Citizenship is permanent and does not have to be reviewed. However, both naturalized citizens and persons who are citizens by birth can either give up or lose their citizenship.
Some people choose to give up their citizenship for personal reasons – marriage to a foreign national, offer of a job in another country that requires citizenship there, or similar reasons. Other people lose their citizenship because of actions they have taken such as swearing an oath of allegiance to another country or serving in the government or military of another country. Still others who have naturalized may have their citizenship revoked because they provided false information in their LPR or naturalization applications, and those falsifications are later discovered.
Unlike LPR status, citizenship does not require that you live in the U.S. If you have LPR status and you are outside the U.S. for more than a year, you can be assumed to have abandoned your LPR status. Citizens, on the other hand, cannot abandon citizenship by absence. They may live abroad for many years and still return to the U.S. as citizens. Indeed, when returning to the U.S., they are required to use U.S. passports.
Persons who are naturalized get naturalization certificates to show the new status, and persons born abroad can get certificates of citizenship to show their U.S. citizen. Of course, one of the most common documents to show citizenship is a U.S. passport. While no one is required to get a U.S. passport, many people choose to do so. Passports are generally valid for 10 years and must be renewed with new photos at the end of each 10-year period.
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