Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Help with Dual Citizenship problem!?

My boyfriend and I are in a long distance relationship and ready to make a GIANT move in it. We have some small problems, he's going into the film industry and Canada's is, okay but I know he's reaching for Hollywood.





Here is where my problem lies.


1. He has a valid American Citizenship


2. He also had a German Citizenship





He wants to become a Canadian Citizen but he already has 2 Citizenship's, I want him to come up here but the problem lies is that I want him to become a Citizen in a country I would like to live in, but we all know how Relationships can be and he's quite worried about losing his American Citizenship.





He mostly wants to go back down there after he is done with school, (He's not too fond of Student Visa's.) But I want him to experience Canadian Life as well.





So what should we do? His Dad is a USA Citizen, His mom is from Another Country, and he wants to go back their to work someday but he wont be able to if he doesn't have a Citizenship if I am correct. He wasn't born there.





Helpp!Help with Dual Citizenship problem!?
If he comes to Canada and gets to stay legally for 3 years on an appropriate immigrant visa, he can be naturalised as a Canadian citizen. This will not cause him to lose US citizenship - officially the USA disapproves but in practice the USA permits dual citizenship. There are dual US/somewhere else citizens all over the place.





More of a problem is the fact that he is also German. Germany traditionally did not permit dual citizenship at all. It still doesn't except in very limited cases. One of those cases is if you were born with dual citizenship - that's the only possible way he can have it. He will lose that if he gets citizenship in any other country UNLESS he applies to the German government for permission to keep it BEFORE applying for another citizenship. The form for that is called a Beibehaltungsgenehmigung.





Actually, even that is only relevant if his mother is German. If his mother is not a German citizen and he has German citizenship only because of one parent having long residence in Germany, he will lose it at the age of 23 in any case if he wants to stay American - under a reform of German law in 1990, a child is German as well as any other citizenship they are born with if one parent is a permanent resident in Germany and has lived there for over 8 years, but on becoming adult at the age of 18 they have five years to choose which citizenship to keep, and if no positive choice is made, German citizenship is automatically lost.





You don't need citizenship to work in a country, but you do need a long-stay visa or a work permit, and the fact that just about everywhere has unemployment problems means these are quite hard to get unless you haveHelp with Dual Citizenship problem!?
It's better for him to go to Canada as a US citizen, and then become a Canadian citizen, since US allows multiple citizenship.





There are people who have more than 2 citizenships. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Bare鈥?/a>
As a US citizen, he can live overseas forever and still remain US citizen, at the same time being a German and Canadian citizen.
marry him... he'll get canadian citizenship.
There isn't any problem with losing US citizenship. Under US law, you can have as many citizenships as desired. There were laws at one time that did cause Americans to lose their citizenship if they pledged an allegiance to another country (citizenship, military, etc.) but those were overturned by the supreme court.





However, maintaining the German citizenship may be a problem.





Under German law, a person may not have more than one citizenship unless he/she was born with both. In other words, this would indicate that he would likely lose his German citizenship if he acquires another citizenship.

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