Dual Citizenship Should Be Legal

Congress` intention could hardly be clearer. The Supreme Court`s decisions in the Afroyim and Terrazas cases, which have such significance in defending dual citizenship when elected by those who already enjoy U.S. citizenship, have no teeth here. These phone calls ask what kind of conditions the U.S. can impose on those who beg at the door for membership. This is the only framework within which U.S. law now seems to oppose dual citizenship. Naturalization is the process by which a resident of a country can acquire citizenship, usually through a specific stay in that country for a number of years as a permanent resident. For example, permanent residents of Canada must reside in Canada for four out of six years to apply for citizenship.

Individuals with temporary status, such as students and foreign workers, must first obtain permanent resident status in order to count their years as residents against the citizenship requirement. Cross-sectional evidence shows that naturalized citizens perform better professionally than non-citizens, even by the number of years since migration was controlled,23 but selection effects impede a causal interpretation of this evidence. Bratsberg, Ragan and Nasir (2002) found that, consistent with the removal of barriers to employment, young immigrant men after naturalization have access to jobs in the public sector, white-collar workers and trade unions, and also experience faster wage growth. The results are robust to the inclusion of controls on unobserved individual productivity and support the theory that naturalization facilitates assimilation into the U.S. labor market. However, as it is difficult to find exogenous sources of variation in naturalization, no study has attempted to isolate the effects of naturalization on labour market assimilation using large and representative cross-sectional data. Can changes in dual citizenship laws be used to improve our understanding of the causal effects of acquiring U.S. citizenship? Arton plays a critical role in empowering governments, advisors, legal and financial professionals, and investors to achieve their goals efficiently, effectively and responsibly.

Some countries allow non-residents to obtain citizenship if their parents were born in that country. For example, Hungary allows people who do not live in the country to acquire Hungarian citizenship, provided that they can prove in the application that their parents are citizens. We also have a richer understanding of the nature of loyalty, one hopes. The last few decades have given rise to many comments on the value of civil society – the network of organizations and bonds that exist separately from the national government and are often a counterweight to it. Appreciating civil society means accepting that citizens will have a variety of commitments and loyalties at the same time – commitments that are not seen as sweetening healthy loyalty to the nation. We should be in the 21. In the nineteenth century, national loyalty does not consume everything, that patriotic commitment can coexist with loyalty and dedication to other groups and institutions. We should extend this perspective to the realm of national loyalty.

Even if there are limits in the extremes (such as in times of actual war between the two nations), these deeply atypical combinations should not dictate the legal framework that applies to most people most of the time. Therefore, we should abandon the language that requires the renunciation of other nationalities, although it remains a good idea to include a non-exclusive oath of allegiance as part of our naturalization ceremonies. Yes, concretely. The U.S. government does not require U.S. naturalization. Citizens must renounce citizenship in their country of origin. Although the Oath of Allegiance to the United States speaks of a renunciation of “loyalty and loyalty” to other nations, U.S. immigration law does not explicitly address the issue of dual citizenship.

The best summary of the U.S. government`s position on dual citizenship is a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that states that “a person may have and exercise citizenship rights in two countries and is the responsibility of both countries.” The U.S. State Department is also having a more technical discussion about dual citizenship. Before applying for U.S. citizenship as a second citizenship status, it`s important to contact the embassy or consulate of your home country to find out if that country allows dual citizenship. Otherwise, you risk losing your citizenship in that country without knowing it. The USCIS will assess your eligibility for naturalization and look at many aspects of your life, especially your law enforcement management. Certain types of violations such as immigration fraud, domestic violence can result in your deportation.

In such situations, you should seek legal advice, preferably from a law firm like ours that specializes in immigration matters. To determine whether dual citizenship rights have a causal effect on the acquisition of U.S. citizenship (as well as other results), I compare the evolution of immigrant outcomes from countries that have recently legalized dual citizenship (“treatment group”) over time with the changing outcomes of immigrants from countries that have not changed the law (“control group”). Compared to cross-sectional or before-and-after analyses, this identification strategy, commonly referred to as difference in difference analysis, has the advantage of sparingly controlling for (1) differences in outcomes between origin groups that are constant over time and (2) changes in outcomes that are constant between origin groups over time. However, several identification assumptions must apply to the proposed strategy for determining the impact of dual citizenship laws. First, we must start from the exogeneity of politics; In other words, changes in legislation should not be due to the government`s responses to variables associated with past or expected future results. I discuss this hypothesis in the next section. Second, we must assume that the changes in outcome variables observed in the control group are a good indicator of what would have been observed in the treatment group if the laws had not changed. This assumption depends primarily on the “comparability” between treatment and control groups and the absence of factors varying over time, with the exception of changes in laws that influenced immigrants` incentives to naturalize or other outcomes of interest differently from one treatment and control group to another. To increase the likelihood that these conditions will be met, I limit the analysis to both immigrant groups in a particular region of origin (Latin America) and legislative changes that took place over a period of time (the 1990s). Additional sample constraints and specification options to increase the internal validity of the design are discussed in the following sections.

In this article, I use microdata from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses, in particular the 5% and 1% Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) files (Ruggles et al. 2004). I limit the analysis to foreign-born, working-age individuals from Latin American countries who were at least 18 years old when they arrived in the United States, and who have lived in the United States for at least five years (three years if married to a U.S. citizen). Adulthood upon arrival in the United States is imposed to exclude cases of immigrants deriving from citizenship from their parents` naturalization to focus on the voluntary decision of naturalization. Another reason for excluding immigrants from childhood is that young arrivals are likely to differ from older arrivals in terms of language acquisition and other experiences that affect work outcomes (Bleakley and Chin, 2004). Countries have different laws and regulations for dual nationals, and some countries may not allow dual citizenship. Search for your destination on our country information page. You should also check with the embassy of a country where you have a foreign nationality to find out the relevant nationality laws before you travel.

Examples of rules that may affect dual citizenship include: Tables 2, 3, 3 and 44 provide estimates of the impact of dual citizenship recognition on the difference in difference (DD) decision.