How common is dual citizenship among current U.S. members of Congress?
Executive summary
Available reporting lists multiple legislative efforts in 2025 seeking to restrict or force disclosure of dual citizenship among U.S. officials, but those sources do not provide a definitive count of how many current members of Congress actually hold dual citizenship. News coverage and advocacy pieces note that some members are foreign‑born or have foreign connections and that lawmakers including Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Bernie Moreno have introduced bills to target dual citizenship [1] [2] [3].
1. How the debate reached the floor: bills and sponsors
Republican senators and representatives pushed measures in 2025 aimed at ending or at least exposing dual citizenship among officeholders. Sen. Bernie Moreno introduced the “Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025,” which would bar simultaneous foreign citizenship and require people to choose within a year, while Rep. Thomas Massie introduced the Dual Loyalty Disclosure Act (H.R. 2356) to force candidates to disclose any foreign citizenship [3] [1]. News outlets frame these proposals as driven by concerns of “divided loyalties” and national‑security rhetoric from some GOP lawmakers [4] [5].
2. What the bills would do — and legal obstacles cited by reporters
Moreno’s bill would declare that no one may be a U.S. citizen “while simultaneously possessing any foreign citizenship,” require administrative systems to track declarations, and treat noncompliant individuals as having relinquished U.S. citizenship for immigration purposes [2] [3]. Multiple news stories note Supreme Court precedent protecting dual citizenship and question enforcement under the Constitution — reporting that Afroyim v. Rusk and other cases recognize dual citizenship and limit Congress’s ability to strip U.S. citizenship [2] [6].
3. How common is dual citizenship in Congress — what sources say (and don’t say)
Available sources assert that several members of Congress are foreign‑born and that “a surprising number” have dual nationality, but none of the provided articles gives a credible, sourced tally of current members holding dual citizenship. For example, a travel blog claims many members were born abroad and that “a surprising number” have dual citizenship, while opinion and partisan outlets repeat that some members are foreign‑born — but these are not authoritative counts and the reporting does not list a comprehensive, verified number of dual citizens in the 119th Congress [7] [8]. Therefore: exact prevalence among sitting members is not specified in the supplied reporting — available sources do not mention a verified count.
4. Estimates of dual citizens in the U.S. population — wide ranges cited
Newsweek’s coverage cites expert estimates that range broadly — from roughly 500,000 to as many as 5.7 million U.S. dual citizens — and notes that eligibility for another citizenship is often much higher (for example, Forbes has suggested up to 40% might be eligible for a second citizenship), but those figures refer to the general population, not to members of Congress [6]. The wide range highlights methodological uncertainty and why reporters do not present a clean congressional count.
5. Political framing and competing motives in the coverage
Conservative sponsors present the bills as protecting “exclusive allegiance” and preventing conflicts of interest [3] [9]. Multiple outlets and commentators portray the push as part of a broader hard‑line immigration and “America First” agenda and warn it could be weaponized against political opponents or naturalized officeholders [5] [10]. Some reporting explicitly raises concerns about constitutional limits and historical protections for dual citizenship [2] [6].
6. What’s missing from the public record and why it matters
None of the provided sources presents a vetted public roster showing which current members of Congress hold foreign citizenship or a statutory definition that would determine who is covered. As a result, reporters and the public lack the baseline data needed to evaluate the scale and impact of proposed laws — available sources do not mention a verified list of dual‑citizen members [7] [8]. That gap is central because policy tradeoffs—privacy, national security, family ties, and constitutional protections—depend on how many officials would be affected.
7. Bottom line for readers and policymakers
There is clear momentum among some Republicans in 2025 to curb or at least disclose dual citizenship among federal officeholders, but the supplied reporting does not quantify how many current U.S. members of Congress actually hold dual citizenship; count estimates exist for the general population only and vary widely [1] [6]. Any policy change will collide with legal precedent protecting citizenship and with political claims about motive and fairness documented across the coverage [2] [5].