Second Citizenships, Residencies, and/or Temporary Relocation

Multiple-citizenship has always been fascinating to me. For example, most countries oaths of citizenship are worded in such a way that preclude loyalty split between them and another, yet they don't prevent or punish their citizens for holding dual citizenship.

My understanding of citizenship is that it's a relatively modern invention that a person could have more than one citizenship. The oaths you mention are holdovers from the time when citizenship meant fealty to a specific ruler in exchange for lifelong protection and sanctuary. To have more than one citizenship would be impossible, since you can only be "supremely loyal" to a single sovereign.

These days, since citizenship is more an operation of law from a nation state and less a particular privilege granted by a ruling individual, such loyalty is less required. The vast majority of countries consider someone who has multiple citizenships, including the one of the country in which they are in, to be a citizen of solely that country (e.g. if you are a dual citizen of the United States and Australia and you are standing in the United States, the U.S. only recognizes your U.S. citizenship).

Some countries, like Germany, still actively try to discourage the practice, though even Germany is becoming less strident. If you are a German citizen and you naturalize in any other (non-EU or EEA country or Switzerland), you automatically lose your German citizenship by operation of law unless you asked for permission to retain it. But getting permission has become progressively easier, and Germany does not make a person who is born with German citizenship and another citizenship choose by a certain age.

It is something of an interesting topic, for sure, though it's very easy to fall down the dark well of conspiracy theorists (some Germans believe you are not a Proper German Citizen unless you have the goldenrod-colored A4 form declaring you to be so) and nation state abolitionists (not saying I disagree with the latter, but it is a very short trip from there to "I am a human and also a corporate person separate from my corporeal being").

"The Indian Citizenship Act, 1955, does not allow dual citizenship."

So that's not an option for 1.32 Billion people.

The Canadians citizenship ceremony to me was fascinating, because it begins with an aboriginal land acknowledgement.

The statement is quite literally "the very ground we're standing on doesn't even belong to us, but here we are saying that you are a citizen of . . . clearly not the land".

Their demographic experiment is also very interesting. About 10% of all Canadians don't actually live in Canada - that is an extremely large ratio. It is also a growing number, and as housing prices and lack of economic opportunity continue to drag, more Canadians leave. At the same time, the Canadian government is desperate to ignore these issues, and just bringing as many immigrants as possible so they can prop the housing market since it is the last bastion of their economy and accounts for a third of GDP when you factor in related services and industries. That was pre-COVID so now it's quite likely to be even larger.

It's a generational revolving door of immigrating, getting citizenship, and then watching your kids emigrate. I suspect that within our lifetimes we'll see >50% of Canadians actually live outside of Canada.

Being Canadian will be a sort of administrative identity more than anything resembling a citizenship.

Speak for yourself :-)

Multiple passports, in 2021 gives you options that are invaluable. You can establish homes in 3 countries. In case of emergency in one country you can go to another 2. You can enter countries that exclude citizens with one or more passports.

There is so much to be thankful for with multiple citizenships.

The one major downside is U.S. Taxes.

Be very grateful to your parents and self-initiative.