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INDIANS IN SWEDEN

‘Stateless’ Indian children in Sweden set to benefit from new guidelines

Earlier this year, Indian parents told The Local that they were waiting to apply for Swedish citizenship due to fears Indian citizenship rules would render their children stateless. Now, new guidelines from the Indian government have been issued to avoid this.

Published: 3 September 2024 11:05 CEST
'Stateless' Indian children in Sweden set to benefit from new guidelines
Under new rules from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs, children should no longer lose Indian citizenship when their parents gain citizenship of another country. Photo: Isabell Höjman/TT

India’s Citizenship Act from 1955 has until recently been interpreted in such a way that any Indians gaining another citizenship had to renounce their Indian nationality and surrender their passport, with their children automatically losing Indian citizenship too.

Now, a new Office Memorandum from the Ministry of External Affairs has clarified how the act should be interpreted. 

Firstly, Indians no longer need to renounce their citizenship once they have gained citizenship of another country – the process happens automatically. 

“As prescribed u/s 8(1) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 Any ‘Citizen of India’ of full age and capacity can renounce Indian citizenship,” reads the memorandum.

“Accordingly, those foreign nationals of Indian Origin who have already acquired citizenship of any other country are not eligible to renounce their citizenship. In fact, their citizenship has already been terminated… by acquiring citizenship of other country,” it continues.

It goes on to list a set of circumstances in which the Indian citizenship of a minor is not affected by their parent becoming a citizen of another country, such as when one parent renounces Indian citizenship before the child is born (with the other remaining an Indian citizen), or in the case of a child born to one Indian parent and one foreign parent who has never held Indian citizenship.

It also clarifies that children’s citizenship should not be affected if their parents voluntarily acquire citizenship of another country and cease to be Indian citizens, writing that the act “does not have any provision of termination of citizenship of minors of such persons”.

In situations where one parent gives up Indian citizenship and the other keeps it, the child should not be affected, unless the parent with foreign citizenship gains full legal custody of the child. In that case, the child’s citizenship “shall be of that parent who has the legal custody of that minor child”.

Even in this case, however, the child may still be able to retain Indian citizenship.

The High Court of Bombay in Goa ruled in August that an Indian 16-year-old, the child of a mother with sole custody who gave up her Indian citizenship for Portuguese citizenship in 2015, should be allowed to retain her Indian citizenship. It wrote, in court documents seen by The Local, that the teenager is still an Indian citizen and “cannot be left stateless”.

The memorandum from the Chief Passport Officer at the Ministry of External Affairs, which was written after discussion with the Ministry of Home Affairs, also recommends that instructions for foreign citizens to surrender their Indian passport or renounce their citizenship be removed from official websites, as this is understood to happen automatically once they gain citizenship of another country.

When The Local checked the website of the Indian Embassy in Sweden, it had updated advice on renunciations, removing a section which previously stated that “every minor child” of someone renouncing their citizenship “ceases to be a citizen of India”, as well as a section stating that all Indian nationals who have gained Swedish citizenship must apply to renounce their citizenship and surrender their passport.

It has also added a section stating that Indians lose citizenship “with immediate effect” once they are issued with a passport or naturalisation certificate of another country, and are no longer eligible to apply to renounce their citizenship, as well as clarifying that a renunciation certificate is no longer required for any Indians applying for an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) card.

Note: After publishing this article, a reader got in touch to say that the Indian Embassy in Sweden still maintains that Indian children lose citizenship when their parents become Swedish citizens, despite removing these sections from its website. The Local has contacted India’s Chief Passport Officer, the author of the Office Memorandum mentioned above, for clarification on this issue.

Member comments

    1. No, you’ll still need to apply for an OCI card, you just don’t need to show proof that you’ve renounced your Indian citizenship when you do so – it’s enough to show that you have Swedish citizenship. There’s more information on the Indian Embassy’s website, although I’d recommend reaching out to them first to double check exactly which documents you need: https://www.indembassysweden.gov.in/page/oci-cards/

  2. Thanks to the team at Local for following up on this story and researching the facts that provide clarity. So relieved to see this. Great work!

  3. I recently spoke to Migrationsverket about this issue of Indian children becoming stateless if parents were to apply for Swedish citizenship in this case. They mentioned that for Indian parents applying for Swedish citizenship, they can apply with the minor child as applicant in the same citizenship application. This has been recently changed in the Migrationsverket guidelines is what I was told but good to confirm that.

  6. Is it possible for you to share the link of this memorandum? I live in the Netherlands and I am going through the same challenge. Your article is gives some hope.

  7. Thx Local for reporting this. could you also help me to share memorandum link ? I can still see in indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in portal still flashing message like ” every minor child of that person shall cease to be a citizen of india under sub – section(2) of section 8 of the citizenship act , 1955″

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IMMIGRATION

‘Shift to the right’: How European nations are tightening migration policies

The success of far-right parties in elections in key European countries is prompting even centrist and left-wing governments to tighten policies on migration, creating cracks in unity and sparking concern among activists.

Published: 19 September 2024 17:38 CEST
'Shift to the right': How European nations are tightening migration policies

With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.

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