Suddenly German
I thought I had already written about this but due to the number of "wait what??" comments to my last post about my offhand reference to getting a German passport, apparently I didn't.
So my older brother Tobin had gotten rather into looking up these things and had figured out that we are eligible for German citizenship. Basically, if your parent was eligible, you are eligible, for essentially unlimited generations as long as eligibility hasn't been lost. Eligibility is invalidated by voluntarily taking another citizenship or voluntarily serving in the armed forces of another country. So my great grandparents left Germany on July 17th, 1913, to emigrate to Brazil. They were German citizens and didn't take on Brazilian citizenship. My grandfather was born a Brazilian citizen and involuntarily served in the Brazilian army for his obligatory military service. My dad was born a Brazilian citizen, naturalized as an American citizen because the family moved to the US when he was less than a year old. Renounced his Brazilian citizenship after Tobin was born but before I was born, because he wanted to visit Brazil but would have been in trouble for not serving in the military there if he didn't renounce his citizenship -- as a result though Tobin is a Brazilian citizen and I am not.
I was of course born an American citizen, now a permanent resident in Australia. If I take Australian citizenship I lose my German citizenship. BUT so what I'm thinking, is if Cristina and I have children here in Australia before I take Australian citizenship, they will be born as American, German, Venezuelan, Australian citizens (!). ;)
This isn't just a novelty, who knows how the world will look in 30 years, but my children should have full rights to live and work anywhere in Europe, the USA, Australia, or Venezuela (and because a lot of latin American countries have mutual agreements, they'll have some rights to travel or work in many S.American countries I think). I will give my children the world ;)
Also much as I really love living where I am and my current job, being as German citizenship gives me _and my wife_* right to live and work anywhere in Europe, there's a possibilty Cristina and I might move to Spain -- medical accreditation from South America is easier there and obviously she wouldn't have a language barrier. (*not sure if the "and my wife" part applies to all of Europe but it does in Spain, the one country I looked into since it's the only one we're realistically considering)
So my brother Tobin was doing the paperwork, which was a bit formidable since it involved getting birth and other documents pertaining to three generations in three countries, but as long as he was doing it it was the same paperwork for him and me and our cousins so he did it simultaneously for several of us. A month or so ago I finally received my official document of German citizenship, made the appointment for a German passport as soon as I could (which also solves the very practical problem I've been having which is I often need to send my passport out for visa stamps, it'll be nice to have a second passport in reserve while my US passport is out cavorting the world), which was the appointment the other day. In about ten weeks I should have my German passport!
Incidentally, and you may be wondering, no I don't speak a word of German. I don't even know offhand how to say hi. But weirdly I've found I do suddenly _feel_ more German. If I wasn't already filling up my daily capacity of language learning with studying Spanish I'd probably take up studying German now.