DELTA: IMF, Botswana, Bullyboys, Tinkerers and Liberal Bubble-heads

One my flight back from the EU, I had the good luck to find myself seated next to a young woman from Botswana.  I learn she's a student of economics (probably) returning for her sophomore year at a very selective small women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

As my twins are just starting college life, we had a lot to chat about in the beginning, about the cost of USA tuitions and fees, financial aid, and jobs.  My wife teaches at Middlebury, and (I'll call her Mosta, a pseudonym) knew the Cameroon program my wife set up and was considering applying for next year.  Mosta described her father as a retired road construction engineer, and her mother ran a nursing program at a Botswana hospital.

Botswana Africa is considered one of the most democratic and least corrupt countries in the sub-sahara, though Mosta and I quickly agreed that it was a low bar.  She knew the term "resource curse".  Botswana is home to diamond mining (and not much else), and reliant on raw materials contracts.  She understood and agreed with my "development" theory.   Nations whose path to wealth was mainly tied to being somehow related to someone with the sharpest elbows inside a bureaucracy which controlled foreign access to those raw materials.  The curse of natural resources lies in the bullyboy culture within the governments who find themselves awash in cash from resource contracts but don't have much of a private sector in other home businesses.

How "Dual Citizenship" (or Multi-Citizenship) Works

We used to hear, 30 or 40 years ago, that the USA did not allow dual citizenship.  Or that the USA didn't used to allow it, but now it does.

Here is the deal.   Who decides who has citizenship in France?  France does.  Who decides whether someone is granted citizenship in Botswana?   Botswana.

If I'm the government of Guacamolepeonda, and I declare that all people with red hair are citizens without need of a passport or paperwork, that red haired people setting foot on our soil are citizens... the USA has nothing to say.

As explained by the US Department of State website:

U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one citizenship or another. Also, a person who is automatically granted another citizenship does not risk losing U.S. citizenship. 

If a red headed American sets foot in Guacamolepeonda, perhaps by accident, he/she is at that moment a legal citizen of Guacamolepeonda under out Guacamolepeonda constitution.  You have the right of due process in the USA to defend the revocation of your citizenship.  So you are, no matter what, a dual citizen for the amount of time the USA revokes your citizenship.