Moishe Lippooz That's a widely held misconception, but it's not correct. At one time it was true that simply performing one of those acts would cause loss of US citizenship. But, several Supreme Court decisions added the requirement that in order for US citizenship to be lost in the manner you list, an intention to give up citizenship must exist. In addition, this intention must be proven separately from the act performed. It can't be implied. So, in any case, taking another citizenship (Israeli or any other) will not cause loss of US citizenship, unless an intention to give up US citizenship exists. In fact, current State Department policy is that when a person naturalizes in another country the will presume that he intends to keep his US citizenship, and no loss of citizenship occurs. Here's a good website that describes the US laws on dual citizenship So, why is there a mistaken belief that the US and Israel has some sort of agreement to allow dual citizenship? It mostly stems from the US policy toward dual citizenship that existed prior to the court cases that I mentioned above. At that time, if a US citizen was born with two citizenships, then he could keep both. But, if he requested the the non-US citizenship, he would normally lose his US citizenship. Israel's Law of Return, allowed a Jew to apply to immgrate to Israel, and once he arrived he was automatically granted Israeli citizenship. Because he did not specifically request the Israeli citizenship (he only applied to immigrate), it did not cause loss of US citizenship. What this meant was that, for quite a few years, Israeli citizenship was the only citizenship that a US citizen could acquire as an adult, and still keep his US citizenship (because he never actually requested the citizenship - it was automatically granted after he immigrated). This led to an urban legend that there was some agreement to allow dual citizenship between the US and Israel. After the court decisions on dual citizenship added the "intent to relinquish" requirement, that pretty much opened up dual citizenship to any US citizen, and now a US citizen can obtain citizenship with any country and still keep his US citizenship, as long as the "other" country does not have any rules against dual citizenship. Stephen Gallagher
|
