Saturday, January 26, 2008
So, some of you may wonder why I have had the mini-epiphany described in my last post about marriage and why I have even bothered to reconsider whether it is possible for me. The answer is that I found out that I may need it.
As many of you know, one of my primary goals in life, if not the primary goal in my life, is to travel the world and live in different places including foreign countries to experience as many cultures and settings as possible.
That is one reason the idea of the foreign service officer job appeals to me. It would give me an automatic job in a capacity that I would enjoy in various places around the world and would provide training including language training. The downsides being that you have to tout the party line even where you don't agree with it and that you don't get to pick the locations yourself.
So I was looking into other options and by chance I came across some pages describing how to get citizenship in other countries. I discovered that in several countries in the European Union it is possible to get citizenship by living in the country for 5 years straight and learning the language and culture. Two of the countries that have this sort of requirement that interest me are Sweden and the Netherlands, though we'll take the latter for the sake of discussion. If I were to acquire dutch citizenship, I could live and work in any country in the EU without having to get special visas and work permits. It would require that I learn the language(s) and skills for jobs myself, but would give me freedom to choose my location, at least within the EU. It seems like the hardest part would be actually getting the residential visa and work permit to begin with and then all you have to do is last out the time and learn along the way.
So, that all sounds straightforward, but there is a catch. In order to take dutch citizenship, I would be required to renounce my US citizenship. While I might consider that for a brief moment, I don't think I could actually do it. There is definitely advantage to having citizenship in the most powerful country in the world and besides, it is my home country. It would be terribly bizarre to have to get visas or green cards or something to live/work in the US if I came back to visit or to live. So, I discovered that there is a list of exceptions to the renunciation requirement, but I could only theoretically meet one of them. If I were to marry a dutch citizen then after 3 years of being married to them (and meeting the other requirements), I could apply for dutch citizenship and be permitted to keep my US citizenship as well.
So, that would require I get married which brings in a whole host of questions, some of which I addressed in my last post. In addition to that, I'd need to make sure to end up with someone that liked to travel and move around as well. I'd also have to deal with the question of children.... which I have absolutely zero desire for at the moment and would require some convincing to ever change.
There is another catch as well. While the US does permit a US citizen to hold dual citizenship, if a person voluntarily obtains a second citizenship (as opposed to being granted it due to birth, etc.), they are automatically disqualified for security clearances due to foreign interest. This would effectively disqualify me from the foreign service officer job. My thoughts are that if I were to pursue the dual citizenship route then it'd be a minimum of 5 years from when I started and by that time I'd probably have some career already worked out and I'd already have a way to live and work in most of Europe so I may not need the FSO job.
So, I'm a little torn between which path would be ideal and I don't know that I can make either work, but at least either way would be interesting. And besides, wouldn't it be freakin' cool if I had an EU passport? I'd love to have some legitimate claim to call myself european.