Thursday, September 11, 2008

My First Post

This is my first post on my blog. I saw that a few friends have blogs, so I decided to follow with the same.

Three Citzenships

I am currently the citizen of three countries, and I possess three valid passports.

I became a Romanian citizen by birth and obtained a passport in 2005. As of '07, Romania officially joined the European Union, and as a citizen of the EU, I may live and work freely in any EU nation. This makes for a nice advantage if I wish to do so in the future, or just for ease of visa-free travel. The Romanian passport is also useful for travel to Middle Eastern/Arab countries that may be hostile or non-admitting toward an Israel or US passport.

I became an Israeli citizen by the "Law of Return" in effect in Israel and establishing residency, and obtained a passport around 1994. As a citizen of Israel, I must enter the country with the Israeli passport. Today, I signed up for the Birthright free trip to Israel, and hopefully I will get to go with a few of my fraternity brothers as well. I have recently renewed this one.

Finally, I have recently become a US citizen as well, by the long process of naturalization (just over 10 years), and obtained my passport soon after. It looks pretty cool with the RFID chip and all.

I will leave you with this: I am registered to vote, and I will be voting in all three countries' general elections.