Mallusan and Havefun stated the point that brings me here - the situation captured by The Boy Who Stood on The Burning Deck. I am mad as can be about the way the Indian Govt. is treating Indian citizens in this.
Did the 2003 Act promise that Indian citizenship would not be lost? Yes. Read it carefully. I think it is Section 7B-2 or something like that.
Is this significant? Yes, to Indian citizens who value Indian citizenship it is. It is the standard policy of all nations that allow "dual" citizenship that their own citizenship is PRIMARY. Britan for example says, you can go swear all you want in front of a foreign official, it matters nothing as long as you haven't sworn before an Official of Her Majesty. GOI on the other hand seems to be saying that if another country offers you citizenship, we'lll be glad to dump u, thanks very much, since Indian citizenship is second-class. This is what makes me laugh at the lofty sentiment so gloriously declared by "MahaBharatiya". Reality is 180 degrees away from that. Only those who have been faced with the choice, and taken the hassles for decades, will understand. For once, the GOI was telling us that it was OK to accept citizenship in the land where we lived, and it would not make us less Indian.
But the implementation has been utter fraud from my perspective, and I feel completely betrayed.
Now for the "can't vote" aspect. This rankled me quite a bit, but I am pretty-much reconciled to it, since it is NO DIFFERENT from the situation of an INDIAN passport-holder who lives abroad. If you haven't tried to get yourself on the voting list, I guess you won't realize that they took away your right the moment you boarded that plane. From the discussions in Parliament, it is clear that they are NOW THINKING OF allowing Indian citizens who live abroad, to vote in their home constituencies, PROVIDED THEY vote in person. No absentee ballot, no internet-enabled voting.
So what's different about OIC?
Next is "right to work in govt. jobs". This WAS a big consideration, but as u can see above and doing the number-of-years calculation, it is easy to see that this is a non-issue anymore. Public-sector retirement age in India is not that far off.
Security clearance? This is a sensitive issue in my profession, but lack thereof has allowed a freedom all these years that is denied to many of my colleagues, and it is nice to know that there is nothing secret that anyone is going to get out of you because you don't know any. Then again, if they can give a clearance to Sonia Gandhi, they can give it to me too, no problem.
Also, the OIC law is good because they say that if you have been OIC for 5 years, and then you come and settle in India, after just ONE YEAR, you can switch to becoming full resident Indian citizen again. Presumably, you have to renounce other citizenships - but think about that - most nations don't care if you renounce in front of Babus of other nations, so you will continue to be a real dual-citizen at that point.
The State Department "cautions" cited above are non-starters.
1. In the US, the govt does NOT promise to bail you out anyway, from your COUNTRY OF BIRTH. This is REGARDLESS of whether there is dual citizenship etc. I know people in a certain organization that cannot be mentioned, where they were told this in no uncertain terms. I did read that Condoleeza Rice interceded to get the Indian-American boss of that web portal released from jail, but that was more of a gentle request, not a demand - and even that raised quite a stink. In China, that would simply not work - I know of a Chinese-American professor who led a student team to China as part of his US university job. He had written some books not quite laudatory about the regime. Well... they released him some 3 or 4 months later, after a considerable amount of "interrogation" etc. Nothing the GOTUS did was of much help.
2. Dual taxation. Actually, Indian-source income is taxable in the US (US taxes worldwide income), so the "tax break" for NRI income in India exists only if you cheat on your US taxes. If you pay tax in India, then you get a tax credit on that in the US. As long as India also does not plan to tax worldwide income for OICs, this issue is also a non-issue - assuming that your fear of the IRS is greater than your greed. With computerized cooperation between law-enforcement agencies, dodging taxes is Russian Roulette.
3. Loyalty issues in the US. This is again a bogus issue, and those who raise it are essentlally racists. There are thousands, if not millions in the US who are British-Americans and French-Americans and Israeli-Americans who hold security clearance. Remember Jonathan Pollard, the guy who was convicted of selling secrets to Israel from some spy agency? The guy was an Israeli-American, as I understand. Why did he have Top Secret clearance?
Likewise there are thousands of dual citizens in the defence industries.
Why should Indian-Americans (dual citizens) be discriminated against - I mean accept such discrimination? The assumption is that the US is never going to bomb Britian, France or Israel. Until recently that was not a safe thing to say about India, but today the opinion of the GOI is that it IS a safe thing to say. That's why the dual citizenship move gained momentum at all.
Anyway, I gather that no one has seen the exact text of what has been passed.
