Which U.S. politicians have publicly acknowledged holding dual citizenship and which countries are involved?
Executive summary
Public, verifiable admissions of dual citizenship among U.S. politicians are limited; the most widely documented case is Senator Ted Cruz, who held Canadian citizenship at the start of his Senate career and renounced it in 2014 [1], while other widely shared claims—about members of Congress holding Somali or Israeli passports, for example—have been investigated and often found unproven or based on mistranslations and rumor [2]. There is no central U.S. registry of dual citizens among elected officials, which leaves many assertions unconfirmed and fuels proposals in Congress to require disclosure [3] [1] [4].
1. A clear case: Ted Cruz’s Canadian citizenship and renunciation
The clearest, publicly acknowledged instance in recent American federal politics is Senator Ted Cruz, who was a dual citizen of the United States and Canada when first elected and later publicly renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014, a fact noted in policy databases and summaries about dual-citizenship disclosure efforts [1].
2. State-level and celebrity examples that illuminate but don’t prove a trend in Washington
Outside the federal legislature, high-profile political figures have held foreign citizenship—for example, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger held Austrian citizenship while serving as governor, a point discussed in public debates and reporting about eligibility and dual nationality [5]—but such examples do not translate into a comprehensive list of federal officeholders because the United States lacks a uniform disclosure or registry of dual citizenship for elected officials [3].
3. Rumors, translations and contested claims in Congress: Ilhan Omar and others
Social-media storms have accused members of Congress—including Rep. Ilhan Omar—of holding dual citizenship based on mistranslations or misinterpretations of speeches and other flimsy evidence; fact-checkers such as Snopes have documented how those claims spread and how many of them remain unsubstantiated or false, demonstrating the limits of public reporting on allegiance and passports [2].
4. Why it’s hard to compile a definitive list: law, reporting gaps and proposed fixes
U.S. law imposes citizenship requirements for specific offices (the presidency must be “natural born,” senators and representatives must meet minimum citizenship durations), but it does not require elected officials to surrender other nationalities nor does it maintain a centralized public list of who holds dual nationality, a lacuna highlighted by reporting on citizens seeking second passports and by legislative proposals such as the Dual Citizenship Disclosure Act and related bills pushed in Congress [6] [3] [4] [1].
5. What is verifiable today, and what remains in rumor-land
What can be stated confidently from the provided reporting is that Senator Ted Cruz held and then renounced Canadian citizenship [1], that some well-known public figures (e.g., Schwarzenegger) have held foreign citizenship while in office at other levels [5], and that social-media claims about multiple current members of Congress holding specific foreign citizenships have been investigated and often found to lack credible evidence [2]; beyond those documented examples, the absence of mandatory disclosure and a central registry means many published lists, social posts and partisan claims cannot be fully verified with the sources provided [3] [7].