About DUAL CITIZENSHIP WATCH

Dual Citizenship Watch promotes social change and policies to protect America from the dangers of dual citizenship. 

A central goal of Dual Citizenship Watch is to persuade voters not to vote for dual citizens. Relatedly, we urge candidates to pledge that they are not dual citizens. Assuring that American elected officials are only American protects the United States from threats of outside influence. Additionally, Dual Citizenship Watch wants every U.S. Senator to promise to never vote for a nominee who holds any citizenship other than that of our country. No federal judge or other senior government official should ever be a citizen of a foreign state. 

Dual Citizenship Watch encourages civil and respectful discussion of all aspects of dual citizenship, including immigration and other related issues that are critical for America’s security, identity, and future. 

Currently, American law does not prohibit dual citizenship.

This was not always the case.

Throughout most of our country’s history acts that demonstrated foreign citizenship, like voting or serving in a foreign military, could lead to loss of American citizenship. Congress passed laws prohibiting dual citizenship and forcing naturalized citizens to abandon prior loyalties. But in 1967 the Supreme Court decided in Afroyim v Rusk that the United States had almost no power to divest an American of their citizenship. In that case, a citizen of both the United States and Israel voted in an Israeli election. In an opinion by Justice Hugo Black, the Court held that absent voluntary renunciation or fraud in naturalization, a citizen could not lose American citizenship– even for participating in a foreign election.

Today, tens of millions of individuals in the United States are dual citizens.

A citizen is an individual with the legal right to participate in the political process of a state. It might help to think of citizenship as membership in a country. In our country, individuals are either born citizens or acquire citizenship through immigration. For example, a person born in Iowa to two American parents is a natural born American citizen. A person born abroad who legally immigrates to the United States and is then naturalized is also an American citizen. 

A national is an individual who holds an affiliation with a state, usually through birth, but who lacks the full rights of a citizen. Nationality might be viewed as protection provided by a country. For example, most individuals born in American Samoa are U.S. nationals. They can work in the United States and acquire American passports, but they are ineligible to serve on a federal jury or to vote. 

A subject is subordinate to a monarch. In many modern monarchies, subjects have rights akin to citizens. For example, an Englishman born in London is a subject of the British Monarchy. Traditionally, individuals could not renounce their status as subjects of a monarch, though in modern times this is rarely the case and subjects can change their allegiance.

For the purposes of discussions of dual citizens, “citizen,” “subject,” and “national” are interchangeable because the result is the same: an individual loyal to a particular country.

The issuance of a passport is generally a reliable indicator that someone is a citizen, subject, or national of a country. 

Many countries adhere to some form of the notion of jus sanguinis, the so-called “right of blood,” a tradition that holds citizenship originates from the authority of a monarch. Traditionally, jus sanguinis was near inescapable unless the monarch granted a subject some special exception. American law rejects this idea of perpetual allegiance (that citizens cannot choose to renounce citizenship), empowering individuals to abandon prior loyalties and become exclusively American citizens through naturalization. 

Most Americans do not derive citizenship through naturalization though. Through jus soli, the so-called “right of soil,” most Americans derive citizenship through birth when they are born to persons lawfully present on the territory of the United States.  

Other countries sometimes permit individuals to acquire citizenship through ancestry or another connection to a nation. For example, it is possible to acquire Irish citizenship if you have a close family member who is Irish. One can become an Australian citizen if they meet residency and other requirements. If you travel to a place that claims you as a citizen or where you yourself have claimed citizenship, you might be considered a citizen of that country under its laws.

But as an American in America, no state can compel you to be its citizen. Americans while in America always have the right to abandon citizenship in any foreign state. In fact, if you become American through naturalization, you surrender all foreign citizenship when you take the Oath of Allegiance (see below “Does naturalization automatically end dual citizenship?”).

No. It is possible that an American citizen can maintain ties to a foreign state that do not amount to citizenship but are concerning. India is a good example. The Constitution of India prohibits dual citizenship. This provision limited India’s ability to exploit its diaspora in the United States, both to extract wealth and to exert influence over the American political process. Accordingly, in 2003 India created “Overseas Citizenship of India” (OCI) status. OCI allows Indians to naturalize in the United States while maintaining significant connections to India. OCI holders formally surrender their Indian voting rights but maintain the right to own property in India, travel there without a visa, and receive state benefits– just like regular Indian citizens.  

As such, even places that outlaw dual citizenship can seek to extend influence into the United States. While Dual Citizenship Watch understands the legal complexities of a status like OCI, as a practical member– voters should be cautious.  

Yes. 

When one naturalizes in the United States, they take the Oath of Allegiance. That oath states that “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” Those words and the act of the oath end the legal bonds that connected the new American to their former country. 

While a naturalized citizen’s former country may still claim the new U.S. citizen as its own, it is a long established principle of American law that our citizens are not bound by former ties and have the individual right to extinguish connections to a foreign state. Naturalized United States citizens lose any foreign citizenship when they become American.

A naturalized U.S. citizen may later gain citizenship in a foreign state, including their former country, but at the moment an immigrant is naturalized in the United States, they are American and American only. 

Opposition to dual citizenship has at times been used to mask antisemitism and other ethnic or racial prejudice, as well as hatred of foreigners. 

Dual Citizenship Watch rejects bigotry in all its forms. We seek to preserve the sanctity of American citizenship, which is the greatest guarantor of personal liberty and freedom in modern history.

Acquiring, maintaining, or ending dual citizenship is a personal choice.

Dual citizenship creates a possible conflict of interest between the rights and duties that are inherent in good citizenship. Even when countries are similar, there are at times different interests. It is self-evident then that dual citizens are incapable of serving both states equally and might potentially face a situation where they must pick a side.

For some dual citizens, that question might be as trivial as which team to support during the Olympics or how to celebrate when two national holidays fall on the same day. But other, more important questions require social pressure or even legal compulsion to protect America’s future.

Not voting for dual citizens and preventing dual citizens from holding sensitive positions in government are basic measures that can protect America from national security risks of dual citizenship. 

An American Citizens Only Pledge is an opportunity for voters, candidates, and U.S. Senators to publicly register that they will not vote for any candidate with dual citizenship, that they do not hold dual citizenship, or that they will never support any nominee who holds dual citizenship.

Voters, candidates, and U.S. Senators can record their pledge by posting it to social media or sharing it in some other manner that makes the promise public.