The duel citizenship thing seems possibly messy. I imagine it’s moreso for people outside of the U.S.
It is true that on paper Panama does not recognize dual citizenship and requires you to renounce your previous citizenship in order to be naturalized. However, this does not mean you have to really give up your existing citizenship.
The Panamanian nationality law requires an oath of renunciation of former citizenship as a condition of naturalization. However, currently the US court system interprets this oath as “non-meaningful” and therefore it will not result in the loss of US citizenship, unless the US citizen renounces their citizenship directly to the US State Department, which will then result in loss of US nationality.
That said, it is not necessary to renounce US citizenship to the US State Department to become naturalized in Panama.
FWIW, this, and similar practices that imply dual citizenship isn’t allowed, anecdotally seem to be a very common (perhaps the standard) situation. For example, the US doesn’t expressly allow dual citizenship, and there’s language in multiple places about renouncing other citizenships, but I’ve seen estimates that ~5-10% of US citizens have another citizenship and multiple US Congressmen are public about having multiple citizenships as well. I haven’t heard about any US enforcement against multiple citizenships.
Having looked into many citizenships and residency programs, this situation is common amongst a high percentage of them, and outside of a few rare country exceptions (not present here) everyone seems to move forward being dual citizens without issue despite this. I do wish laws were clear and explicit about these sort of things, and that there was express permission for multiple citizenship, but it does seem that for a long time across many (most?) international jurisdictions multiple citizenships have been and are allowed in practice, even when commonly ‘officially’ disallowed.
I do think, however, moving forward on this does require some willingness to accept that in-practice behavior differs from what may be implied by a country’s official regulation, and that isn’t a fit for everyone. For what it’s worth, to me, after learning quite a bit about this issue moving forward doesn’t feel messy at all, but I certainly understand others feeling differently.
I did a bit more investigation on this:
https://internationalman.com/articles/the-easiest-country-to-obtain-residency-panama/
The duel citizenship thing seems possibly messy. I imagine it’s moreso for people outside of the U.S.
FWIW, this, and similar practices that imply dual citizenship isn’t allowed, anecdotally seem to be a very common (perhaps the standard) situation. For example, the US doesn’t expressly allow dual citizenship, and there’s language in multiple places about renouncing other citizenships, but I’ve seen estimates that ~5-10% of US citizens have another citizenship and multiple US Congressmen are public about having multiple citizenships as well. I haven’t heard about any US enforcement against multiple citizenships.
Having looked into many citizenships and residency programs, this situation is common amongst a high percentage of them, and outside of a few rare country exceptions (not present here) everyone seems to move forward being dual citizens without issue despite this. I do wish laws were clear and explicit about these sort of things, and that there was express permission for multiple citizenship, but it does seem that for a long time across many (most?) international jurisdictions multiple citizenships have been and are allowed in practice, even when commonly ‘officially’ disallowed.
For example, I mentioned this in response to a comment about Netherlands citizenship on the original post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jHnFBHrwiNb5xvLBM/?commentId=psZcBFaZfQnzJDXeq
I do think, however, moving forward on this does require some willingness to accept that in-practice behavior differs from what may be implied by a country’s official regulation, and that isn’t a fit for everyone. For what it’s worth, to me, after learning quite a bit about this issue moving forward doesn’t feel messy at all, but I certainly understand others feeling differently.
That’s good to know, thanks!