Interesting discussion on dual citizenship...

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CrossHairs

Registered Users (C)
Since some of you may not be reading the other forum(s), just a pointer to that thread:
http://boards.immigration.com/showthread.php?t=280512

LegalAlien2 said:
When you fill out the OCI form, there's a question like "Does your country allow for Dual Citizenship in some form?" You should answer "Yes" to this as US does not prevent you from having a dual citizenship... many people from Europe who have taken a USC do use both passports (US and their home country) as UK etc allow for dual citizenship.
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hitechguy said:
This directly contradicts what we were told by the USCIS Supervisor during the oath ceremony in Newark in May 2008 that I attended. We were told "US Does not allow you to maintain Dual Citizenship". Further one of the things you take the oath on is that you renounce allegiance to and the citizenship of all other countries ! So if the oath means anything at all - it means you cannot maintain Dual Citizenship status.

What I cannot understand is why does OCI require that your country allow Dual Citizenship - when it says in its own publications everywhere else that OCI is NOT dual citizenship !! It makes no sense and confuses the issue. In fact OCI itself is a misnomer - since you are NOT a citizen of India with the OCI - you do not have an Indian passport and you cannot vote - a better name would have been LIV ( Lifelong Indian Visa ) - because that is all OCI really is !
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What part is the interesting part? ;) I think the information hitechguy was given is utterly incorrect. From the horses mouth ;)

http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1753.html

In particular: "or a person naturalized as a U.S. citizen may not lose the citizenship of the country of birth.U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one citizenship or another."

I know that some people are fed misinformation about dual citizenship, either by postal employees or it seems even by a USCIS supervisor. One thing is to owe allegiance to the U.S. which should be taken seriously and other thing is renouncing to another citizenship. I don't think the oath says anything about citizenship. In my humble opinion dual citizenship is great, it enriches the country that allows this, as it improves the communication and travel among countries and even trade and work opportunities, as dual citizens are able to travel and work more freely in different parts of the world.
 
Well for my Country Germany you can request Dual Citizenship but does not automatically grant it. I mean by that by becoming a USC it does not mean I can also keep my german citizenship UNLESS I made a request so for me even though my German Passport is still valid I am not allowed to use it. I don't know about other countries but obviously you can have more than one citizenship including US ... we see it all the time on this board.
 
The US government recognizes dual citizenship as a concept, but neither endorses it nor favors it as policy due to the problems they feel it may cause. Perhaps the USCIS supervisor's response was based on that policy.
Also, perhaps the supervisor's response was based on the fact that a US citizen applying for citizenship of a foreign country via naturalization risks loosing their US citizenship.
 
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The US government takes a "don't ask don't tell" approach to dual citizenship. They don't care if you have an additional citizenship with Mexico or Mars; once you have US citizenship, to them you are a US citizen, period. They will turn a blind eye to your other citizenship(s), but if you push your dual citizenship(s) in their face they'll lecture you or penalize you for it.
 
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