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Lawyers see influx in Americans seeking second passports

By Julianne Hill

September 18, 2024, 1:41 pm CDT

With the upcoming presidential election, Generation X nearing retirement and the continuation of “work from anywhere” policies, many Americans are looking to lawyers for help with their “Plan B”—obtaining dual citizenship and leaving the country, according to attorneys contacted by the ABA Journal.

“Over the course of the past two months, I’ve noticed an uptick in that type of call,” says Audrey Lustgarten, managing partner of WR Global, who observed a similar influx at the start of the Trump administration in 2017.

“In general, it comes in uncertain times,” says Betina Schlossberg, an attorney at Schlossberg Legal. “We never thought of people just running away from the United States. All of a sudden, people feel uneasy, and they want to be ready.”

Mo Syed, a principal attorney in Offit Kurman’s immigration law practice group, says he has more paying clients than ever before seeking help to obtain a second passport, most often by ancestry or through investment programs.

“Some of these people are mixed-race couples or same-sex couples that perceive a threat to their future in the U.S.,” he says. Some are looking for options to retire in places with a lower cost of living and access to socialized or low-cost health care, and others want flexible ways to work in other countries without obtaining visas or options for their children to study abroad.

Others are sentimental and want to feel connected to their roots, using ancestry to obtain citizenship “by blood,” says Michael Freestone, another principal attorney at Offit Kurman who helps clients on these cases.

The U.S. does not forbid dual citizenship, but some countries require dual passport holders to renounce their U.S. citizenship.

U.S.-based lawyers typically field initial calls to help clients determine if, how and where dual citizenship might be possible. Often, they partner with members of the other country’s bar. “You can really get into trouble giving advice on other countries’ laws,” Freestone says.

Schlossberg, vice chair of the ABA International Law Section’s Immigration and Naturalization Committee, has referred clients to or partnered on some cases with other ABA members outside of the U.S. in her practice.

“That’s the value of international organizations,” she says. “We’re all connected, and we can always find somebody to provide the kind of service we need.”

‘A lot of waiting’

Most people are interested in gaining citizenship in European Union countries, which brings flexibility by allowing people to study or take a job within the 27-nation group without additional visas, attorneys say.

Many countries, including Italy, Germany and Poland, offer citizenship through bloodlines.

The concept typically is relatively simple. Natural born children of citizens of those countries automatically obtain that country’s citizenship—no matter where they were born.

Except it’s not always that simple. While the idea is the same in each country, legal processes vary greatly and often involve a great deal of research to find supporting documents.

“It’s a lot of paperwork, it’s a lot of bureaucratic processes, and it’s a lot of waiting,” Lustgarten says.

For those seeking Italian citizenship, the process typically takes 2½ years, but it can take as long as four, says Marco Permunian, a member of the Italian bar who hosts The Italian Citizenship Podcast. He says he receives 250 to 300 inquiries per day, and his business has grown tenfold since launching more than 10 years ago.

Typically, applicants must gather as many vital records of the direct bloodline as possible—birth, death and marriage records along with naturalization papers. Often, establishing that paper trail involves reaching out across an ocean and encountering language barriers to find historic documents. Some attorneys offer services to find documents in the ancestors’ hometowns.

“Or you could take the trouble of going to the town and asking for it, which is a lot more fun,” Schlossberg says.

Sometimes, as clients search for their great-grandparents’ birth certificates from the early 1900s in a remote town, they discover discrepancies.

“You come to find out that great-grandma used four different names and three different birth dates on her documents,” Freestone says.

Untangling those types of situations requires digging to verify it is the same person. “It’s nice in the creativity you get to use,” Schlossberg says. To do so, she has combed through ship manifests at Ellis Island and scoured Social Security records.

And the lack of preservation methods in small towns can lead to other unexpected roadblocks.

One client of K. Jakub Gładkowski—a Polish attorney and founding partner of the Warsaw, Poland-based firm Kiełtyka Gładkowski and a member of the ABA International Law Section—was a Texas businessman of Jewish descent who wanted to reclaim his Polish citizenship. It was important in this case to prove his mother left after World War I and the establishment of the Polish state because her hometown of Płońsk had belonged to czarist Russia before the war, he says. Although they found that city’s directory, a mouse ate the fragment of the directory that showed his mother’s departure date.

“It made things very difficult,” he adds. Instead, Gladkowski and his colleagues found a witness to confirm she left in 1918, he says.

For some countries, such as Italy, U.S. documents must be translated into the nation’s official language before submission and certified with an apostille—a State Department-issued authentication that allows a person’s forms to be accepted by Hague Convention countries.

Then, clients hold tight, attorneys say.

For German citizenship, there was a backlog of about 42,000 applications at the federal administrative office in November 2023, says Ellen von Geyso, a member of the bar in the U.S. and Germany who handles many cases to obtain German citizenship.

Golden—and expensive

Some countries—including Portugal, Greece and Spain—have offered “golden visas” in recent years for non-EU citizens who make substantial investments. In Spain, the minimum is more than $550,000, and many U.S. citizens have bought second homes there. That has led some governments to phase out the investor option.

“It’s driving up real estate prices for people that actually live there all the time,” Lustgarten says.

In contrast, the typical cost for support through the Italian process through Permunian’s company is about $12,000 for a great-grandchild looking to reclaim Italian citizenship, he says.

Attorneys warn clients there are possible downsides to having dual citizenship. They suggest that clients discuss the potential of being taxed in both countries with a tax attorney or a certified public accountant.

And there is an issue of protection for dual citizens, Schlossberg says. For instance, if someone carrying both Greek and U.S. passports has an emergency in Athens, the U.S. Embassy might not help, claiming that person is a local national. But the Greek authorities might consider that person American, she adds.

Despite that, Schlossberg—who holds passports from the U.S., Italy and Argentina—mostly sees upsides to multiple citizenships. “I’m very cosmopolitan. I can go just about anywhere.”

Helping these clients is rewarding, von Geyso says. “It’s very, very personal. People pick up their paperwork at the consulate, and then I get the pictures. It’s very nice to see them holding a certificate of naturalization.”