Can employer force me to handover my updated passport? I work for a EU organization internationally, They have had my previous passport on file for more than a year, but it has expired last year: They are now requesting I send them my new passport &quot;to update the employee profiles&quot; Due to Covid, I am currently in a different country than the one I was hired in (I might not have the proper permit) and not keen on sharing my new passport if I can prevent it. Can I push back on them? Can I refuse to provide an updated passport? (they had my valid passport - that eventually expired - on file)
Obviously you can refuse, nobody can force you to give them a new passport. There may be consequences. The worst: The company's country likely has laws that require the company to make sure you have the right to work there, and to have evidence of it. If you are an EU citizen in an EU country, a valid EU passport would be that evidence. When your passport expires, the company might not have anything that is legally sufficient to allow you working for them. They could have the choice between breaking the law, risking a fine, or firing you. This will depend on the exact laws of the country, and likely somewhere deep in the small print of the laws :-) In the UK, where this isn't relevant anymore, the laws were changed in 2014 to require that you have a valid passport. So in the last seven years you would have had to give them a valid passport. BTW. Having a copy of your valid passport can make it possible for your employer to buy you flight tickets for foreign countries, for example, which could be useful. I was once in a situation away from home where I unexpectedly needed a copy of my passport (privately), called HR, and they emailed me a copy of it, so that was also useful.
Any country can certainly decide who it should grant citizenship status to. There is no international rule that I know of requiring that the recipient be currently a resident of the country granting citizenship. Any country may issue passports to its citizens.
It is not uncommon for an employer to ask a former employee to assist with something as a courtesy, and sometimes the former employee will choose to do so. If it requires more than a small amount of time, this may be done under a short-term consulting contract for pay. But unless there was a contract of employment requiring such post-employment advice, there is no legal obligation for the former employee to provide such assistance. The most the former employer could do is give a poor reference if asked by potential future employers, and most large corporate employers now only give job title, salary range, and dates of employment to avoid claims of incorrect or defamatory statements in such references.
As far as I know, airline crew members have to pass through US immigration on arrival, just like everyone else. So they'd need a visa. Airline crews are eligible for a D visa which is specifically for crew members on layovers. Under the current version of the travel ban, citizens of the designated countries are allowed to enter if they already have a valid visa, which current crew members presumably would. However, if they don't, or if it expires, they might be refused a new visa. This would effectively prevent them from working on flights to the US.
American citizens can have dual citizenship , but if an american citizen who has his/her citizenship renounced (even though the person was originally an american citizen) , then what is a way of obtaining the citizenship back? Possibly, by the same means that a non-citizen could be naturalized. But, immigration and nationality officials have broad discretion and would probably refuse to grant citizenship to someone who had previously renounced it. And can an american citizen without dual citizenship (Meaning that he is only an american citizen), renounce his/her citizenship? Yes. For example, Prince Harry's financee plans to renounce her U.S. citizenship and contemporaneously be granted U.K. citizenship (the paperwork goes through really easily when the Queen is your grandmother in law). Renunciation of citizenship is not necessarily tied to gaining a new citizenship, but leaving yourself stateless would be a foolish thing to do.
You are not entitled to a refund Lufthansa stands ready, willing and able to fly you to Hong Kong - they have fulfilled their contractual obligation. The fact that you can't fly is due to your inability to comply with government requirements - it is no different than if you turned up at the airport with an expired passport. While German (and Dutch) law includes the doctrine of force majeure, which is what Prof. Dr. Ernst Führich is referring to, it doesn't apply here. Both parties are still able to fulfil their contractual obligations - Lufthansa can provide a seat on a plane and you can pay for it - there is no contractual obligation on either of you for that seat to be occupied. Notwithstanding, the default position can be modified by contract. Lufthansa's contract says: 10.2.1. We will give you a refund as set out below if we cancel a flight, fail to operate a flight according to the timetable ... and 10.3.1. If you request a refund for reasons other than those mentioned under paragraph 10.2.1. of this section, the amount of the refund will thus, provided the respective fare conditions stipulate as much, correspond to: Airlines sell (and are allowed to sell) tickets with different conditions, including whether they are refundable or not.
If the passport that was stolen is a U.S. one, you should report it by any of the channels outlined on the State Department's page Lost or Stolen Passports. The paper-reporting option is via form DS-64, which asks, among other things, whether you filed a police report; so it might be good to do that first. Form N-565 is a similar form for requesting the reissue of a naturalization certificate, and it, likewise, asks about any police report. Withholding someone's ID documents, knowing that they are necessary for travel, would be "false imprisonment" under both state and federal statutes. Also, 18 USC §§1426 and 1427 cover the crimes of "Reproduction of naturalization or citizenship papers" and "Sale of naturalization or citizenship papers"; a 10-year felony for a first offence. "Whosoever unlawfully ... disposes of a ... certificate of naturalization, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ... 10 years (in the case of the first or second such offense, if the offense was not committed to facilitate such an act of international terrorism or a drug trafficking crime)," If the police take your report but don't scare the possessor of your documentation into immediately returning it, you could sue him or her for the actual expenses of obtaining replacements in Small Claims court. If the mispossessed passport causes big enough damages, I guess you could sue in any court that has jurisdiction.
Per GDPR Art 12(5), “any actions taken under Articles 15 to 22 and 34 shall be provided free of charge”. The right to rectification is Art 16 and reads in its entirety: The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller without undue delay the rectification of inaccurate personal data concerning him or her. Taking into account the purposes of the processing, the data subject shall have the right to have incomplete personal data completed, including by means of providing a supplementary statement. Thus, I think it would be invalid to charge a fee for an address change if that change was made in exercise of your data subject rights. If you didn't invoke this right, it's debatable whether charging a fee would be proper. On the one hand, they can charge whatever service they want (provided that this was part of the contract you entered). On the other hand, they have an obligation to assist you with your exercise of data subject rights. This includes recognising a data subject request even if you didn't explicitly invoke the specific GDPR article. For example, refusing a request for erasure just because you didn't invoke some magic GDPR words would be clearly noncompliant in my opinion. If the company offers multiple customer service options, charging for some of them may be all right. Typically, the lowest-cost solution for a company to deal with GDPR requests is to offer an online self-service option. An email to the data protection officer would typically also be free. Charging for phone support might be fine though. In an insurance context, there could also be a legitimate claim that updating your address is not a mere correction of your personal data, but a modification of the contract (depending on what you're insuring). Another possible counterpoint (which I think is not valid though) would be that the company never stored inaccurate data and therefore doesn't have to satisfy a rectification request.