Naturalising abroad does not itself end Vietnamese nationality

A Vietnamese investor who takes citizenship in Portugal, Grenada or Canada does not thereby stop being Vietnamese. Article 26 of the Nationality Law sets out how Vietnamese nationality is lost, and acquiring a foreign one is not on the list. The amending law that took effect on 1 July 2025 did not put it there. What that law did change is who may hold a foreign nationality alongside the Vietnamese one, where a naturalisation file is lodged, and how long the State has to undo a naturalisation it has already granted.

The grounds of loss are a list, and a foreign passport is not on it

Four grounds survive in Article 26:

• renunciation granted;
• deprivation;
• the cases in Article 18(2) and Article 35;
• loss under a treaty to which Vietnam is a party.

Law 79/2025/QH15 added a fifth at Article 26(2a) — cancellation of a decision granting naturalisation or restoration.

The original 2008 list also carried failure to register retention. That ground was repealed in 2014, more than a decade before cancellation was added: the whole of the amending provision in Law 56/2014/QH13 reads, “Clause 3 of Article 26 is repealed.”

None of what survives is triggered by a foreign authority issuing a passport. A Vietnamese citizen who naturalises abroad and takes no further step remains a Vietnamese citizen, whether or not anyone in Vietnam is told. What follows from that status under the tax, property and service statutes is set by those statutes, and Article 5(4) says as much for citizens settled abroad, referring their rights and obligations to the relevant body of law.

What the President’s permission covers, and what it does not

The President’s permission under Articles 19(6) and 23(5) governs the other direction. Those provisions deal with a person acquiring or restoring Vietnamese nationality who wishes to keep a foreign nationality already held. That person needs the President’s permission, and two conditions must be met: retention must be consistent with the law of the other country, and the foreign nationality must not be used to prejudice the rights and lawful interests of agencies, organisations and individuals, or to harm the security, national interest, order and social safety of the State.

Read instead as a licence a Vietnamese emigrant must obtain before naturalising abroad, the provision is inverted. No such licence exists.

For naturalisation, two groups may ask

For naturalisation, only applicants under Article 19(2) or Article 19(3) may ask to keep a foreign nationality, and the two limbs are not exempted from the same conditions.

Article 19(2) covers an applicant whose spouse, or whose biological child, is a Vietnamese citizen. It waives Vietnamese-language ability, the five-year permanent-residence period, and the ability to support oneself in Vietnam. It does not waive the separate condition of being permanently resident in Vietnam at the time of application.

Article 19(3) reaches four groups:

• a person with a biological father or mother who is a Vietnamese citizen, or with both paternal grandparents, or both maternal grandparents, who are;
• a person of special merit to the building and defence of the country;
• a person whose naturalisation benefits the State;
• a minor naturalising with a parent.

That limb waives the current-residence condition as well.

The grandparent limb is conjunctive on its face. Article 19(3)(a) reads “paternal grandfather and paternal grandmother, or maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother”, so one grandparent on each side does not answer it.

Restoration moved further. Under the 2008 text, a person who had lost Vietnamese nationality could apply to restore it only within one of six listed cases, one of which was making an investment in Vietnam. Article 23(1) as replaced now provides that a person who lost their nationality under Article 26 and applies shall be considered for restoration. The listed gate is gone; the discretion is not.

Where the file goes changed too. Under the 2008 law a naturalisation file went to the Department of Justice of the applicant’s place of residence. Article 21(1) as replaced now sends it to the Department of Justice for an applicant resident in Vietnam and to the Vietnamese representative mission in the host country for an applicant resident abroad, which checks the documents and forwards them with its own recommendation to the Ministry of Justice. The procedure then divides in two: an applicant who has asked to keep a foreign nationality, and a stateless applicant, go straight to the Ministry’s report to the Prime Minister and on to the President; every other applicant is written to first and told to renounce the foreign nationality, and the report follows only once the foreign renunciation document arrives. The President decides naturalisation, restoration, renunciation, deprivation and cancellation alike, under Article 38(1).

Proving nationality is a separate problem from holding it

For a family settled abroad for decades the harder question is evidential. A Vietnamese person abroad who had not lost the status before the amending law took effect still holds Vietnamese nationality — Article 13(2) says so — but may need to have that confirmed before an institution will act on it. Confirmation establishes a status that already exists; it does not create one.

The instrument is the certificate of Vietnamese nationality. Under Article 29 of Decree 191/2025/NĐ-CP, the power to issue it belongs to the Department of Justice, or to the representative mission, of the place where the applicant resides when the file is lodged. Article 30 sets out what the file contains and the checks that follow, and provides a route for an applicant who holds no document proving nationality at all — the case of the family whose papers were lost.

Renunciation is conditional, and one condition is a tax certificate

Renunciation is the step that does end Vietnamese nationality, and Article 27 of the 2008 law, untouched in 2025, keeps two categories apart. It is not yet granted while the applicant owes tax to the State or carries a property obligation to a body, organisation or individual in Vietnam; is under criminal prosecution; is serving a judgment or decision of a Vietnamese court; is in temporary detention awaiting enforcement; or is serving one of the administrative placement measures specified in Article 27(2). It is refused where it would prejudice the national interest, and cadres, civil servants and serving members of the People’s Armed Forces may not renounce at all.

The 2025 amendments lightened the file in one place and not the other. The requirement to submit a Vietnamese criminal-record certificate was repealed. The tax-clearance certificate stayed, now issued by the tax administration body of the applicant’s place of residence rather than the provincial tax department — and a Vietnamese citizen not permanently resident in Vietnam does not have to file it.

The five-year limit on cancelling a naturalisation is gone

The instrument that widened retention tightened something else in the same breath.

Article 33 of the 2008 law allowed a naturalisation decision obtained by deliberate false declaration or forged documents to be cancelled only if it had been granted not more than five years earlier. Law 79/2025 replaces Article 33 in full, and no time limit appears in the replacement. The replacement adds a second ground: taking advantage of the naturalisation or restoration, or of the foreign nationality retained under it, to prejudice rights and lawful interests or to harm security, the national interest, order and social safety. Cancellation now reaches restoration decisions as well as naturalisation decisions, and Article 26(2a) makes it an express ground of loss.

Two limits sit on it. Cancelling one spouse’s decision leaves the other spouse’s Vietnamese nationality untouched, and a minor child’s nationality does not change when a parent’s decision is cancelled.

Where the Nationality Law stops

Two questions are not answered by any of this. Whether the second country allows its own citizens to hold another nationality is that country’s law, and Vietnamese permission to retain a foreign nationality does not override it — although consistency with that country’s law is itself one of the two conditions of the permission. And whether a person is a tax resident of Vietnam is decided by the personal income tax rules rather than by which passports they hold, a separate question with its own answer.

What the Nationality Law does settle sharply is where a dual national stands in front of Vietnamese officialdom. Article 5(4) as replaced provides that on Vietnamese territory the State recognises only Vietnamese nationality for a citizen who also holds a foreign one, in relations with competent Vietnamese bodies, unless a treaty provides otherwise. Article 5(5) then requires sole Vietnamese nationality and permanent residence in Vietnam of a narrow group named in the text: a person standing for, elected to, approved, appointed or designated to a post or title for a term in a body of the Party, the State, the Fatherland Front or socio-political organisations, a person in the cipher organisation, and a person in the armed forces. Article 5(6) requires civil servants and public employees outside that group to hold Vietnamese nationality only, states an exception for cases benefiting the State without prejudicing the national interest, and closes with a requirement of permanent residence in Vietnam. Article 5(8), also new, provides that an administrative decision of a competent Vietnamese body on nationality under this Law is not subject to complaint or lawsuit.

What is still to come

Article 2(2) of Law 79/2025 gives ministries, ministerial-level bodies and related bodies two years from 1 July 2025 to review the legal instruments carrying rights and obligations of Vietnamese citizens who also hold a foreign nationality, and to amend them within their competence or propose amendment to whoever holds it. That deadline is 1 July 2027.