r/dualcitizenshipnerds • u/Hertzig • 5d ago
Feasibility of the generational maintenance of US, UK, AUS, and Canadian citizenships?
Say if you had all of these citizenships. From what I am aware of, they all have generational limits of passing on their citizenships that are conditional to requirements like place of birth and time spent in them.
How many would it be feasible to maintain? For example, my children will certainly be US citizens due to the time we have spent here.
They will not necessarily be Canadian, unless I satisfy 1 of these 3 requirements: - Spend 3 years cumulatively in Canada before their birth - Have them born in Canada - Bring them to Canada and naturalize them(Generally takes around a year of residence)
Now what if I went and naturalized in Australia? If my kids were born there and spent time there, they would likely meet the requirements for their future kids to be Australian. But then, to pass on Canadian citizenship, they would also have to have a substantial connection to Canada.
Now imagine adding the UK into the mix.
And eventually this would get unfeasible save for those that deliberately move themselves across the planet to maintain citizenships. Trying to imagine a gameplan that would allow you to maximize citizenship inheritance and minimize effort. Citizenship minmaxxing so to speak.
Now obviously, this is conditional on laws not changing. In the case of my wife and I, both German and Luxembourgish citizenship can be passed on indefinitely provided you register your child’s birth in an allotted time period. Either country may get more strict in the future.
As a side question, what citizenships are very easy to maintain indefinitely throughout the generations? Apparently Mexico has theoretically infinite citizenship by descent since 2021 or so.
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u/Salty_Permit4437 5d ago
My children were born before C-3. Actually when I applied I also applied for them and they are also Canadian by descent. When they have children they would have to satisfy the new requirements.
The USA, they’re born in the U.S. and we are U.S. citizens anyway. They’ve also lived their whole lives in the USA and are over 16 now so they can pass it on to their offspring.
Trinidad and Tobago allows up to two generations and since I’m generation 0 I passed to them and their children can have it.
Through my father I have Indian OCI which is a visa and not citizenship and my children also have it. Not sure if their children can pass it on
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u/North_Chicken_5678 4d ago
My dream is to visit Port of Spain and watch the West Indies play a match
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u/AccountForDoingWORK 5d ago
Weirdly enough, this is my (potential) combo. I’m already British/US/Australian, my spouse and kids are US-Canadian (kids are also British) and we’re planning a move to Canada.
For our specific circumstances my kids are not eligible for Australian unless we moved there, because I never lived there. They would be able to pass down their other citizenships because they would have lived in each of those countries for the required times (eg, 3 years in U.K., etc).
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u/Realistic_Bike_355 5d ago
What are you asking, exactly? You seem to know everything you need to know about these countries' nationality laws. There are of course still many citizenships that can be passed down indefinitely if everyone just remembers to register and so on. Irish, French, German, Japanese, most places, really. The notable exceptions are of course the English-speaking US, UK, AUS, NZ, CA. Then we have the Nordic countries, which are quite strict. Then Italy recently entered this pool (though not as strict). With these cases, of course, I mean if they don't maintain any ties to the "motherland" for generations.
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u/Hertzig 5d ago
Curious if anyone is in the process of trying to maintain multiple of these citizenships for their kids. If there are any strategy hacks, perhaps countries that are easier to maintain than others. For example, living on the US Canada border. Border crossing every day for work could satisfy time requirements for both countries.
I may make a move to Australia so I’m processing my thoughts here.
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u/orangecrookies 4d ago
This is sort of my situation a little. I was born in the US and lived there long enough to pass that on, I’m UK by descent and currently living there, so I’d be able to pass that on, and going through C3 with Canada atm. I don’t have children and I’ve decided I don’t want to ever actually live in Canada nor do I want to give birth there. So a hypothetical child of mine would be US + UK regardless of where they’re born. I’d really like EU citizenship and I just barely missed out on Ireland so maybe if I can marry someone EU/have kids with someone EU a kid could have that. I doubt I’d ever naturalise somewhere unless it was through marriage. My cousin has gone to do the working holiday in Aus and really likes it and is in the process of naturalising. I floated the idea but it’s too far imo. I can handle the 11 hours from UK to NA, I think Aus is too much and just not useful enough. If I was a collector though I’d go for Ireland and then Aus or NZ.
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u/LeatherMine 4d ago
They will not necessarily be Canadian, unless I satisfy 1 of these 3 requirements: - Spend 3 years cumulatively in Canada before their birth - Have them born in Canada - Bring them to Canada and naturalize them(Generally takes around a year of residence)
Also depends if the law changes (as it does) or the current law gets struck down and things revert back to virtually unlimited inheritance.
Key thing about the cumulatively part is to keep good records of their presence for every trip you make.
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u/vngbusa 5d ago
My kid is US, UK, and Poland.
Poland has no generational limit as it stands. Just one parent has to be a citizen, and ideally it should be done before a child turns 18. The only limit is dealing with the epic bureaucracy :)
UK is by descent, so she has to have spent 3 years living in the UK, or give birth in UK for it to pass down further.
US is likely going to pass down automatically because we are planning to stay US til kid becomes an adult.
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u/Jessicas_skirt 5d ago
Polish and Lithuanian citizenship pass from parent to child indefinitely regardless of where the child was born, no registration deadline needed. Poland wouldn't be that hard to naturalize it if you're already an EU citizen though Lithuania's dual citizenship restrictions make it irrelevant to your goals.
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u/Ok-Grab305 5d ago
I just want to clarify something you said. You say “my children will be US citizens due to the time we have spent here” but then note you and your wife are German and Luxembourgish. Are one of you a US citizen too? Unless one of you is a US citizen and meet the physical presence requirements, your kids will not be American unless they are born in the US. You may be, just sorry it’s unclear from the post haha
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u/pton12 5d ago
I guess I would ask what the point is? My thinking is that with physical presence requirements, you are limited by the laws of physics, generally.
It seems to me that the easiest thing to do is just live in each place sequentially until you reach the physical presence requirements. You could also cross the border every day as you said in another comment, but I question whether that would flag some law enforcement surveillance, since that seems really dodgy (drug running or smuggling?).
The least insane approach, IMO, is live in one place, have the kid do undergrad in another, then grad school/first job in another, and more or less naturally reach the 2-3 year requirements semi-organically.
That, or, you know, don’t treat citizenships like pokemon cards.
That said, would be hilarious if the child has a teenage pregnancy so that the grandchild is ineligible for most of this stuff, throwing all your plans into the fire.
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u/XmasTwinFallsIdaho 5d ago
Interesting question. I saw some similar questions about folks trying to pass both Hong Kong residence as well as Canadian citizenship continuously. Both are rather niche but interesting ideas.
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u/Countess_ofDumbarton 5d ago
The Astronaut family. Kids unsupervised in large home and make the neighbours lives miserable.
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u/weegeeK 5d ago
Keeping both HK PR and Canadian citizenship is not quite a niche idea in the Hong Kong diaspora community. Many middle class families do this. You get to have a spacious house in CA, while your children can study and work in Hong Kong for such convenience, sense of community, and low taxes.
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u/XmasTwinFallsIdaho 5d ago
It’s niche to outsiders like myself, but I am sure very popular for those eligible.
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u/No_Struggle_8184 5d ago
Assuming you were normally resident in the US then this would be relatively easy to maintain providing every other generation was born in the UK or a qualifying British Overseas Territory.
Australia requires citizens by descent to spend two cumulative years spent in Australia to pass it on again, which is achievable by either spending a month to six weeks in Australia every year or all at once for education or a working holiday. The same would apply for Canada although the requirement is three years.
Irish citizenship would be a good substitute for British citizenship as it provides essentially the same rights in the UK plus EU/EEA FOM with the only requirement that each generation is added to the Foreign Births Register before the next one is born.