If you’re dishonest, it could come back on you. Of course you admit they have a foreign passport.
All it takes is 1 Google search to know that if one of the non Japanese parents is from a country that has jus sanguinis laws, the child is nearly in all cases automatically granted citizenship from that country and could hold a passport too. If it was born outside Japan for example in the US then it could also have citizenship/ a passport because it was born there. They know who the parents are and where your child was born. I don’t think it makes much sense to withhold this information in the first place.
Always tell the truth.
I’m in charge of our daughter’s UK passport. Her mother is in charge of the JP passport. We make it a policy for me not to say whether I have or haven’t renewed her UK one. She can legitimately say she doesn’t know.
As we’ve been divorced for 10 years, this is not such a problem…
Yes, always lie as much as possible in official situations, especially when it comes to passports and nationality. Nothing good has ever come out of being truthful in these things.
This has come up before many times.
# For people who acquire multiple nationalities by birth:
1. It’s not a crime for a Japanese national to have a foreign passport 2. **It is a crime to lie on the form.** 3. The current age by which they have to make a declaration *or* lose other citizenship is 20 — because the age of adulthood dropped to 18 4. Making the declaration makes it possible to keep both but imposes a duty to endeavor to lose the other ones.
*NONE of this applies if you acquire citizenship in Japan by choice or if you acquired another citizenship by choice having been a Japanese citizen.*
Lying on official papers can give authority reason to prosecute you. Even if they won’t. I’d avoid it and especially you have no reason to lie whatsoever.
Lying of this kind of thing is a crime.
And if the kid got the dual citizenship at birth, even when he’s an adult there won’t be trouble. Friend is 35, just renewed both passport last week without lying on the form.
Basically let your Japanese spouse renew the passport but only you knowing they have non-Japanese one. You spouse can just say that they don’t know.
Yes. It put their American last name in parentheses behind their Japanese name on the passport. The youngest is 23 and the oldest is 32. All the kids still live and work in Japan. There has never been any issue. No one has ever asked them about their US citizenship.
When coming and going from trips to the US, where they must use their US passport to enter the US, when re-entering Japan, the immigration official will ask why they have no stamp in their Japanese passport. They say that they have a US Passport. Sometimes the immigration official asks to see it to verify the stamp, other times not.
No one has ever told us, nor the kids that they must give up one. I know not everyone is the same, but three kids…that’s been our experience.
No never.
Legally I don’t know. Anecdotally. I know a 43 year old guy who lived in the states for 20 years. He kept both passports and no one at immigration cares that his Japanese passport didn’t have American visa stamps in.
13 comments
If you’re dishonest, it could come back on you. Of course you admit they have a foreign passport.
All it takes is 1 Google search to know that if one of the non Japanese parents is from a country that has jus sanguinis laws, the child is nearly in all cases automatically granted citizenship from that country and could hold a passport too. If it was born outside Japan for example in the US then it could also have citizenship/ a passport because it was born there. They know who the parents are and where your child was born. I don’t think it makes much sense to withhold this information in the first place.
Always tell the truth.
I’m in charge of our daughter’s UK passport. Her mother is in charge of the JP passport. We make it a policy for me not to say whether I have or haven’t renewed her UK one. She can legitimately say she doesn’t know.
As we’ve been divorced for 10 years, this is not such a problem…
Yes, always lie as much as possible in official situations, especially when it comes to passports and nationality. Nothing good has ever come out of being truthful in these things.
This has come up before many times.
# For people who acquire multiple nationalities by birth:
1. It’s not a crime for a Japanese national to have a foreign passport
2. **It is a crime to lie on the form.**
3. The current age by which they have to make a declaration *or* lose other citizenship is 20 — because the age of adulthood dropped to 18
4. Making the declaration makes it possible to keep both but imposes a duty to endeavor to lose the other ones.
[https://www.moj.go.jp/ENGLISH/information/tnl-01.html](https://www.moj.go.jp/ENGLISH/information/tnl-01.html)
[https://www.moj.go.jp/EN/MINJI/minji78.html](https://www.moj.go.jp/EN/MINJI/minji78.html)
*NONE of this applies if you acquire citizenship in Japan by choice or if you acquired another citizenship by choice having been a Japanese citizen.*
Lying on official papers can give authority reason to prosecute you. Even if they won’t. I’d avoid it and especially you have no reason to lie whatsoever.
Lying of this kind of thing is a crime.
And if the kid got the dual citizenship at birth, even when he’s an adult there won’t be trouble. Friend is 35, just renewed both passport last week without lying on the form.
Basically let your Japanese spouse renew the passport but only you knowing they have non-Japanese one.
You spouse can just say that they don’t know.
Yes. It put their American last name in parentheses behind their Japanese name on the passport. The youngest is 23 and the oldest is 32. All the kids still live and work in Japan. There has never been any issue. No one has ever asked them about their US citizenship.
When coming and going from trips to the US, where they must use their US passport to enter the US, when re-entering Japan, the immigration official will ask why they have no stamp in their Japanese passport. They say that they have a US Passport. Sometimes the immigration official asks to see it to verify the stamp, other times not.
No one has ever told us, nor the kids that they must give up one. I know not everyone is the same, but three kids…that’s been our experience.
No never.
Legally I don’t know. Anecdotally. I know a 43 year old guy who lived in the states for 20 years. He kept both passports and no one at immigration cares that his Japanese passport didn’t have American visa stamps in.
See previous posts by /u/jbankers including…
https://reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/8iczg8/_/dyriqmp/?context=1
https://reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/l1u3n9/_/gk2omxp/?context=1