. If not, then be a legal resident alien for life. That’s not hard. Problem solved.

Monocrat: I think military or some other kind of service should be mandatory for US citizens.

As for the 14th, I still find no connection between being physically born somewhere and automatically getting citizenship from there. If my child were coincidentally born in say Mongolia because I was working there yet I’m AMerican and my future wife is German. What nationality makes sense? To me, this is a very straightforward question.

The 14th had more to do with blacks and Indians, this is a pretty broad interpretation of it.

Interestingly, Ireland (long known as the easiest place to get EU citizenship for kids) did away with its citizenship-by-birth statute in 2004. Now, the rule is:

Non-national parents of children, born in Ireland on or after 1 January 2005, must prove that they have a genuine link to Ireland. This will be evidenced by being resident legally in Ireland for three out of the previous four years immediately before the birth of the child. On proof of a genuine link to Ireland their child will be entitled to Irish citizenship.

I like this more than a parental citizenship or permanent residency requirement, m’self.

There is no single policy that would work for every country. Canada and the US would even not necessarily want the same policy on citizenship and naturalization.

A lot of the debate in Canada has less to do with divided loyalty and more to do with what services citizens expect while living abroad, and what Canadians should do to help them. There was no dual citizenship debate until the government decided to evacuate people from Lebanon for free this summer.

In my view, it was a mistake to offer the evacuation from the Lebanon war for free – they could have just fixed a price, given people the option agree to pay when they renew their passports at a later date. If, after returning to Canada, they never want to leave again and thus never want a passport, fine. No bill collectors, just a note in the passport records. But the evacuees would have to sign a form acknowledging that they understand that there will be a fee (perhaps even a symbolic one) will need to be paid at a later date. I have heard of Canadian residents of Lebanon, soon after arriving safely in Canada (some even on the PM’s plane) asking the Foreign Affairs ministry when they will get their free return ticket home to Lebanon.

Likewise, I think that instead of limiting people to one citizenship, we should stiffly raise the passport fee for those who apply abroad, without even going to Canada. Outside of Canada, you charge say, $500 for a “consular kitty” fund to renew your passport without going back to Canada. For Canadians resident in the USA (which represents lower evacuation costs) the fee could be lower or the same as in-Canada passport requests. Tourists who lose their passports can get a white emergency one for the reglular lower price, one-trip only, back to Canada to apply for a new passport. The goal is to make a distinction between citizens who choose to make their home abroad and still expect something of the government and those who live and pay taxes in Canada.

If people in Canada do not feel that they are being “taken for a ride” by their co-nationals living outside of Canada (may of whom came as permanent residents, stayed the requite period, and left Canada as soon as they were naturalized), the dual citizenship debate might quiet down.

Monocrat,

Without citizenship of some sort, a person would be stateless, so children need some citizenship declaration at birth. Virtually every nation on earth confers citizenship through at least one parent, so eliminating automatic citizenship to all born on US soil would not leave US-born foreign children stateless.

Besides the significant issue of security – a US citizen doesn’t need a visa to enter the country, there is also the issue of benefits. Public hospitals in states with large immigrant populations are buckling under the strain of providing medical services to US-born children and their undocumented parents. Some hospitals in border states like Texas have even closed down their neonatal wards.

Some of those “policy tourists” DO exercise their rights by coming back to the US to attend public schools and get additional ESL services at taxpayer expense. Several of my students in my previous district were “parachute kids” who lived with local Korean-American families. They weren’t exchange students, but regularly enrolled students getting a free public education that their overseas parents weren’t paying for through taxes.

I don’t have a “hypothetically high attachment” to the United States. I have a deep respect and affection for the nation that nurtured me from infancy to adulthood, a nation that I now call home again after many years abroad. I know not everyone with US citizenship feels this way, but I value citizenship enough not to want to see it handed so casually to people who have not put down even small roots in the country. TCKs who do not have a strong attachment to one country may not share this strong feeling of identification with one’s native or adopted country.