Dual citizen, traveling between citizenship countries, airlines and APIS?

Upvote:3

I don't think you will be allowed to board a flight to the US with your Spanish passport on file and without ESTA or visa: the info will be sent to CBP and they will return "DON'T BOARD". The airline will have to update your API info before boarding with your US passport for you to be cleared to board. They can't just see your US passport and let you board (as would happen for other countries which don't use API-like procedures or countries which only receive it as information rather than to trigger a board/don't board response).

In EU countries where you are protected by GDPR, you should be able to get the information from the airline on how they will handle your data and who they will share it with. However I fear it might be a somewhat vague "authorities which require it" which doesn't state whether it's the origin or destination country or both. In many cases (especially countries without exit checks such as the UK or the US), they will share it with the departing country (though I'm unsure as to what exact data they share).

If you really want to be sure they don't find out, your only option is to travel via a third country.

Note that there are a lot of exceptions which allow dual citizenship for Spanish citizens (depending on how you got each citizenship). You might be worrying unnecessarily. And even if in your case it's actually not allowed, it might be interesting to check what the penalties could be and especially if it's actually enforced. Many countries which in theory don't accept dual citizenship don't actually enforce it.

More post

Search Posts

Related post