In another potentially hugely important move coming out of the GOP-controlled Senate, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) moved to ban dual citizenship in America for good, arguing that Americans should either be American citizens and nothing else, or be citizens of a foreign land, framing the move as being obviously America first.
As background, while some constitutional scholars argue that dual citizenship was allowed by the Constitution when it was written, it has only been explicitly recognized as a right since a 1967 Supreme Court ruling that either affirmed or made up, depending on who is making the argument, the right to be a dual citizen as an American citizen.
Many, particularly on the MAGA side of politics, argue that the law should not allow such things, as Americans ought to be either fully American or just citizens of some foreign land or lands, but not both American and foreign. Teddy Roosevelt made the same argument in his book Fear God and Take Your Own Part.
In any case, Sen. Moreno has moved to introduce legislation that would legislation on Monday that would require any U.S. citizen who has foreign citizenship to choose between the two countries, doing so by ending dual citizenship and requiring that all citizens to submit “exclusive allegiance” to the United States.
Announcing the legislation, called the Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025 and introduced on Monday, December 1, in a post on X, Sen. Moreno said, “It was an honor to pledge an Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America and ONLY to the United States of America. America First and America Only. It’s time to end dual citizenship for good.”
Speaking to Fox News Digital about the legislation, the Senator, who was born in the nation of Colombia but became a naturalized United States citizen, said that becoming an American as soon as he could do so was the greatest honor of his life, saying, “One of the greatest honors of my life was when I became an American citizen at 18, the first opportunity I could do so.”
Continuing, the senator told the outlet, “It was an honor to pledge an Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America and only to the United States of America. Being an American citizen is an honor and a privilege — and if you want to be an American — it’s all or nothing. It’s time to end dual citizenship for good.”
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Under the legislation, American citizens who hold citizenship in another nation would be required to disclaim their loyalty to either America or the other nation. To enforce that, the legislation would require that both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) create databases so that they could track and enforce the change in citizenship.
Further, it would give those Americans who hold dual citizenship only one year to decide between the nations in which they hold multiple citizenship and either renounce their foreign citizenship or their American citizenship, which they can do by writing to the Secretary of State or DHS. Those who do not write in will be deemed to have relinquished their U.S. citizenship.
Watch Rep. Fine defend a bill that would ban dual citizens from serving in Congress on CNN here:
Featured image credit: By Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – Bernie Moreno, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134984540