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by koyote 19 days ago
Quite a few countries do not allow dual citizenship. So a person who was born in the US and is therefore US citizen at birth will not be allowed to have that country's citizenship until they revoke the US one.

China and Singapore are some of the more prominent examples.

2 comments

Both of your examples are wrong.

China considers it a "nationality conflict," the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically, they can still be registered on hukou and get ID card. Apparently they used to unofficially force you to decide as an adult, but stopped a few years ago and now issue the Travel Document for life.

edit to add -- that assumes the parent is not a unconditional green card holder, which is the scenario here.

Singapore allows dual citizenship until 21. Which is not necessarily a good thing, as if you do not do their national service you will effectively get banned from ever going there even if you renounce it later.

Japan and Korea both allow it forever from birth in practice, but the latter also has some complexities regarding the military (either renounce before a certain age or you have some restrictions returning until past a certain age).

> Both of your examples are wrong.

They are not entirely wrong. The person you replied to said "that country's citizenship":

> So a person who was born in the US and is therefore US citizen at birth will not be allowed to have that country's citizenship

Taking example of China, you said "the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically"

"Treated as a citizen" is not same as "having Citizenship". OCI card holders are India are pretty much treated as citizens, except few rights such as the right of suffrage/ability to engage in agricultural land use etc, but that doesn't make them citizens of India.

There is a huge political difference between OCI and a Chinese travel document. A CTD explicitly lists the bearers nationality as Chinese.

An OCI card, as you said, is effectively like a PR card for former citizens. It is explicitly not citizenship politically and India fully recognizes their foreign citizenship.

If an OCI holder with a US passport gets arrested, India will notify the US consulate as they are a citizen. The same would not apply for a Chinese travel document holder. That is what I meant as “treated as a citizen domestically.”

As to political rights, I assume in practice that one cannot join the Party without first revoking their other citizenship, if at all. But since it is not a democracy, that was never a right/element of citizenship in the first place.

The Netherlands as well.