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I was born in the country of X, and just became US citizen. My original X country doesn't allow dual citizenship. Law in X country says my X citizenship would be automatically dropped if I get naturalized in other country. But I haven't renounced my X citizenship yet, and still have an un-expired passport.

Question: if I want to make working visa to France (a third country). Can I still use my X passport? Or would France care about the fact that X country doesn't recognize dual citizenship and thus deny my visa application? My X passport is not expired and I did tell French embassy that I am dual citizen of US and country X right now. I am in US right now making visa to go to France.

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    Note that formally, if country X rules are really as you describe, the citizenship is not yours to renounce. You merely failed to inform the authorities of your new status but might have already lost it.
    – Gala
    Jan 9, 2017 at 10:14
  • As a US citizen, you do not need a visa to enter France, provided you remain in the Schengen area for 90 or fewer days in any 180-day period. If your visit complies with that restriction, you don't need a visa; just enter France with your US passport.
    – phoog
    Jan 9, 2017 at 15:46
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    I need a working visa to work in France. free visa is for tourists.....
    – Curly
    Jan 9, 2017 at 16:30
  • @Gala, thanks for the feedback, What shall I do now? They took my X passport and application material and are processing it. Shall I stop by and give them also my US passport with my name changing document? Thank you!
    – Curly
    Jan 10, 2017 at 13:43
  • I have no preferences of using one passport or the other. It is just I want to get the visa, so I can start my program as soon as possible. Not sure if they will ask me to re-make all the french documents based on my new American passport. that will take another 4 months. I am still me, the same person....
    – Curly
    Jan 10, 2017 at 13:46

2 Answers 2

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It sounds unlikely that the branch of the French government who is in charge of processing your visa would care to make a determination on behalf of country X about your citizenship there. So in other words I don't think they would care.

Also, unless they are explicitly asking for every one of your nationalities, you are not necessarily obliged to tell all of them to the French visa office. For example I know dual citizens of US and country Y, but when dealing with government of a third country such as France they only write USA in the country of citizenship box.

But I don't really understand why you'd want to use the passport of country X for you visa, in spite of the fact that, if I understand correctly, you're not quite positive you can get that passport renewed. Take a hypothetical situation where that passport expires or gets lost or stolen while you're in France. You next go to the consulate for country X in order to get it reissued. Might the consulate be able to figure your US naturalization and then refuse your passport application? At which point your visa file with the French government might be useless or at least a pain to deal with. I'm only hypothesizing here, and generally I don't like to answer questions this way, but might using the US passport from now on not be more prudent? (In other words, if you already believe that country X would no longer consider you a national were they to know your US naturalization, then why not respect that and act accordingly?)

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  • Thanks for the reply. I got the job offer and spent months to make the official documents in France, based on my X citizenship. X passport was the only passport I had back when I was applying for this official document. 1 week ago, I just became US citizenship, and now I am making visa. I just don't want it takes another few months in France to remake the official document based on my new "identity"....I changed my name on my US passport.
    – Curly
    Jan 9, 2017 at 7:34
  • Also, say if I lose my X passport in France, then I can just apply for a new X passport. How would X know that I have us citizenship? Thanks for your thoughts and comments
    – Curly
    Jan 9, 2017 at 7:35
  • Simply, an official of country X might ask you that question directly, and you may find yourself compelled to either tell them, or lie, or try to avoid answering the question, neither of which are great options
    – qoba
    Jan 9, 2017 at 8:24
  • Also thanks for the explanation, I understand why you did it this way; if you do intend to choose US citizenship instead of X then I'd advise you to research how to transfer the benefits of your visa admission to your US passport rather than country X in the case of a change of citizenship to a third country
    – qoba
    Jan 9, 2017 at 8:28
  • @Curly Other ways dual citizenship can be revealed: (1) You apply for renewal at an embassy but can't present a green card/residence permit/visa, e.g. because you have become a citizen. (2) You go for a visit to your country of origin and you don't have applicable visa/exit stamps, because you used another passport at some point. You can avoid both (by being careful with how you use your passport and going to country X to renew it) but it's not easy.
    – Gala
    Jan 9, 2017 at 10:02
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Legally, it seems you are not a citizen of X anymore. If that is indeed the case, by applying as a citizen of X, you would be misrepresenting your situation and using an invalid document fraudulently. You did write that you told the French consulate about your “dual” citizenship but if you are not actually a citizen of country X and even if it issued the passport and it looks completely fine, its validity is questionable at best.

I agree with @qoba that the French consulate is not particularly likely to act on this when issuing the visa but given the fact that you are now moving to France and that you have much more than a short tourism visit at stake, I would still be concerned about the possibility that it somehow creates problems later on.

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