The bill’s text doesn’t single out any one group — it applies to every U.S. citizen who also holds a foreign citizenship, however they came to have it. That’s a much larger and more varied group than the phrase “dual citizen” usually brings to mind, and it includes people who have never applied for, and may not even know they have, a second nationality.
Reminder
S.3283 is a bill in committee, not law. Nothing below is a current legal requirement — this is what the categories of affected people would look like if it were enacted as written.
Naturalized U.S. citizens who kept their birth citizenship
The U.S. does not require someone naturalizing as a citizen to formally renounce their country of origin’s citizenship, and many countries don’t recognize a renunciation made only to satisfy another country’s process[1]. Millions of naturalized Americans are, in practice, already dual citizens today. Under Section 4(c) of the bill, this is the group facing the hardest deadline: renounce the other citizenship within a year of enactment, or renounce U.S. citizenship, or have U.S. citizenship deemed relinquished automatically[2].
U.S.-born citizens with citizenship by descent
Many countries grant citizenship automatically to children of their own citizens, no matter where the child is born — commonly called jus sanguinis. A U.S.-born child of an Italian, Nigerian, Indian, Irish, Israeli, or Mexican parent, among many others, can already be a citizen of that other country from birth, with no application ever filed. The State Department’s own guidance confirms dual nationality can happen automatically at birth this way[3]. Under this bill, that person would be a dual citizen subject to Section 4(c) whether or not they ever asked to be one, and whether or not they’ve ever used the second passport.
Americans born abroad
A child born outside the U.S. to American parents is typically a U.S. citizen at birth under existing law, and depending on the country of birth, may simultaneously acquire that country’s citizenship too (jus soli, birthplace-based citizenship, or through a parent). That’s a second, separate path into the same dual-citizen category the bill targets.
Children who can’t make the choice themselves
The bill’s renunciation mechanism — a written filing to the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security — is written for an adult acting on their own behalf. The bill’s text doesn’t spell out a separate process for a minor who holds dual citizenship through a parent, leaving an open question about how families with dual-citizen children would actually be expected to comply.
People who acquire a foreign citizenship later, for unrelated reasons
Section 4(b) covers a different case entirely: someone who is only a U.S. citizen today, but later voluntarily takes on a foreign citizenship — for example, to inherit property, to work legally in a parent’s home country, or through marriage in a country that grants citizenship to a spouse. Under the bill, that act alone would be treated as relinquishing U.S. citizenship the moment it happens, with no separate renunciation step or year-long grace period[2]. That is a meaningfully harder line than what applies to people who are already dual citizens when the law takes effect.
Who the bill leaves alone
Two groups sit outside the bill’s reach as written: U.S. citizens with no foreign citizenship at all, and non-citizens (including green card holders) who are not U.S. citizens in the first place. Holding a foreign passport as a non-citizen U.S. resident isn’t touched by this bill — it only applies once someone is already a U.S. citizen.
Up next: the constitutional fight this bill would almost certainly run into, and the two Supreme Court cases already on the books that speak directly to it.
References
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (2026, August). Citizenship Through Naturalization. https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/find-help-with-the-naturalization-process ↩
- U.S. Congress. (2025, December 1). S.3283 – Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025, bill text. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/3283/text ↩a ↩b
- U.S. Department of State. (2026, August). Dual Nationality. Bureau of Consular Affairs. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/Advice-about-Possible-Loss-of-US-Nationality-Dual-Nationality/Dual-Nationality.html ↩
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