dual citizenship, American with German mother - help please!

[vilkatis]

Hello,

In another topic here,

http://www.immigrationboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=17264

sakura posted the following in response to another question (I've adjusted the emphasis from point 4 to point 2 since that applies to me):

You don't have to give up us citizenship to get a german passport

For the OP, he actually can NOT be a dual national, neither with Germany and India NOR with Germany and (if he is a US citizen) with the US. The US embassy in Germany writes this (see especially point 4):

2. A child born to an American parent and a German parent acquires both American and German citizenship at birth, regardless of place of birth, if the parents satisfy the jus soli or jus sanguinis requirements of their respective countries. See the sections above entitled, "Basic Primer on American Citizenship Law," and "Basic Primer on German Citizenship Law." Neither country requires a person born under these circumstances to choose between American and German citizenship, i.e., he/she may keep both citizenships his/her entire life.

3. A child born in Germany to two American parents may also become a dual national at birth under the circumstances described in paragraph 4 in the section above entitled, "Basic Primer on German Citizenship Law." Under German law, he/she would have to choose between American and German citizenship before turning 23.

4. Under German law, a person may not have more than one citizenship unless he/she was born with both, as described in paragraphs 2 and 3 above. Thus, German law requires an American who becomes a German citizen through the Einbürgerung process (see paragraph 5 in the section entitled, "Basic Primer on German Citizenship Law") to formally renounce his/her American citizenship, and a German who becomes an American citizen (see paragraph 5 in the section entitled, "Basic Primer on American Citizenship Law") to give up his/her German citizenship.

Einbürgerung means German naturalisation.

According to this post, I am already a dual citizen.

Anybody with more information &/or URL's with more information, please respond.

I am an American born in the United States to a German mother who was born in Berlin in the 1930's. She lived there until she was 17 & then immigrated to the U.S. Documentation of her birth and records of her citizenship are not a problem; I'd need to track them down, but they all exist and are in order since she's had to use them numerous times over the years. I speak only English fluently, but I studied German for three years in high school and could re-learn it enough to be semi-fluent in short order, possibly reaching low-level fluency within a year.

I would like to confirm that in very specific detail, and I would like to go about formalizing that status and obtaining a German passport. I'm currently resident in the EU and this would VASTLY improve my situation if I am, indeed, an EU citizen.

This is a pretty exciting development for me since I've been wanting to attempt either a German citizenship or (much better) a dual citizenship. Until now I expected a very high residency barrier combined with a language barrier .. now it seems much more reasonable.

Any and all commentary, hints &/or pointers to web sites or forums would be very much welcome!

THANK YOU !

-- vilkatis

[Directive/2004/38/EC]

There have been a number of other people in your same situation. See http://www.immigrationboards.com/viewto ... highlight= for example.

The German Embassy in London has this page... http://www.london.diplo.de/Vertretung/l ... Seite.html

[JAJ]

I am an American born in the United States to a German mother who was born in Berlin in the 1930's. She lived there until she was 17 & then immigrated to the U.S. Documentation of her birth and records of her citizenship are not a problem; I'd need to track them down, but they all exist and are in order since she's had to use them numerous times over the years. I speak only English fluently, but I studied German for three years in high school and could re-learn it enough to be semi-fluent in short order, possibly reaching low-level fluency within a year.

A few questions, which affect your status?

1. When were you born? In particular, were you born before 1975?

2. Did your mother become a U.S. citizen - if so, when?

[vilkatis]

Thanks!

That seems like good news.

To answer the other questions ... I was born a long time ago in in a galaxy far, far away ... uhm, yep. A very comfortable bit before 1975.

Which I hope is Good News.


Mom naturalized sometime in the mid- or late 1980's, also quite a comfortable bit after I was born (I think I was just about 30).


Looks like I've got a bit of research to brush up on. I'll keep checking in & posting feedback as I learn stuff.

-- vilkatis

[Wanderer]

Slightly on-topic wrt to German Nationality, I've noticed there are literally thousands of Russians in Germany, all there as some sort of repatriation due to them having German descent, most likely down to the raping etc, that followed the Red Army and it's march into Berlin.

We went to Lubeck, and to Nettelndorn in Hamburg and the community there is 100% Russian and they get free housing and some sort of food subsidy. It's like Little Russia there. No-one worked so far as I could see.

We visited a distant relative of my gf's, Russian language, Russian TV, Russian food. Made me think possibly Russian's aren't great integrators but that's probably an 'ist' in this PC world...

But it does prove that there is plenty of scope if you have German ancestry.

Vorspung durch teknik

[Administrator]

.

Living in Latvia, and the Baltics in general, I can painfully vouch for the Russian enclave mentality.

It is astonishing how many are sitting tight, waiting for "the Mother Russia'' to come back and return the Glory Days. Google up the Estonian mess from a couple of months back.

Not to say that all are like that. It is just an astonishing percentage, over half by a solid margin, that do have that mentality. There are entire towns up here where Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian are not spoken (and English not at all or badly), where there are virtually no native-language signs for private stores and such.

It has been only 15 years, so maybe it's not so surprising in the big picture of history. In the past year I have worked with two Russians who spoke virtually no Latvian and very little more English.

I joke you not, last year during the NATO gathering in Riga, a reporter I work with interviewed a Russian who said (and this is very nearly the exact quote) : "We don't need NATO here. If Latvia is attacked, then Putin will fill the sky with war planes and drive them away."




On-topic, as a content writer for our site, I'd be rather interested in seeing how German citizenship legislation works today. I know it's been murderous difficult in the past and they've been changing the laws to be more difficult. But, I hadn't considered the 'ancestry visa'/citizenship angles.

Anyone with links & resources & anecdotes, please keep posting them.

I'm happy to glom them down to create a new subsection for our site.

the Admin

[Wanderer]

In Germany it's definately due to the Russo-German relationships that ensued either forcably or willingly 1945-on.

The family was visited moved there about 15 years ago, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The son, spoke only Russian and rather tragically, he was killed in a car accident a few days later.

My gf's friend in Kazakhstan has a German grandfather, and they both seem to think there's some sort of easy-visa scheme for her to visa/relocate.

Also rather conversely their are still German villages in Russia as mirrors of the emclaves u mention in the West. I presume they stayed after WW2, sorry, the Great Patriotic War, maybe from POW camps. There's one mr my gf's city, Chelyabinsk in the Urals so they are not neseccarily very West of Moscow!

I have sooo many arguements with Russian's about WW2, they have been taught by the Soviet systematic rewrite of history that the war started in 1941 and was finshed in 1945 by the Red Army. That's it.

Of course what the Germans did to the Russian's was awful, but in Russia there is no acklowedgemnt of Red Army atrocoties in Berlin, raping, or compulsory intercourse as they called it. After they left the British sector to the British, it was obvious the common Soviet soldiery didn't know how to use a toilet, the sight for the Brits taking over the barracks was disgusting. And they even stolen the toilets they didn\t know how to use.

Dare mention this to a Russian and it never happened of course.

Can you tell I'm reading 'Berlin, Then and Now'?

Oh, and Popov invented the radio, not Marconi, and some other guy invented the steam engine before Watt....

As my gf is Russian I've had to get all this off my chest, thanks guys!!

[JAJ]

Thanks!

That seems like good news.

To answer the other questions ... I was born a long time ago in in a galaxy far, far away ... uhm, yep. A very comfortable bit before 1975.

Which I hope is Good News.

Unfortunately for you, it may not mean good news. Children of German mothers born before 1975 did not automatically acquire German citizenship:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law

[vilkatis]

Thanks for the responses!

That is pretty disappointing news, JAJ.



Damn.

Of course, I still qualify to become a German citizen, but the dual-citizenship would have been ideal for a wide array of reasons. I'll keep looking at it, but so far it seems out of reach for me.

Double-dang!

-- vilkatis

Oh, P.S. -- I have one extra link to add into the topic:

http://www.london.diplo.de/Vertretung/l ... Seite.html

The root link for it has a number of other related resources:

http://www.london.diplo.de/Vertretung/l ... reich.html

[Directive/2004/38/EC]

Of course, I still qualify to become a German citizen, but the dual-citizenship would have been ideal for a wide array of reasons. I'll keep looking at it, but so far it seems out of reach for me.

If you are already a German citizen, as you suggest, then you probably are already a dual citizen.

If you naturalize as a German citizen, then you need to give up your other citizenships. But if you are born with, for example, US and German, then you typically do not have to make a choice.

[vilkatis]

Basically it comes down to this (summarized from the above URLs) --

- any child born to a German citizen in or AFTER 1975 is a German citizen

- no matter where the physical location of birth, so long as one of the parents is a German citizen at the time of the child's birth

- any child born to a U.S. citizen (or in the U.S.) is a U.S. citizen

- neither country requires that child to choose one citizenship in preference to the other; that child automagically keeps both & is a dual citizen for life


However, for a child born BEFORE 1975 (me, for example):

- if your FATHER was a German citizen at the time of birth, that child is a German citizen & the above applies

- if your MOTHER was a German citizen .. too effin' bad. You get nothing from Germany.


So, for a bizarre example, myself & my brother are not German citizens because of our mother. But, our cousins, born in the U.S. to her German brother, are dual citizens.


I'm looking into it to see what exceptions there are, there are a couple, but none so far as I have found apply to me.

For other folks in this situation, if you were born to an unwed German mother prior to 1975, then you can apply for an exception and claim German citizenship. Subject to an approval process. It is not automatically recognized.

Figures.

Generally the luck I've had most of my life .. shyte.

I am looking, but I doubt it exists, but there MAY be some circumstance that I can claim a German citizenship from birth (my mother & her family were effectively refugees from East Berlin in the mid-50's, for example).

If I can't claim it from birth, then I have to apply for citizenship through normal channels (such as ancestry), meet those requirements, and will then be required to renounce my U.S. citizenship.

Something I may well be prepared to do, but it is a far more painful, expensive and time-consuming process.

-- vilkatis