Mughal Rishta

Still a Pakistani citizen, or not

On a page where half the proposals involve somebody settled abroad, this is the status question families never ask and sometimes should have. It is not a matter of opinion: it turns on a statute and a list.

The rule, and where it sits

Section 14 of the Pakistan Citizenship Act 1951 provides that a Pakistani who is also a citizen or national of another country ceases to be a citizen of Pakistan unless he renounces the other status under that country’s law. The Supreme Court considered it in 2019 and rejected the argument that a Pakistani keeps his citizenship merely because the other country permits dual nationality. What matters is not what the other country allows but whether Pakistan has notified it.

The list, and what is not on it

The section does not apply to a person who is also a citizen of the United Kingdom, or of any other country the federal government has notified. The immigration directorate currently lists twenty-two: the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Bahrain. Read it for what is absent. Most of the Gulf is not on it, nor are Spain, Portugal, Greece, Türkiye, Malaysia or South Africa, all of which have country pages on this site. The Supreme Court also observed that no published criteria govern how a country is added or left off, and directed that guidelines be framed, so the list is a list and it can move. Confirm the current position rather than relying on what a relative did in another decade.

Two exceptions worth carrying into a rishta conversation

The section does not apply to anyone under twenty-one, which settles most questions about children. And it does not apply to a female citizen of Pakistan who is married to a non-citizen, so a Pakistani woman does not lose her Pakistani citizenship on account of marrying a foreign national. Families worry about that particular point a great deal, usually without checking it.

Which card he holds, and why the two are not the same

A national identity card for overseas Pakistanis is issued to Pakistani citizens living abroad. The holder remains a citizen: visa-free entry, property, bank accounts and a vote. A Pakistan Origin Card is issued to former citizens who gave up Pakistani nationality, to foreign-national spouses and children of citizens, and to people with ancestral links. The holder is not a Pakistani citizen: visa-free entry, property and accounts, but no vote and not the constitutional position of a citizen. On a profile, Norwegian or British may mean either of those, and it is a single question to clear up.

Five questions, one sentence each

Which nationalities does he hold, and since when. Which card does he travel on. Has anybody in the household renounced a nationality, and if so when. What do the children hold, or what would they hold. And is the family relying on something somebody was told at a consulate years ago, or on the current published position. Those five take ten minutes between two families who are already talking, and they are the difference between a plan and an assumption.

Why it belongs here rather than in a visa guide

Because it decides ordinary things rather than abstract ones. What the couple can hold and inherit in Pakistan, what the children’s documents will say, and which of them can later sponsor whom. None of it is difficult to establish, and all of it is far easier to establish before the nikah than three years afterwards with a registry office asking. It also has a bearing on the thing both families actually care about, which is whether the couple will end up living in two countries for longer than anybody intended. The citizenship position does not by itself decide that, but it decides who can start which process, and starting the wrong one is the commonest way these matches lose a year.