Renunciation when you are already a dual-citizen

My wife and I are both foreigners in Taiwan, but we are both from different countries. My wife gave birth to a baby girl just 2 weeks ago. Since the baby qualifies to have a passport from both our countries (via the embassy registration) that’s what we were planning to do, initially.

At the same time, I am about to complete 5 years of legal work in Taiwan and will become eligible for Taiwan naturalization very soon (and will probably have to give up my original citizenship). While researching the documents etc. for naturalization, I found that I can apply for the baby’s Taiwanese naturalization alongside me.

Now they don’t explicitly say that, but let’s assume the baby will also have to renunciate her original citizenship. But what if she had two ? Will she have to renunciate both ?

Or (as I told my wife), let’s sacrifice one :smile:

I mean, we don’t get both citizenships for the baby. Just the one that we will renunciate for her Taiwanese application.

Later she can easily qualify for the other citizenship (by relation to parent). And then :partying_face: … we will have a dual-citizen…

Anyone else been in a situation like this before ? Any suggestions ?

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Should be fine. Like you wrote, wait for the kid to get Taiwanese citizenship and apply for the other one afterwards.
Theoretically you could even hold to apply for any citizenship and claim the baby is stateless. And later get triple citizenship if that is legally possible. In that case the kid can not travel until the process is finalized.

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Taiwan does not confer citizenship by birth, so get them registered at both your embassies.

Unless you want to live here permanently there’s no need to become Taiwan citizens… Be aware if Taiwan does confer citizenship to your child he’ll have to serve in the army…

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:thinking:

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May I ask which countries are you two from? Knowing this can offer better quality answers.

Pakistan and Philippines.

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Thank you!

I don’t think it matters that much to be honest. The Philippines doesn’t recognise dual nationality in ANY circumstance and Pakistan only recognises it with a select few countries, Taiwan not one of them. They will most certainly ask you, your child or your spouse to renounce if attaining a secondary nationality.

Yes, this was in fact my plan. I have applied for her ARC already as a filipino national, though she hasn’t obtained any citizenship or passport for that matter.

The reason for applying as a Filipino for ARC was because (due to easy access to Philippines Embassy in Kaohsiung) we can easily renounce her Filipino citizenship to get the Taiwanese one.

Once she is a Taiwanese national, she can still get Pakistani citizenship / passport, while we restore her Filipino citizenship, especially since Philippines embassy here (actively) helps ex-filipinos to reclaim their Filipino nationality (though it costs about 10,000 NT$).

I just hope Taiwan doesn’t force me to get and then renunciate her Pakistani citizenship by force i.e. especially if we don’t have it at the time of her application. Unlike Filipino citizenship which is not difficult to restore, Pakistani citizenship has a waiting period of 25 years after renunciation, in case you want to claim it back.

I will try my best to get her all three, but not too worried if she loses the Pakistani one.

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Oh well, I guess then in the worse case she’ll have to give up both before getting her Taiwanese citizenship. She can definitely say good bye to her Pakistani citizenship forever then, but hopefully she can still restore the Filipino one.

https://www.meco.org.tw/services/dual-citizenship

Of course, I won’t apply for her on the basis of her birth. But Taiwan does offer citizenship by naturalization if a parent is going to naturalize too, unless I am interpreting this law wrong :

https://law.moj.gov.tw/Eng/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?PCode=D0030001

To be honest, I do want to live here permanently (compared to the alternative), and I know Taiwan has it own set of issues compared some of the places I lived at (which were more developed than Taiwan), but being a Pakistani citizen, if I had to choose between Pakistan vs Taiwan, then Taiwan is no doubt the better choice (unless I want my daughter to enjoy the same special treatment I have enjoyed during my international travels :sweat_smile:).

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Is this something people actually want to get?

It makes sense if they want to visit/move to Pakistan, no?

It also depends where you’re from. A Pakistani passport isn’t a great travel document, but it’s better than one from Iraq or Afghanistan.

Over 200 million people are born with only this option at their disposal. They don’t have a choice and I can’t say if they would prefer a different one if they could, but probably so.

Would people from the developed world want to get it ? No. Unless someone is of Pakistani origin or ancestry. It’s certainly not a sought after passport. :slightly_smiling_face: (at least not for the right reasons)

The only people who seek Pakistani passport actively (sometimes even illegally through forgery/bribe) are people from Afghanistan, specifically the ones that were displaced during the Russian invasion some decades ago and were taken in by Pakistan as refugees (there’s like a million of them).

As @Dr_Milker rightly pointed out, there are some passports that are even more difficult to travel with. So I guess for some people from Afghanistan, a Pakistani passport is kind of an upgrade :sweat_smile:

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This is incorrect Marco. Updated.

https://www.meco.org.tw/services/dual-citizenship

Dude. That was four years ago. Prevailing info at the time said that.