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For decades, the U.S. has quietly been one of the chillest countries in the world when it comes to dual citizenship. If you were born in one country and raised in another? Congratulations, keep both passports. Naturalized somewhere new later in life? No problem. But that long-standing flexibility could soon be on the chopping block.
This week, senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, introduced the Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025, a bill that would effectively end dual citizenship for Americans. If it becomes law, U.S. citizens would be required to owe “sole and exclusive allegiance” to the United States, meaning they would have to choose just one passport and not be able to hold two symultaneously.
Under the proposal, anyone who already holds U.S. citizenship and another nationality would have one year to decide which one to keep. Stick with America and you’d have to formally renounce your foreign citizenship. Keep the other country and you’d be giving up your U.S. status. New citizens who later acquire foreign citizenship would automatically be considered to have relinquished their American citizenship.
Moreno frames the bill as a matter of loyalty. In announcing the legislation, he argued that citizenship should be “all or nothing,” warning that dual nationality can create conflicts of interest and divided allegiances. The bill’s findings section echoes that language, saying exclusive citizenship is necessary to preserve the integrity of national identity.
That’s a sharp detour from how the U.S. has historically handled this issue. Right now, the law doesn’t require Americans to choose between passports, even if they naturalize elsewhere. In fact, millions of people hold U.S. citizenship alongside another nationality, often because of where they were born, where their parents came from or because they built lives in more than one country.
Dual citizens today already juggle legal obligations to both countries, including taxes, military service requirements and travel requirements. They’re required to use a U.S. passport when entering or leaving the United States and they sometimes must use their other passport when traveling abroad. While bureaucratic, it’s been legal, accepted and increasingly common around the world.
That reality would change fast if the bill is enacted. If the Exclusive Citizenship Act moves forward, it sets a 180-day clock after enactment for the new rules to take effect. Federal agencies will be responsible for tracking compliance and formally reclassifying anyone who fails to make a choice.
For now, it’s just a proposal that would still have to clear Congress and survive the sure-to-come legal challenges. But it’s already sparking a big question with very personal stakes: in a country built by immigrants, what does loyalty look like in a world where more people than ever belong to more than one place?