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Comment by random42_ | Hacker News Reader

Did you actually had to give up on your Japanese citizenship? I know that when taking the oath you reject all other citizenship you may have but AFAIK this is not enforced, meaning you don't have to go to your embassy and formally require to give up on your citizenship. Really curious to know more about this.

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The US does not care if you have any other citizenships but some countries do. E.g. Japan will revoke its citizenship on the citizens who obtained another one [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nationality_law#Loss_...

I actually got work in Japan. My passport was expired, and I went to renew it. They always ask how you're staying in the states and to show evidence. At that point my green card was expired and I only had naturalization to show. At that point I had to give up my Japanese citizenship, in order to get a visa. I don't remember if that was the exact reason but I was able to get away with dual for a while. Maybe if I tried renewing it in Japan it wouldn't have been a problem?

Ouch... Hopefully Japan will change this at some point, with the increase in international marriages. I've been living here long enough and paid enough taxes to consider becoming a citizen. But I wouldn't trade it for my US citizenship.

Interesting aside. One of my Taiwanese friends got his Japanese citizenship, and thus renounced his Taiwanese.

But plot twist: Taiwan allows (what's akin to) temporary renouncment. Now he's a dual citizen.

This is very accurate, countries do not share citizenship data so it is impossible for them to know who has 2 or more passports.

I have several friends that have remained in possessions of their previous passports and still renew them in case they ever need them.

No, it’s highly dependent on the countries involved. When you apply for the second citizenship, that country knows about your first citizenship. They can decide to force you to choose one. And the first country may or may not allow you to give up that citizenship. As an example, you can read about dual citizenship in Europe here: https://m.dw.com/cda/en/dual-citizenship-in-europe-which-rul...

You will see that the rules differ by country.

You misunderstand. The USA does not have a list of Japanese Citizens, meaning that if a Japanese citizen decides to become and American one they have no concrete proof that he discarded his proof of Japanese citizenship (in this case a Passport) unless they reach out to Japan.

Unless you are an international criminal the US will not waste time or resources requesting that information.

This is true for most countries.

Yes, but I believe the point is that you can lie that you gave up the first one, even if you didn’t. There isn’t a way of checking

There’s quite a few territories where you need to get a license/seal/stamp/signature from the administration of your current citizenship. Going deeper, it’s then common for that request to only be authorized given the promise of the administration of the new citizenship to grand you this new citizenship. A two-way commit of sorts.

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