Expat challenges rule to renounce U.S. citizenship
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
According to Costa Rican law, foreigners who seek Costa Rican nationality through length of residency have to agree to renounce their current citizenship.
That is not the case for a person who obtains Costa Rican residency through a relationship with a Costa Rican.
The issue is important for U.S. expats. While that country allows their citizens to hold other nationalities, most would not want to surrender their citizenship when they opt to become Costa Ricans.
Now a Playas del Coco woman, identified by the Poder Judicial as Leslie Barbara Zelinski Levy, has filed a Sala IV constitutional case challenging the section of the immigration law that mandates surrendering a previous citizenship. She is a U.S. citizen.
Costa Rican or American?
The case was filed by San José lawyer Bárbara Jiménez Coble. The appeal challenges the different ways Costa Rica handles the citizenship application in which one class of persons must surrender a foreign citizenship but another class, those obtaining citizenship through a family relationship, do not.
A U.S. Embassy official told a writer Wednesday that a number of American citizens here have signed documents promising to renounce their citizenship, but that the embassy does not take the paperwork seriously.
In a more formal account, the U.S. State Department says on its Web site “a person who acquires a foreign citizenship by applying for it may lose U.S. citizenship. In order to lose U.S. citizenship, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign citizenship voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. citizenship.”
Surrendering U.S. citizenship can be a formal process that some expats do in order to avoid U.S. taxes or for political reasons.
In some cases because a treaty agreement exists between Costa Rica and another nation, citizens may assume dual nationality without the need to renounce the current one. The United States does not have such a treaty. That figures in the court appeal, too.
Those who seek Costa Rican citizenship must show that they have been in the country a prescribed period, which varies based on their country of origin.
Non-native Spanish speakers have to take a language test. All have to take a test over Costa Rican civics.
Those who seek residency by a family relationship, such as a spouse or a child born here, do not have to take these tests.
Some criminal suspects who are fleeing U.S. justice sometimes manage to obtain Costa Rican citizenship because the country’s Constitution prohibits the extradition of citizens. The citizenship process can be reversed if the Costa Rican government believes that there were misrepresentations in the naturalization process.
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