S. 3283 Bernie has the Right Idea, but...

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) isn’t the only Bernie in the US Senate. The other Bernie may be less well known but he has just introduced a bill with an intriguing idea. Senator Bernie Moreno joined the Senate in January 2025 and is a Republican from Ohio. A native of Colombia, South America, Moreno immigrated to the United States as a child with his parents and is a naturalized citizen of the US. At the time of his naturalization, he renounced his Colombian citizenship.

Senator Moreno introduced S. 3283 on December 1, 2025. Briefly, this bill, currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee, would ban dual (or multiple) nationality. American citizens who hold foreign nationality would need to renounce such foreign nationality in order to retain American citizenship. Failure to do so would result in loss of American citizenship. The proposed bill, styled the Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025, makes a lot of sense.  Children of foreign diplomats accredited to the United States are not American citizens by birth as their parents are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US as required by the XIV Amendment to the Constitution. However, they can be considered as permanent residents and are entitled as such to a green card. This is rather complex depending upon whether the parent is a blue list or white list diplomat. The reader is referred to search these categories at other sites but it is sufficient to ask whether either one of these categories should be entitled to American nationality or residency.

Foreign leaders who are also US citizens include Pope Leo XIV, Daniel Noboa, President of Ecuador, Luis Rodolfo Abinader Corona, President of the Dominican Republic, among others. Nabih Berri, Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament has been a green card holder for many years. Boris Johnson, born in New York to British parents served as a member of Parliament and as Mayor of London before renouncing his American nationality in 2016, after a dispute in 2015 with American tax authorities. It should be noted that dual nationals of the United States and green card holders, who are lawful permanent residents of the US, are subject to the US tax regime wherever they may reside and must also report foreign bank accounts on their income tax returns. Green card holders are subject to American taxes unless they surrender their green card and American residency. Numerous foreign celebrities and prominent business people arrange for their children to be born in the US and thus obtain birthright citizenship in addition to their parents foreign nationality. Whether they ever are subject to the American tax regime and what loyalty they may owe to America besides having US passports is questionable.

A scandalous abuse of the XIV Amendment and birthright citizenship is Chinese birth tourism. Pregnant women, coached by travel agencies to hide their motivation, come to the US to give birth to American citizens with the aim of eventually using their anchor baby to obtain immigration rights for themselves and their family. They leave the US and their unpaid hospital bills with a newborn baby and its US passport. Birth tourism is not limited to China but is widespread throughout all nations as American birthright citizenship is well known to all seeking a means of entering the US. Senator Moreno’s bill seeks to solve some of these issues by ending dual nationality. It should be clear that dual nationality imposes a tremendous burden on the United States as the nation is obligated to its citizens in a reciprocal manner to the obligations of its citizens.  American dual citizens, for example, may be held in foreign countries as hostages, as recently occurred in Iran, with the subsequent result that the US paid huge ransoms to free these people. Dual nationals visit dangerous countries of which they are citizens yet they would never have gone to these troubled locations without the prior knowledge that the US will redeem them. President Trump signed executive order 14156 on Jan. 20, 2025 seeking to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented aliens and temporary visa holders who give birth in the US. This executive order is currently being challenged in federal court.

The flip side of the above is that at least twenty nations wlll endow an applicant quickly with a new nationality for a “donation” of a specified amount.They will grant a passport to the new citizen with all rights and privileges. This is what the multiple nationality game has become. Regrettably, the US participates in this type of scheme, granting green cards in return for a sizable investment. Many of its beneficiaries pledged to make the investment, obtained the green card, but never followed up with the requisite investment. The US government has acquiesced to this behavior with no penalty or sanction to the fraudulently obtained green card holder.

Though Sen. Moreno’s bill makes sense given the above cited facts, it is doubtful that it will ever see the light of day. If, through some sort of legislative miracle, it ever becomes law, it will be struck down as unconstitutional by the federal courts. The guiding Supreme Court decision is Afroyim v. Rusk 387 U.S. 253 (1967).  The Court ruled, in a 5 to 4 decision, written by Justice Hugo Black, that a US citizen cannot lose his or her citizenship unless they willingly surrender it. While stare decisis is a fundamental legal doctrine, precedence has been overruled, most notably in the overturning of Roe v. Wade by Dobbs v. Jackson. But the language of the XIV Amendment is very clear and thus not very susceptible to creative legal parsing. The only way dual nationality and Afroyim v. Rusk can be overturned it seems would be by constitutional amendment, a long and arduous path.

Garry S. Sklar

Las Vegas, NV

March 9, 2026