Ella Heyder is bracing for a breakup, even though she already moved out decades ago.
She’s contemplating cutting ties altogether with her home country, the United States of America, and President Donald Trump.
“I’m quite disturbed by what’s happening in the U.S. under Trump’s regime. It’s a fascist, imperialist regime,” Heyder said as she and others waved signs outside the American Embassy in Ottawa during what has become a twice-weekly protest against the current U.S. administration.
“It makes me a little bit ashamed. It makes me feel very sad,” she said.
For decades, Heyder has carried two passports. While she grew up in Norfolk, Va., Canada has her loyalty, and she figures a permanent split is inevitable.
It may depend on the country and even the institution. I know of dual citizens from my home country, Norway, who were denied financial services there despite being born there and having citizenship.
If you’re moving back permanently the only sane thing to do is to renounce US citizenship ASAP to get the clock started on becoming a non-US person.
However, I’m staying, because I have a wife and children here who are all single-citizenship natural born US citizens.
If those are your children, wouldn’t they automatically get your citizenship?
No. Rules vary country to country. My children could have filed to get one of they did before age 21 and had spent something like 6 months total in Norway before that age. They’re past that and they didn’t have enough time in the country, though they have visited. They can still apply on grounds of my citizenship at the time of their birth, but it’s a much longer process and they’d need to learn the language. If they have a spouse or children, they would have to go through that as well. Norway is harder to immigrate to than most countries.
If I had only predicted the demise of democracy 28 years ago, when I moved, I would have made sure they learned the language and had dual citizenship. Alas that didn’t happen. These days there are online schools and such we could have used so it’s a little easier and I see that lots of parentsb these days do exactly that.