Comment by AlexB138 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexB138 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is really the strongest argument I've seen of any of this being a problem. Coming to any country as an immigrant is a privilege, and it the immigrants prerogative whether or not they feel the terms are acceptable. It is, however, completely unacceptable to put a special burden on their citizenship like this. Once they're a citizen, they should be a citizen, period. If there's not confidence that they're acceptable, they shouldn't become a citizen in the first place, otherwise they should be treated with full rights.

I'm not clear on how dual-citizenship works when you naturalize to the US, but are there not situations where they have to give up citizenship to their country of origin? Does that mean these people are permanently left in a degraded legal state with no home country, where they would have full legal rights, to return to should the DHS decide they've over stepped their bounds on Facebook?

> there not situations where they have to give up citizenship to their country of origin?

One such a case is China. If a Chinese citizen gets the passport of another country they lose their original Chinese citizenship (if China knows about the new passport.)

I wonder what happens if they are born in countries like the USA that give citizenship at birth. Do they have to forfeit one of the two citizenships? And when, at birth by decision of the parents or later on by their choice?

I do not think you need to be a US citizen just because you were born there. There are countries that allow a child born in the US to acquire the citizenship of its parents.

As far as I know (and I'm not an authority), the US never requires that you give up your first citizenship. Some countries (like Japan) do however. So a Japanese citizen wishing to become American would have to give up his birth citizenship.

However, the US do not recognize the concept of dual citizenship. Meaning that an Italian-American is always seen as just an American by the US government. Once you become American you are American, you are not a XXX-American.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com