Difference between German citizenship and ability to obtain a passport? Would additional citizenships remove these German ones? I am a US citizen born in the US to US citizen parents who also hold dual citizenship (of Colombia for one and of Germany for the other). I hold a US passport. As far as I can tell on the German Consulate website, I immediately, at birth, also became a German citizen by descent because &quot;Children born in wedlock after Jan. 1, 1975, acquired German citizenship if one of the parents was a German citizen at the time of their birth&quot;. The German state has record of this since I was registered at a German consulate by my parents after I was born. My dad did not get his US citizenship until I was around 5. Furthermore, according to national law 19362, I am also entitled to Uruguayan citizenship because my grandfather, an Uruguayan citizen, was born &amp; raised in Uruguay. I have not yet applied for this citizenship. I have several questions: I am already a German citizen simply because of my dad's citizenship at the time of my birth, correct? Applying for a German passport would be a related, but separate step? i.e., my current lack of German passport is not reflective of my citizenship status? If I were to apply for this Uruguayan citizenship via law 19362, would I be required by Germany to rescind my German citizenship and/or my right to a German passport? If the answer is yes to number 2, would it be possible to, in the future, rescind the Uruguayan citizenship and subsequently get the German one back? Is this allowed on both sides? The information on rescinding is tough to find.
Being automaticly citizens of the US and Uruguay, causes no problem with your German citizenship. For Uruguay, you are appling for recognition of your citizenship at birth as a grandchild of a Uruguayan citizen. Only when you, as an adult, apply for nationisation (i.e. that country considers you to be a foreigner at the time of the application) would you lose your German citizenship automaticly when this application has been granted, unless you apply for an exception beforhand. Such an exception would only be granted when you can prove that you still have strong ties to Germany.
The answer is &quot;it depends,&quot; of course. An asylum application may be considered less credible if the applicant entered as a tourist. The applicant would have to explain what changed between the time of entry and the time of the asylum application. (Perhaps a change of government at home? The start of a civil war?) Many countries expect applications for a work permit to be made from outside. Such an application may take much longer to process than a tourist visa, which makes the stay as a tourist problematic. On the other hand, there are countries which allow some tourists to file immigration applications. For instance, Canadian citizens and some others can apply for a German residence permit while they are in Germany.
Yes, of course you still owe it. There's no logical reason why ceasing to be a citizen should relieve you of existing obligations. The State Department mentions this explicitly Persons who wish to renounce U.S. citizenship should be aware of the fact that renunciation of U.S. citizenship may have no effect on their U.S. tax or military service obligations (contact the Internal Revenue Service or U.S. Selective Service for more information). In addition, the act of renouncing U.S. citizenship does not allow persons to avoid possible prosecution for crimes which they may have committed or may commit in the future which violate United States law, or escape the repayment of financial obligations, including child support payments, previously incurred in the United States or incurred as United States citizens abroad. I think the &quot;may&quot; is just to cover their butts - I can't find any indication of any provision that would forgive tax debts when you renounce. Indeed, renouncing your citizenship may cause you to owe more tax, because of the expatriation tax. Basically, all your unrealized capital gains are treated as if they were realized and taxed on the day before your expatriation, and you owe capital gains tax on them.
From a German perspective, it would be absolutely normal and expected that you're providing identity &amp; contact information publicly. Per §5 TMG (Impressumspflicht / Anbieterkennzeichnung) this is required for German tele-media offerings, such as websites or email providers, even if non-commercial. Whereas for you as an upstanding and diligent email provider an abuse@... address should be enough, the German context expects a street address where you could be served with a lawsuit… There absolutely are privacy and free speech issues with this compelled self-doxxing. But by running an email service, you're not just acting as a private person. Your privacy interests and the transparency and security interests of other people have to be balanced. Now since you are not in Germany, the TMG does not apply to you. You have no legal obligation to provide this information. However, the ISP also has no legal obligation to to deliver your email. The ISP does have an obligation to apply appropriate organizational and technical safety measures. It seems that one organizational measure they have found appropriate is that they will only deliver emails from providers that provide public contact information, as would be the norm in Germany. I am not entirely sure how the GDPR applies here. The GDPR doesn't really allow or prohibit disclosures of personal data, it just requires that every purpose of processing for personal data has a legal bases per GDPR Art 6. One such legal basis is a legitimate interest, which boils down to a balancing test between your rights and freedoms and other people's interests. I'm also not sure if the contact information should be classified as personal data in this context, because the contact info primarily relates to your role as an email provider. I'm also not sure if the ISP is processing your personal data in the sense of the GDPR when they merely require you to publish it on your own site. They would be processing it as soon as they scrape, store, or otherwise use this info.
The UN has a copy of the extradition treaty between the US and Brazil, the short version of it is that the treaty lays out in Article II an exhaustive list of crimes that are extraditable, skimming the list I don't see defamation (since of course in real life it's not a federal crime). As a general principle, Country A won't extradite someone to Country B if the conduct they are accused of in Country B is not a crime in Country A, if Country A does not think Country B would provide a fair trial, or if the person is convicted if the punishment likely to be imposed by Country B would be illegal under the laws of Country A (this comes up a lot with extradition from Europe to the US if a possible punishment for the crime is death). So in your hypothetical Brazil would probably be unwilling to extradite its own citizen for the crime the US accuses them of. I think another part of your question is whether the US or Brazil would have jurisdiction over this defamation. In theory, both could claim jurisdiction over it. In practice most criminal conduct is criminal relatively universally, especially among similarly geolocated countries, so the rest of this paragraph is assuming both countries did consider the defamation criminal and extraditable. As a matter of judicial effectiveness an Internet crime would probably be prosecuted in the country where the person resides. There would likely be a language barrier too, if the US court would have to employ a Portuguese translator. However, this is all largely a political question more than a legal one, if the US really wanted to make an example of this person in their own country the US could try to use political leverage to get Brazil to extradite them. The US could also wait until the person travelled abroad and petition the third country to imprison and extradite them. That's something that happens more commonly for citizens of a country that the US does not have an extradition treaty with.
The State Department is mischaracterizing the law, which requires only that the US citizen &quot;bear&quot; a valid US passport, not that the US citizen &quot;use&quot; the passport. This law, 8 USC 1185(b), used to have a fairly stiff penalty, and it used to apply only in time of war. When the wartime element was removed in 1978, so was the penalty. It now reads Except as otherwise provided by the President and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may authorize and prescribe, it shall be unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid United States passport. If a US citizen attempts to leave the US without a valid US passport, there is a very small chance that the departure could be prevented by a CBP officer, but in the normal course of affairs the traveler would not even encounter a CBP officer, so the possibility is very remote indeed. There is nothing, however, that prevents a US citizen who also holds a passport issued by another country from using the other passport while also carrying a valid US passport. See also What is the penalty for US citizens entering/leaving the US on a foreign passport? at Travel and Can someone be penalized for an &quot;unlawful&quot; act if no penalty is specified? on this site.
Yes, in most jurisdictions citizenship or residency is not a pre-requisite for standing. However, be aware that there are plenty of jurisdictions where the practical effect of being non-native gives you effectively no chance of winning. "Fair" in some countries means their citizens always beat foreigners.
Note that, criminals are not allowed to apply for a German citizenship, so I don't know whether the German government would consider being a deserter as a being criminal. First of all, they would deny a criminal German citizenry, but that goes only for crimes, that are also illegal in Germany (Sec. 12a § 2 Nationality Act, § 12a Abs. 2 StAG). Were you - for instance - convicted for muder you couldn't become a German citizen. Desertion in that sense however is not a criminal offence in Germany, so you're good. Regarding double citizenship, Sec. 12 § 1 2nd sentence no. 2 Nationality Act (§ 12 Abs. 1 S. 2 Nr. 2 StAG) allows you to keep your original citizenship, if the country of origin &quot;regularly refuses to grant release from citizenship&quot;, which should be the case here. Therefore, you could become a German citizen according to Sec. 10 Nationality Act (§ 10 StAG).