Dual???

I'm getting to the point in or out, no straddling.

Must be for tax purposes.

"Dual"? When did we start allowing that???

As an American & Canadian citizen, I hereby challenge Carrey to a dual at dawn.

Actually, the US just doesn't go all ape over forcing you to renounce your other citizenship. If you rub it in their noses without letting them know in advance they'll revoke your US citizen status. Running for office, serving in a foreign army, or doing other things that are inconsistent with your US citizenship gets the status revoked. If you let them know in advance, like several E European born US citizens did, they'll ok your running for office and if you get press ganged into a foreign military and can prove it, your time served in another army won't cost you either.

It's generally a good system.

I went to law school with a girl who was a U.S. citizen, but also carried a British passport. The U.S. just wouldn't recognize the "dual citizen" status, even though the Brits did.

Back in high school in Asuncion, Paraguay, I had a friend whose parents worked for the State Dept., so he was born in Lima, Peru. Back then not only did he eventually have to live in the US for a number of years (5?) to maintain his US citizenship (he figured college would be a lot of that time) but also had to avoid Peru for the next decade or so after his 18th birthday . They had universal conscription and considered anyone born there to be a citizen, no matter what you did, and induction was immediate. (A number of South American countries had the same laws.) So sometimes the dual citizen part is involuntary.

Twn,

Recognizing dual citizenship is pretty recent. Maybe in the last few years, I think.

Orrin: did you like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? I thought Carry did a great job in this one.

Great philosophical science fiction movie. Such selective memory erasure services are on the horizon, rest assured. All this happy pill - prozac crap is just a laughably crude beginning to dehumanizing. But the story in Spotless Mind proves that you can't erase human nature or God's plan (neither of which contradict one another).

Interested in your thoughts or if you have reviewed it. I know you loved Donnie Darko as much as I did -- for similar reasons.

As for Carrey becoming an American, that's the news -- not that he was allowed to keep his Canadian passport. It's his chosen country.

As always, your blog rocks.

george:

Thanks. I haven't reviewed it yet, but loved it. It effectively answers why a world where bad things happen isn't incompatible with Creation.

Actually, I know someone who has dual US/Irish citizenship. She did it in basically the reverse order than Carrey: she is a U.S. citizen, but on the basis of having been born in Belfast and having Irish grandparents, she qualified to apply for Irish citizenship.

She said her reasons for applying for Irish citizenship, besides loving the country of Ireland, were that she travels a lot. And it's a lot easier to get around Europe, for instance, if you have a passport from an E.U. member country. Furthermore, she expects that in the future, she may end up needing travel to various countries in the Middle East, where being known to be an American could make her a tempting target for terrorists or kidnappers. If she does travel to such places, she plans on carrying only her Irish passport, and telling everyone she's from Ireland.

So far at least, she's never had any trouble getting either passport renewed. Neither country seems to mind her having a dual allegiance; she doesn't expect either allegiance to be in conflict with the other anytime within her lifetime. Last time I renewed my own U.S. passport, I took a close look at the oath I had to sign. I was required to affirm that I was a U.S. citizen, and had not done one of several things, including formally renouncing my U.S. citizenship, taking up arms against the U.S. government, etc. Nowhere in the list was anything like "I have not accepted citizenship in another country", only "I have not renounced my U.S. citizenship". Seems like dual citizenship is quite kosher as long as the other country is not an enemy.

When did Carrey get his greencard - start the immigration paperwork? He's not married at the moment (therefore not to an American). I thought you had to live in the States for 5 years (3 if married) to go for your citizenship, which he got on October 7th. Wow, wish I was rich 'n' famous, might be able to get somewhere with the luckless INS !

When did Carrey get his greencard - start the immigration paperwork? He's not married at the moment (therefore not to an American). I thought you had to live in the States for 5 years (3 if married) to go for your citizenship, which he got on October 7th. Wow, wish I was rich 'n' famous, might be able to get somewhere with the luckless INS !