kdoc67

I was born in the UK but I became a Naturalized US citizen in 2005.

My British passport is expiring and I want to renew it but on the C1 application form it says "If you possess the nationality or citizenship of another country, you may loose this when you acquire a British passport".

Does anyone know if there is really a risk to my US citizenship if I renew my British passport?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Bob

no risk, you have dual nationality and won't lose it.

Might want to have a read of the passport thread in the US section though as it has quite a bit of info on the process at the moment and how long it's taking.

kdoc67

Bob,

thanks for the feedback :-)

I will go read the passport thread as you suggest, I didn't see that one when I was trying to figure out where to post my question :-)

wordfool

Unless the British embassy has started giving lists of passport applicants to the US government you should be OK.

JAJ

Still wouldn't make any difference.

Dan725

I think its that old chestnut of one country not giving a toss for another "laws", if you like.

For instance, when you take your Oath here, you "Renounce All other Citizenships". Does the UK take this renunciation seriously? No. This situation is just a reversal....that's what it says on the (British) form, but it bears no weight with the US Govt.

henryh

Actually in the US naturalization oath, you renounce all other allegiances, not citizenships.

Dan725

Pedant

AAActually, this is the wording:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen "

Sounds pretty much like foregoing all other citizenships to me....

nettlebed

A REAL pedant would say that what the oath means is that you can start acting as a fifth columnist in the country of the citizenship to which you are renouncing allegiance, and still have a clean conscience.

DigitalGhost

I'd agree, that sounds like your surrendering all allegience to the Queen which is the oath somebody needs to take now when becoming a British Citizen.

I know for a fact that the British pay no heed to this though. Unfortunately however some countries like Japan and Germany still require you to completely surrender all citizenship to your home nation before you can adopt their citizenship and the UK/US governments do have to pay heed to this.

Dan725

That's right - I have a German friend who will not apply for citizenship due to this. I don't doubt that it would probably stop many Brits too, if it were the case.

DigitalGhost

My girlfriend is the same, she's Japanese born and will no doubt never take citizenship of any other country because of this, even though it is highly unlikely that she will ever move back to Japan full time. She just sees it as burning a bridge that she can't really bring herself to let go of, although admittedly as you say it would take a lot for me to give up my UK passport, EU citizenship is a bit too much to let go of really.

ian-mstm

HTG, it doesn't matter. Why, you ask? Because any oath taken in the US is *NOT* binding on any other country. In other words, the UK decides who is and is not a citizen of the UK... so it doesn't matter what oaths you've taken in the US.

Ian

Bob

your wrong about Germany.....you just have to apply for permission in advance which will be granted unless you are getting citizenship from a dodgy country.

md95065

Does the German list of "dodgy countries" include the US?