Budmiller

Once you have your green card, is it okay to change the country of
citizenship? For example, you are a citizen of country A while you went
through the green card process. You got your green card and within a
couple months, got citizenship of country B.

Would this be a problem while:
1. Re-entering USA on the new passport
2. Applying for US citizenship

Thanks,
Budmiller

Alun L. Palmer

"budmiller" <> wrote in news:1155699653.044908.143440@
74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com:

> Once you have your green card, is it okay to change the country of
> citizenship? For example, you are a citizen of country A while you went
> through the green card process. You got your green card and within a
> couple months, got citizenship of country B.
>
> Would this be a problem while:
> 1. Re-entering USA on the new passport
> 2. Applying for US citizenship
>
> Thanks,
> Budmiller
>
>

I shouldn't be, as such. The green card process is based only on your
country of birth, not citizenship, and that only affects you if there are
too many people from that country of birth applying, so as to kick in a
quota limitation. Changing your citizenship doesn't affect which quota you
fall into. IOW, they thought of that gimmick, or lots of chinese would try
to change their citizenship to get out of the chinese quota, for example.

As for applying for US citizenship, merely asserting a particular
citizenship will make no difference. There are two things to think about:

1) At the citizenship ceremony you revoke all other citizenships as a one
time thing, but this only has effect in some countries and not others. IOW,
any citizenship gained after the ceremony won't be affected by your US
citizenship, and depending on which country or countries you were a citizen
of before you may or may not lose it. In most cases the revocation has no
effect, just a bunch of empty words, but that depends on their law, not US
law.

2) You can lose US citizenship after naturalisation, but mainly by being a
civil servant of another country or serving in it's armed forces, and even
then not if you are drafted. So if you gain an additional citizenship after
you become an American, this will not by itself cause you to lose US
citizenship, not even if you go to live there permanently (but don't go to
work for their government or sign up for a tour in uniform!).

However, check the laws of the other country. In a small minority of cases
you may lose your foreign citizenship if you gain it before the US
citizenship ceremony.

Rich Wales

Alun L. Palmer wrote:

> 1) At the citizenship ceremony you revoke all other
> citizenships as a one time thing, but this only has
> effect in some countries and not others.

More precisely, a newly naturalized US citizen makes a blanket
statement renouncing all prior allegiances. This statement is
mandatory (no point even trying to ask for a waiver), but many
other countries will not recognize it as a valid renunciation
of citizenship under their own laws. Further, although the
blanket renunciatory statement is required by US law, the US
makes no attempt to enforce it in any meaningful way.

> 2) You can lose US citizenship after naturalisation,
> but mainly by being a civil servant of another country
> or serving in its armed forces, and even then not if
> you are drafted.

Actually, even doing the above things will =not= result in loss
of US citizenship =unless= you do it with the =intention= of
giving up your US citizenship. And the current (since 1990)
US State Dept. policy on the subject is that, except in a tiny
handful of rare cases, they will pursue loss-of-citizenship
actions =only= when a person goes out of his/her way to tell
US officials that he/she =did= in fact intend to give up US
citizenship.

> However, check the laws of the other country. In a small
> minority of cases you may lose your foreign citizenship
> if you gain it before the US citizenship ceremony.

True. Citizenship is up to each country to determine via its
own laws. Just as no other country can force the US to consider
(or not to consider) someone to be a US citizen, the US does not
have any power to force any other country to consider (or not to
consider) someone to be a citizen of that other country.

Rich Wales http://www.richw.org/dualcit/
*DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, professional immigration consultant,
or consular officer. My comments are for discussion purposes only and
are not intended to be relied upon as legal or professional advice.