Dual Citizenship: How Anyone Can Get a Second Passport
00:00 Intro
01:41 Benefits of Dual Citizenship
04:08 Getting a Second Citizenship (The Long, Cheap Way)
05:17 Citizenship by Ancestry and Jus Soli
07:07 Citizenship by Investment
08:08 Getting a Second Citizenship (Marriage)
09:09 Having a Citizenship That Makes it Easier to Get Another Citizenship
09:59 Easter Egg
10:22 Cases in Which You Cannot Have Dual Citizenship
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Before I discuss the ways I will just quickly number some of the benefits of having dual citizenship:
Visa free travel: one of the most obvious ways to get a second citizenship is by making your life greatly easier when traveling.
If you have a Canadian and an Argentine passport, two quite strong passports with visa free access to a number of countries in the world.
But, with an Argentinian passport you cannot travel to the US without a visa, which is relatively difficult to get. With a Canadian passport on the other hand you can’t travel visa free to Russia which is also pretty hard to get.
Second advantage is: being able to work in a much wider number of countries.
Third advantage: minimizing economic instability. Let’s say you live in a country with less economic stability, that may be subject to currency devaluation, or a banking system collapse.
There are many other advantages, I just named a few to broaden your horizons regarding dual citizenship.
How to get a second passport
The long, cheap way
The most effective way to get a second passport is the most common one, and also the cheapest one. The only disadvantage is that it usually takes a lot of time to get it.
Initially you will get a temporary residence permit that requires a renewal every one or two years. After a number of years living in this country you will be able to apply for citizenship.
Getting a Second Citizenship (Ancestry, Being Born in a Country)
Firstly, we are going to talk about citizenship by ancestry.
Do you have a parent, a grandparent, or even a great grandparent that was a citizen of another country? If so, odds are you can apply for the same citizenship as your ancestors, regardless whether they are alive or not.
The most popular country in this regard is probably Italy. If you have an ancestor who was or is Italian, and you can prove a direct line with that he was Italian and he or she was your ancestor, you are eligible to apply for Italian citizenship.
In this type of citizenship by ancestry you usually do not even have to live a single day in the country of your ancestor. Neither you have to know the language.
The second, sort of involuntary basis to acquire citizenship is when you are born in a country that grants citizenship automatically to anyone who is born there.
Getting a Second Citizenship (Citizenship by Investment)
Now we are going to talk about a way to get a second citizenship which has been quite popular and also controversial in the last few decades, which is citizenship by investment.
In a number of countries you can actually buy citizenship in a relatively straightforward process.
In other countries, you actually have to make a donation, and also pay fees. So you will actually not see your invested money coming back, but you will still get the right to hold their passport.
In Europe these programs have faced a lot of scrutiny. Cyprus was quite famous for its citizenship by investment program, which is not available anymore.
North Macedonia is the most recent country in Europe to offer citizenship by investment.
Getting a Second Citizenship (Marriage)
Many people have a false assumption that if you marry a citizen of a given country, you will be eligible to apply for his or her citizenship. While this used to be true in the past, currently it is almost nonexistent.
Currently, Cape Verde, a small island nation in Africa is one of the few countries in the world that offers citizenship by marriage.
In many other countries, getting married to a citizen will greatly reduce the number of years you have to live in the country before you can apply for citizenship.
Having a Citizenship That Makes it Easier to Get Another Citizenship
In some cases, simply by having one citizenship may make your life greatly easier when getting a second citizenship. Let’s analyze two examples.
The second case applies to some exceptions that will reduce your residence years required to apply for citizenship among EU members.
Cases in Which You Cannot Have Dual Citizenship
In some cases you will not be able to actually get a second citizenship. You will either have to stay with the current one you already have, or take the one you are applying to and renounce your previous citizenship.
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