Loss of citizenship

Loss of citizenship, also referred to as loss of nationality, is the event of ceasing to be a citizen of a country under the nationality law of that country. It is a blanket term covering both involuntary loss of citizenship, such as through denaturalization, as well as voluntary renunciation of citizenship.

A 1961 letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, stating that Beys Afroyim had lost his U.S. citizenship. Afroyim became the subject of a landmark 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case, Afroyim v. Rusk.

Grounds

There are generally two categories of grounds for loss of citizenship.[1][2] "Involuntary loss" may occur due to either automatic lapse of citizenship from the citizen for failure to take some action to retain citizenship, or active withdrawal of citizenship by the country. In contrast, "voluntary loss", often called "relinquishment" or "renunciation", is initiated by the citizen.[2] It is not always easy to make a clean distinction between the two categories: loss of citizenship due to an initial cause undertaken voluntarily (for example, voluntarily serving in a foreign military or voluntarily naturalising as a citizen of a foreign country) could be seen either as "voluntary loss" or "involuntary loss".[2]

The European Union Democracy Observatory, in a study of the nationality laws of thirty-three European countries, found nine broadly-defined cases in which a citizen of a country may lose his or her citizenship:[3]

  1. Voluntary acquisition of another citizenship
  2. Residing abroad on a permanent basis
  3. Fraud in the naturalisation process, including sham marriages, or failure to give up the other citizenship in countries which require that as a condition of naturalisation
  4. Serving in a foreign military or foreign government
  5. Upon adoption by a foreign citizen, or other change in the child's legal relation to the parents such as annulment of maternity/paternity
  6. For a minor, upon the loss of citizenship by the parents
  7. Failure to fulfill conditions, for example in Japan, where Japanese children born with an additional citizenship lose Japanese citizenship if they fail to give up the other citizenship before the age of 22
  8. Voluntary renunciation

Involuntary loss of citizenship does not necessarily mean automatic and immediate loss. Even if a country's laws state that under certain circumstances citizenship is automatically removed, until officials of the government or embassy are informed, that country's government will probably still retain that person's name in its citizenship records.[4]

International norms

Various international treaties limit the cases in which loss of nationality may occur. In most cases this limits the government's power to deprive the individual of citizenship, but this also may limit the individual's ability to voluntarily make themselves stateless.[5] Article 7 of the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness provides that "[l]aws for the renunciation of a nationality shall be conditional upon a person's acquisition or possession of another nationality". However, this is not considered a peremptory norm which binds non-signatories to the Convention.

Notes
  1. OPM 2001, p. 5
  2. De Groot, Vink & Honohan 2013, p. 2
  3. De Groot, Vink & Honohan 2013, pp. 3–4
  4. OPM 2001, p. 6
  5. De Groot 2013, p. 1
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References
  • Citizenship Laws of the World (PDF). Washington, D.C.: Office of Personnel Management, Investigations Service. March 2001. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2003-04-06. Retrieved 2013-12-14.
  • De Groot, Gerard-René; Vink, Maarten; Honohan, Iseult (2013). "Loss of Citizenship" (PDF). EUDO Citizenship Policy Brief (3). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-10-24. Retrieved 2018-06-12.
  • De Groot, Gerard-René (2013). "Survey on Rules on Loss of Nationality in International Treaties and Case Law". CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe (57). Retrieved 2014-01-17.
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