More than 3,400 Pakistanis have renounced citizenship in the past five years, which the Express Tribune describes as a “worrying sign”:
More than 3,400 Pakistani citizens have renounced their nationality in the last five years after adopting the citizenship of other countries while another 1,500 want to give up their association with the homeland. Around 251 Pakistanis have adopted the nationality of Canada, 171 of the United States, 145 of Australia, 121 of New Zealand, 75 of Norway while 54 chose to become citizens of Denmark. The rest went for the citizenship of other countries in Europe and the Middle East, immigration officials told The Express Tribune.
As the article goes on to point out, Pakistan allows dual citizenship with a variety of countries in Europe, North America, and the Middle East, meaning that those emigrants could have retained their Pakistani citizenship, but instead explicitly rejected that choice. In doing so, they voluntarily gave up a variety of benefits which the Pakistani government offers to its citizens abroad, such as evacuation from war-torn Yemen — a “benefit of citizenship” which the U.S. has not seen fit to extend to its own diaspora (contrary to all the Homelander myths about black helicopters coming to rescue us wherever on Earth we might go).
According to recent estimates, the Pakistani diaspora is about the same size as the American diaspora: each comprises seven million citizens living outside of their respective countries. But the number of Americans who have given up their citizenship in the past half-decade is at least in the low five digits.
