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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

I noticed on the form:

  Citizenship or Place of Organization: USA

I know that he was born in South Africa to a South African father and a Canadian mother. I assume this means he is entitled to citizenship (and passports) in both places.

Does anyone know if he still has both of these citizenships? If yes, I am surprised that he is not required to declare them on this form. Maybe SEC does not care about other passports, if already a US citizen.

One idea: Maybe he renounced the others so that he can run a rocket company in the US. As I understand, Space X is crazy strict about security requirements, and many of those are dictated by the US Federal gov't.

For example, in New York City, I knew many Jewish people that were native born US citizens, but also had an Israeli passport. It made it easier to visit Israel (much lower security requirements), and it was an important cultural link for them.

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When you become a US citizen they ask you to renounce other citizenships. At least it was the case the for me.

The Naturalization Oath is "Renounce and abjure absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or citizen".

Makes no mention of giving up citizenship or passport-holding, just allegiance.

I had to pledge allegiance to the queen when I got my canadian citizenship (or maybe my parents did? I was 9 so that would make more sense). So in a way, I'd have to renounce my canadian citizenship to become American, even if in reality you are right that it doesn't happen.

Citizenship is allegiance. Even if the moral doesn't align with the reality anymore, it still is considered to.

Both countries allow it https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=356...

https://www.immigrationhelp.org/learning-center/is-u-s-dual-...

I don't think this applies to naturalization. If you're born with the qualifications for citizenship in each, then you are a citizen of both. Apart from being born that way, you may not be able to hold either one or the other, on naturalization.

I suspect it depends on what your original citizenship was. There are a number of countries with which you can have dual U.S. citizenship.

>they ask you to

My understanding is that they can't really enforce this. You can still hold multiple citizenships even if its against the rules.

I have seen this with dual nationals by birth in Japan -- both Japanese and something else. By law, they are required to make a choice at age 20. However, the "by law" part is very hard to enforce if their parents registered for nationality in the non-Japan country after applying for nationality in Japan.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nationality_law#Dual_...

What were your other citizenships?

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