Millions of Americans vying for European citizenship

[LRE]

Millions of Americans vying for European citizenship

* European-descent Americans want to become ‘global citizens’

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: The European Union and its booming economy is attracting millions of European-descent Americans, who are eligible to claim citizenship in one of the 27 EU countries based on the nationality of their parents, or in some cases, grandparents and great-grandparents, according to a report published in Palm Beach Post over the weekend.

Citizenship in one of those countries allows people to live and work in any EU nation.

The report says that since the United States doesn't keep statistics on dual citizens, it's impossible to know exactly how many people applied for citizenship in Europe. But it's estimated that more than 40 million Americans are eligible for dual citizenship, and a growing number of Americans want to try their luck elsewhere, it says.

Global citizens: "I recognised for the first time in my life that being American had limits," said Mulvehill, an entrepreneur whose mother was born in Romania, adding, "and that if I really wanted to become what I call a global citizen, then I needed to tap into all my resources to expand my ability to serve entrepreneurs not just in Lake Worth, which is one town, and not just in Florida or in America or North America, but on the globe."

"I understand the impulse: You can get a better deal over there," said Stanley Renshon, a professor at the City University of New York and former president of the International Society of Political Psychology. "Whether it's good for the American national community is quite a different question."

Renshon belongs to a faction of immigration experts that believes dual citizenship diminishes the American identity.

"The devaluation of American citizenship for the sake of comparative advantage strikes me as fairly self-centred," Renshon said.

One of the biggest advocates of dual citizenship is Temple University professor and author Peter Spiro, who believes that defining one's identity by his citizenship is a thing of the past. "There are really no harms caused by individuals having additional citizenship these days," Spiro said.

Every EU country has its own process for obtaining citizenship. Ireland, Italy and Greece are among the most lenient in terms of letting an individual claim citizenship not just from a parent, but from a grandparent or possibly a great-grandparent. Even in countries that allow an individual only to claim descent based on a parent, in many cases the new citizen can pass the citizenship on to his child.

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