Dual citizenship

[Leslie Goldstein]

anybdy know when dual citizenship became lawful for naturalized Amercans?  I
thougt they had to abjure previous citizenship.
LFG

Eugene Volokh wrote:

>         Hmm -- is the claim really that the government may never discriminate
> against dual citizens of both the U.S. and an enemy nation?  (I set aside
> the much harder question of the non-dual citizens.)
>
>         To begin with, we're talking here not about *race* discrimination, but
> *citizenship status* discrimination.  I realize the two may overlap in such
> situations, but there is an important different of principle here.  During
> World War II, for instance, I take it that everyone would agree that we were
> entitled to treat Japanese *citizens* differently from, say, Canadian
> citizens.  The status of being a citizen of an enemy nation is surely a
> permissible basis for government classification.  (Let's set aside for a
> moment the question whether Japanese, German, and Italian citizens could be
> treated differently; I suspect that even this discrimination wouldn't be
> subject to strict scrutiny, but surely it isn't the case that citizenship
> status discrimination as such is subject to strict scrutiny.)
>
>         But what about dual citizens, who are also American citizens?  Well, I
> certainly sympathize much more with their plight; but I'm not sure whether
> the Constitution protects them against discrimination based on their having
> another form of citizenship other than American.  Yes, if someone is an
> American citizen, we should generally assume (absent other evidence) that
> he's loyal to the U.S.  On the other hand, if someone is a German citizen,
> we can likewise assume -- with no bigotry or insult -- that he's loyal to
> Germany; people are usually supposed to be loyal to their country of
> citizenship.  If he's a citizen of both countries, we have a problem here:
> We have some reason to think that he feels loyalty to both, but we don't
> know which loyalty is stronger.  Today, of course, that dual loyalty doesn't
> matter; in December 1941, it obviously mattered a lot.  Sounds like very
> good reason (and, since strict scrutiny isn't implicated, a perfectly
> constitutional reason) to investigate this person further -- and in a close
> case, to take at least certain forms of action detrimental to him, such as
> not hiring him in a sensitive military position.  (I reserve the question of
> when it should be permissible to intern people who are citizens both of the
> U.S. and an enemy nation.)
>
>         Citizenship is not an irrelevant characteristic.  Nor is it a
> characteristic that, like race or ethnicity, might be statistically
> probative of certain attitudes, but that we should strive to ignore.
> Citizenship matters, it should continue to matter, and it seems to me that
> the government may act as if it matters.
>
> Shubha Ghosh writes:
>
> > The argument for rational discrimination based on the
> > divided loyalties of dual citizens or naturalized
> > citizens seems as weak as the arguments that gay
> > individuals should be signalled out as security risks
> > because of the risk of blackmail (a rationale I
> > understand that was quite common under the Hoover
> > administration and perhaps still exists now).