October 18, 2004
Citizenships
The other day I surfed the web and found a site that gives advice to German expats on how to keep or lose their citizenship and how the third generation doesn't necessarily get the German passport.
A German friend of mine in Vienna is pregnant. The baby's father has an Italian passport, the parents are not married. The child is going to get the German citizenship. It only gets the Austrian citizenship if the parents were married and one of them is Austrian.
If this child never lives in Germany and has a baby in Austria, what will this child be? According to German law children of German expats (who were born in D) can get the German citizenship. The third generation won't. But there is an "except": It will get it if the child were stateless otherwise.
Foreigners who want to have the Austrian citizenship have to fulfill some criteria. One of them is an "affirmative attitude towards the Republik of Austria". "Do I lose my citizenship now because my attitude is different?", native Austrian N. asked me last night.
Posted by novala at October 18, 2004 07:44 PMI've always found it incomprehensible that a friend of mine, whose father was born in Italy, has Italian and not Swedish citizenship, even though his mother is Swedish, he's lived his whole life in Sweden and he doesn't even speak Italian.
Posted by: francis s. at October 21, 2004 05:13 PMDual citizenship was not possible in the past for Germans living in the US. When I had to renew my German passport at the consulate in San Francisco, last year, I learned that now you can become a US citizen without loosing your German citizenship. I like that thought. Although I would LOVE to vote her in California, I had always hesitated to give up my German citizenship as I simply feel too German, still, after four years living in the US of A. The consulate recommended to request keeping the German citizenship before aquiring the US citizenship once I am eligible for it (five years of residence or so). This sounds like a very good solution to me.
Posted by: Silvia at October 26, 2004 09:42 PMCame to this exchange a bit late but would like to know the URL of the info you talk about. My 18-year old daughter has German and Australian citizenship (both by descend), was born in Japan and lives in the U.S. with a Green Card. What is going to happen to her children (too many scenarios to even think about...) The Australians saw the light last year and now you don't lose Australian citizenship if you acquire a new one. But the Germans still require a special dispensation which is neither easy to obtain nor cheap. To me, ius sanguis makes more sense than ius solis – as long as both mother and father can pass on citizenship; what doesn't make sense is the insistance of some countries that dual citizenship is somehow undesirable. Wake up...