The Oxymoron of Dual Citizenship
In December, Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, introduced the “Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025,” which states, “An individual may not be a citizen or national of the United States while simultaneously possessing any foreign citizenship.”
Moreno’s bill came in response to the growing number of Americans who possess “dual citizenship,” something that was exceedingly rare before the 1970s and remained uncommon until the last two or three decades. The bill’s intentions are clearly stated in three points:
“To preserve the integrity of national citizenship, allegiance to the United States must be undivided.”
“Existing law allows certain United States citizens to maintain foreign citizenship, which may create conflicts of interest and divided loyalties.”
“It is in the national interest of the United States to ensure the United States citizenship is held exclusively.”
At five years old, Senator Moreno immigrated to the U.S. from Columbia with his family and became a U.S. citizen at 18. “Being an American citizen is an honor and a privilege—and if you want to be an American, it’s all or nothing,” Moreno said in a statement after the introduction of his bill. “It’s time to end dual citizenship for good.”
Martha McDevitt-Pugh, who resides in the Netherlands and is the chair of both Democrats Abroad and Global LGBTQ+, responded to Moreno’s bill almost immediately,
Dual citizenship is not a threat—it’s an asset that reflects the reality of an interconnected world where Americans live, work, serve, and advocate for U.S. interests on a global scale. Questioning loyalty because a citizen possess [sic] another passport is not just wrong: it’s an attack on the millions of Americans whose lives span borders and who contribute every day to the strength of the Unites States.
Growing up, I had no idea there was such a thing as dual citizenship. I knew adults who were naturalized, but they had taken the Oath of Allegiance, which required them to “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty” to which they had once been a subject or citizen. The use of the word “abjure” carried religious overtones. Strong stuff. No wiggle room in that oath.
In high school and college political science courses, I heard about naturalization but nothing about dual citizenship.Upon joining the Marine Corps, I swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” I would never have thought there was any wiggle room in that oath, either.
During those years, I may not have heard about dual citizenship, but I did hear about British impressment of American sailors. It was one of the reasons we fought the American Revolution and established the Marine Corps. The British claimed Americans were “subjects” of the Crown, no matter where they were born or where they lived. If the Royal Navy needed more sailors, they were forcibly taken from American merchant vessels. American complaints were futile.
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, Britain recognized the sovereignty and independence of the United States and differentiated between “Subjects” of the British Crown and “Citizens” of the United States. This should have ended impressment.
However, as the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) progressed and Britain faced manpower shortages, the practice began again. Britain excused itself by saying it did not recognize American naturalization of British subjects and was taking only those sailors who had immigrated to America post-Treaty of Paris. The U.S. protested in the strongest terms, but the Royal Navy continued to impress sailors until more than 6,000 were spirited away. This was one of the principal causes the War of 1812.
Britain continued disregarding American naturalization of British subjects until 1870. The change was a result of the Fenian raids into Canada following the Civil War and the 1867 Fenian Rising in Ireland. Taking their name from the followers of the third century A.D. Irish hero Finn MacCool, the Fenians were dedicated to driving Britain out of Ireland and to establishing a free and independent Irish Republic.
Upwards of 200,000 Irish-born men fought in the Civil War, 150,000 or more for the Union and another 40,000 or more for the Confederacy. Since these men had been born in Ireland under the suzerainty of the British Crown, Britain regarded them as British subjects. Having become naturalized U.S. citizens and having fought in the Civil War was of no consequence to Britain. Tough luck, mate!
When these veterans joined Fenian groups and attacked British forts in Canada or returned to Ireland and supported the Fenian Rising there, Britain considered them traitors. When captured, they were not afforded the protections, legal representation, and due process they should have had as foreign nationals.
This cavalier disregard of American citizenship caused Congress to pass the Expatriation Act of 1868, which declared it was “a natural and inherent right of all people” to renounce one’s citizenship. Britain was not eager to surrender her principle of perpetual allegiance but after two years of American pressure, debates in England, and fear of making martyrs of Fenian prisoners, Britain abandoned it.
At the same time that the United States worked to insure that naturalized Americans had no obligations to their native lands, the State Department worked to disallow dual citizenship. The Expatriation Act of 1907 codified several decades of State Department decisions. It included many provisions but, most importantly, declared an American who was naturalized in a foreign state or who took an oath to a foreign state lost his U.S. citizenship.
Also, if a naturalized American lived in his native land for more than two years or in any foreign land for more than five years, he would lose U.S. citizenship. A woman who married a foreign national would lose her U.S. citizenship and take the nationality of her husband. If she gave birth to a child on U.S. soil, that child would be a U.S. citizen and a citizen of the husband’s country, but only until age 21, when he’d have to “elect” one citizenship.
The prohibition on dual citizenship remained mostly in place until 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled in Afroyim v. Rusk. Efraim Bernstein, later known as Beys Afroyim, was a Polish Jew, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1912 and became a naturalized citizen in 1926. His communist activism caused him ever more problems and in the late 1940s he resettled in Israel. In 1960, he attempted to return to the United States but was denied a passport and told he had lost his U.S. citizenship because he had voted in Israeli elections.
With the aid of ACLU lawyers, Afroyim fought his loss of citizenship in U.S. courts. He lost again and again, until the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in his favor, saying that under the 14th Amendment the government couldn’t strip a person of his citizenship. Dissenting opinion argued that nothing in the 14th Amendment or elsewhere in the Constitution prevented the government from revoking a person’s citizenship in accordance with laws passed by Congress.
The Supreme Court’s decision opened the way for dual citizenship. Such a status, of course, also depended on a second country allowing it. Israel has allowed dual citizenship since its 1948 inception and codified it in the 1950 Law of Return and the 1952 Citizenship Law. In 2023, The Times of Israel estimated there were more than 200,000 people living in Israel who were dual citizens of the U.S. and Israel. The 2020 Census estimated 191,000 Israeli Americans living in the U.S. There are also thousands of Americans serving in the Israel Defense Forces—exactly 23,380, according to a 2024 article by The Washington Post. It’s unclear how many of these are reservists living here in the U.S., who were called to active duty following the Hamas attack in October 2023.
In May 2024, a bill was introduced in the House to afford these Americans serving in Israel the same protections American reservists called to active duty in the U.S. military receive. The authors of the bill say the legislation will provide protections against foreclosure, default judgements in legal cases, repossession of rental property, increase in interest rates, and loss of a civilian job for those serving.
It seems astounding that the U.S. government would provide such benefits to those serving in the armed forces of a foreign nation but so is allowing—at least since 1967—dual citizenship. The bill was referred to the Committee on Veteran Affairs and then to a subcommittee. It has not emerged from committee.
Though Israel-United States dual citizenship has gained the most attention, it is not the most common by a long shot. Dual citizens of Mexico and the United States are in the are in the hundreds of thousands and have the potential to reach 10 million or more in the near future. We have no exact numbers because neither Mexico nor the U.S. compile data on dual citizens—or so we are told. Mexico’s 1998 Nationality Act makes dual citizenship easy, allowing American-born children of at least one Mexican parent to become Mexican citizens simply by filing out a form.
Moreover, Mexico has been promoting dual citizenship ever since the passage of the Nationality Act. In 2000, Mexican President Vicente Fox urged Mexicans living in the U.S. to naturalize, reassuring them that they wouldn’t lose Mexican citizenship and their American-born children would be eligible for Mexican citizenship. Dual citizenship for either them or their children was another powerful incentive for Mexicans to enter the U.S., legally or illegally.
The consequences of uncontrolled Mexican migration can be seen most dramatically in California, which had only a single-digit minority of Mexicans in the 1950s and ’60s. Mexicans are now a plurality of the population in California and comprise the majority of the children. It’s likely they will achieve majority status in another two decades. Once thought a demographic change peculiar to California, Texas is now heading the same direction.
Since both California and Texas share a border with Mexico, this leads to some interesting speculation. What if Mexico developed a reserve military force of dual citizens similar to that of Israel? Proportionately, instead of 23,000 soldiers, that would be 450,000, or nearly two-and-a-half times the current size of the Marine Corps.
It would seem it’s time for Bernie Moreno’s Exclusive Citizenship Act. How can it even be possible to pledge loyalty to two nations? Dual loyalty is an oxymoron.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/columns/the-oxymoron-of-dual-citizenship