With the Lithuanian parliament considering a second referendum on legalising dual citizenship, Lithuanian-Americans are feeling both hopeful and resigned. Decades-long effort to solve the issue has so far led to little progress.
The town of Lemont near Chicago is a centre for the Lithuanian diaspora in the United States. It hosts the Maironis Lithuanian School, which has been operating here for over fifty years.
This year, more than five hundred children from Lithuanian-American families are studying the Lithuanian language and history on Fridays and Saturdays.
In the evenings, the school is lined up with cars with Illinois and Michigan licence plates, as Lithuanians from the surrounding area arrive to pick up their children after school.
For many Lithuanian-American families in the area, the school is the only way to preserve the Lithuanian identity and pass it on to their children. Speaking Lithuanian at home after school is not always enough.
“There are families who speak Lithuanian at home, but in most cases these children cannot read or write [Lithuanian],” says Goda Misiūnienė, the headmistress of the Maironis Lithuanian School.
Further reading
There are four Lithuanian schools in Chicago and the surrounding area, and while language, history and culture lessons are important for maintaining the link with Lithuania, they are not enough.
The dilemma of citizenship
Many first-generation Lithuanian migrants in the United States face a dilemma: if they want to become American citizens, they may lose their Lithuanian passport.
Misiūnienė says: “If you are born in Lithuania and you cannot have citizenship as a birthright, it is very painful.”
The Lithuanian constitution says that “except in the cases provided for by law, no one may be both a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania and a citizen of another state”. The Constitutional Court’s interpretation of the article is that it precludes dual citizenship as a matter of course – the exceptions include citizenship granted for special merits or children of mixed families – and the rule can only be changed via a referendum.
Another Lithuanian educational institution, the Chicago Lithuanian School, located closer to the city’s skyscraper-filled downtown, has nearly 200 Lithuanian children.
Its headmistress, Vida Rupšienė, has only a Lithuanian passport. She would like dual citizenship, but not for herself. “Now my children are adults here, they have been living here for over 19 years, and grandchildren are on the way, and Lithuania would have lost almost 10 people from my family, which is a great loss for my culture, for my country,” says Rupšienė.
Goda, on the other hand, holds both Lithuanian and US passports. She echoes Vida’s point that the bridge to return is also at stake: “If we didn’t have dual citizenship in my family, my daughter probably wouldn’t have gone back to Lithuania. But she did.”
Whether they will be able to return is what dual citizenship comes down to, say Lithuanians interviewed in the Chicago area.
Impossible to return home
This is what Laima Howe, who lives in Washington DC, experienced first-hand. She has spent several decades in the United States, but still does not feel at home here. She wants to return.
“This is an age when you need to be at home. And home is Lithuania,” says Laima.
She became a US citizen in 2001 – and automatically lost her Lithuanian passport.
“We didn’t think much back then” she says about the implications of becoming naturalised in the US, “we were still young”.
“I never got rid of the feeling that I was doing the wrong thing,” Laima adds. “It was always in my heart that I was living here because I needed to”, while home was Lithuania.
Returning to Lithuania is not easy for her now – she needs a visa to visit, although part of Laima’s family still lives there and she owns an apartment in Klaipėda. She gets a tourist visa when she goes to Lithuania.
“We can’t live in Lithuania,” she sums up, although she would like to.
Goda Misiūnienė, headmistress of the Maironis Lithuanian School, makes a similar point. She says that her daughter would not have returned to Lithuania if it were not for her dual citizenship: “If she did not have that passport, would she go with that American passport and try to apply for a residence permit every six months? I don’t think so.”
Laima Howe is not willing to give up her American passport – part of her life is based here, as is part of her family.
She also draws pension from both countries. “The Lithuanian part is 300 euros and the American one is 418,” she says.
Pain and resignation
The decades-long debate about dual citizenship has been “painful” for Lithuanians in Chicago.
“It is very disappointing to hear the attitudes of some of the people over here and in Lithuania: they say, you left and now you need something?” says Rupšienė, the headmistress of the Lithuanian school in Chicago.
Others have already thrown their hands up after the last referendum to change the constitution. It was held in 2019 and while most voters supported dual citizenship, the turnout was too low to make the results valid. Now, Lithuanian-Americans are sceptical whether the second attempt would be any better.
“They say: what’s the point, it won’t change anything. We won’t go, we won’t vote. That’s what scares me,” says Misiūnienė.
Sixty MPs have proposed holding a second referendum on dual citizenship in May 2024, alongside a presidential election.
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