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Anyone have any experience with getting dual citizenship (US adding EU)? I'm looking at the "Slovak by Descent" program as a bit of a lark, and was wondering if there were any pitfalls (aside from the obvious "no longer able to apply for jobs that need a US security clearance"). Seems to me to be all upside, no downside.
This isn't likely to be persuasive to someone who doesn't feel it in their bones, but I don't think you should hedge when it comes to the land of your fathers, and I don't want to live in a nation surrounded by such hedgers. A class of trans-national elites with no particular loyalties to hearth and home is a bad thing in and of itself, and you shouldn't participate in its propagation.
I recognize this is probably at least partially a result of a character flaw of mine, but I'm viscerally disgusted by the idea of dual-nationals and think we should amend the constitution to explicitly prohibit American citizens from being citizens of any other nation.
It makes travel significantly more convenient depending on where you're going. A proper third-world passport is actually more useful than EU for this, since countries who have beef with one tend to have beef with both. And even if you're purely a US citizen you need two passports to travel to both Israel and much of the Middle East. Also worth doing if you're wealthy and have a second home outside the US, tourist visa limits can get inconvenient and citizenship can make dealing with homeownership bureaucracy easier.
You can 100% travel to Israel and the rest of the middle east on one passport, even in the same trip. I've done it. Israel knows the Arab states won't allow entrance to anyone with an Israeli stamp, so they just stamp a pos-it note they place on one of the pages and you remove it when you leave. And unless things have changed since the Gaza and/or Iran wars (very possible, my travel was a decade ago), Israel doesn't care what other stamps are in your passport. You might arouse enough suspicion to get questioned by security at the airport for a few minutes, but thats about it.
Also, do you really want to be travelling to a country that is hostile enough to your home country to deny you entry with your main passport? I would not trust in the anonymity of a foreign passport with today's technology. It won't be hard for the government to figure out you're a citizen of a hostile power entering under less than fully candid circumstances. As much as I'd love to visit Iran, I would not feel safe currently doing so as an American, regardless of whether I entered on an Irish or Polish passport. I guess there are wealthy elites and certain kinds of professionals with very idiosyncratic travel obligations for whom multiple passports are extremely useful from a practical perspective, but that's got to be a pretty small group (among holders of first world passports, at least). For the vast majority of people who don't live or regularly work in a foreign country, the bureaucratic hassle of obtaining a second passport is probably going to dwarf any bureaucratic hassle you save by having a second passport.
Didn't realize the Israelis had finally started doing that, good for them. I haven't been there in a very long time. And yes, many countries which are perfectly safe and pleasant to visit have visa-free travel for fellow thirdies while putting annoying/extractive requirements on westerners. It's often through regional associations like CARICOM, but also a general rule of thumb that their relevant government personnel see Americans as suckers to be fleeced and annoyed, whereas an exotic passport is "who is this guy? Best leave him alone." Particularly if you have local government contacts.
True objectively. But one kind of bureaucratic hassle can be done at your leisure when you have lots of time at your disposal, the other often happens when you're time-crunched, sleep-deprived, and have very limited recourse to outside bureaucracies.
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