Dual Citizenship: Netherlands/US

[sensitive_euroman 0]

Greetings!

Don't know if this is the right place to ask - can anyone enlighten me to any problems with my son (now 15 months!) having dual citizenship of US and Netherlands. Is that possible? My wife has just got the US passport for him for when we go to the Netherlands this Christmas.

I have been doing a bit of research on this online and read so much conflicting info.

[Stabu 0]

Don't know if this is the right place to ask - can anyone enlighten me to any problems with my son (now 15 months!) having dual citizenship of US and Netherlands. Is that possible? My wife has just got the US passport for him for when we go to the Netherlands this Christmas.

I have been doing a bit of research on this online and read so much conflicting info.

Okay, I'm from Finland and I'm not a lawyer but I am a political scientist so I do know something about this issue. The US accepts dual citizenship so there's no problem being a dual citizen from the American point of view. I'm not sure if the Netherlands accepts dual citizenship but they should, because there's an EU resolution mandating EU members countries to accept it. It may be restricted though (Germany for example has very restrictive dual citizenship laws, but even they are mandated by the EU resolution so they also have accepted dual citizenship).

There are mainly three problems having a dual citizenship. The first one is that dual citizenship may cause partial dual taxation. In most cases, at least in the Western World, the various countries accept each other's taxcodes and thus don't possess extra taxation on dual citizens. I especially doubt that the Dutch tax administration would do this. However the IRS does do this for anyone they think has left the US as a tax refugee. As the Dutch taxes are higher than the ones in the US, it's very unlikely that this problem would occure, even if your son would later on chooce to live in the Netherlands.

The second problem is regarding conscription. The Netherlands has mandated conscription, the US doesn't. Thus it's possible that your son would have to sign up in the Dutch army for an year or so when he's over 18. If I remeber correctly the Netherlands has however depenalised conscription, meaning that even if the law says that everyone should sing up for the army, in practice you don't have to sign up and won't be punnished at all if you chooce not too (it's like with the American Selective Service System [hereon SSS] you must sign up, but if you don't, you won't be punished in most cases). Furthermore IF he chooces to sign up for the Dutch army he may be free'ed from a possible draft in the US, because the SSS has a clausal stating: "A dual national whose other country of nationality has an agreement with the U.S. which specifically provides for an exemption is exempt from induction." In pratice this means that once served in one country you don't need to serve in another. In my opinnion it's better to be drafted in a country where you just need to sit around in a barrac than to be drafted in a country where you may end up in a war losing life or limb(s). Furthermore he will be excepted from the US draft at least if he serves over a year in the Dutch army since: "An alien who served at least a year in the military of a country with which the U.S. is involved in mutual defense activities will be exempt from military service if he is a national of a country that grants reciprocal privileges to citizens of the U.S."

A third minor problem is that if you have dual citizenship you will be subjected to two legal systems and thus if he breaks the Dutch law in the US he may be arrested in the Netherlands for doing so (and the other way around). This is however unlikely and the Dutch laws are in general laxer than the US laws. Furthermore the US laws already state that the US has right to arrest any person from any country regardless if he has a US citizenship or not and brought to justice under the US law (the US is probably the only country in the world with this facist system) and thus he is already stuck with this sanction regardless if he has dual citizenship or not. The main issues I can think of is something to do with morality. Like in the Netherlands using all illegal drugs is legal as well as purchacing cannabis. Furthermore prostitution is also legal in the Netherlands and the age of consent is 14 if I remember correctly. As you probably can see from here, it's very unlikely to run accross problems like this, since in most cases the things banned in the US are also banned in the Netherlands and vice versa.

This is all I can think of this early... hope it helps .

[letty 1]

As far as I understand you do have two passports for your son right now?? Than I might not understand the problem right because as long as you have the passport you won't lose them! Every few years the rules changes in the Netherlands and the best place to find information about it is on the IND-site (www.ind.nl), which is in Dutch though. Friends of mine, she's Canadian he's Dutch had a child in October 05 and has dual citizenship, but he got borne here (The Netherlands) so I don't know if that makes a difference.

It would be convenient to have for your son but going through customs with an American passport doesn't give you any trouble right now. They hardly ever looked at my husbands and never got it stamped.

About the conscription (dienstplicht): all boys over 18 get here a letter that the will be called into the armee for a draft when there is a need too (like a war coming up). Nobody gets into the armee unless it's volenteerd or because of a carier they choose so you son won't ever have to sign up for a year if the situation doesn't change : )

Not to much information, but every little bit helps!