Dual Citizenship

The main address for this site is http://expat.silvert.org. All other sites are mirrors and may be out-of-date.

Dual Citizenship

If you are contemplating taking out Portuguese citizenship, you should consider the implications for your present citizenship.

While I am not an expert on citizenship law, I am familiar with the attitudes of the US State Department (DoS). When I took out Canadian citizenship in 1978 the US Consulate asked me to renounce my US citizenship. I refused, but they revoked my citizenship in 1980 anyway. Then I discovered that they had no right to do this (the matter was settled by the US Supreme Court in 1967) and when I called the Consulate to ask about it, they meekly admitted that I was right. So I now have a US passport again.

They will however try to get you to give up your US citizenship - for example, if you say that your reasons for taking out foreign citizenship are political rather than economic, they may interpret that as renunciation of US citizenship (even though all you meant was that you wanted to vote in local elections in your new home country). So beware.

This site is maintained by William Silvert, to whom all questions, comments and complaints should be addressed. You are also welcome to record your visit on the guestmap.