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Updated: January 9th, 2024
Written by: Daniel Atz with Lauren Lowell
This American-Luxembourgers study is based on research LuxCitizenship started in 2018. It gives a bird’s eye view of the Americans reclaiming Luxembourg nationality (citizenship). We call them the American-Luxembourgers.
Note: This study dates from 2021. To view the latest version, please visit our Case Studies page.
The Luxembourg Nationality Act of October 23rd, 2008 introduced the possibility of dual (or multiple) nationality in Luxembourg.
Consequently, this new law offered a path to reclaim Luxembourg nationality for people with a direct lineage ancestor from Luxembourg alive on January 1, 1900. On December 31, 2018, that specific eligibility came to an end, although other paths to Luxembourgish nationality through ancestry remain.
From 2008-2019, over 2,090 United States citizens recovered Luxembourg nationality through their ancestry under Articles 29/89 of the Luxembourgish Nationality Act.
Moreover, this figure is a big understatement of the number of applicants who have started, but not fully completed, the recovery process or have applied under other parts of the law.
The Article 29/89 nationality recovery process requires a personal trip to Luxembourg. These individuals have until December 31, 2021 to travel to Luxembourg.
According to the 1940 US census, over 100,000 “Luxembourgish-Americans” lived in the United States. Using demographic math, this means that as many as 2,950,000 Americans might have qualified to reclaim Luxembourg nationality.
First of all, a very large number of people only submitted their applications in the last months of 2018. Exactly how many is still not published. What we do know is that the number of completed citizenship cases has grown by an average of 77% per year between 2013-2019.
Furthermore, 2,090 new American-Luxembourgers is already equivalent to a 0.7% of the total number of Luxembourgish citizens living in Luxembourg (313,705)*. Consequently, if we multiply the total completed applications from January-December 2019 by 77%, we can expect at least 1,195 more Americans to complete their citizenship declaration in Luxembourg. Above all, this equals 3,285 people or 1% of the population of citizens in Luxembourg.
For 100 Luxembourg Ancestor Certificate Applications Studied, the average processing time by the Luxembourg Government was 323 days. We can assume the processing time trends are equivalent to the volume of applications received in Luxembourg. For December 2018 applicants, many have not received a response after 425 Days. So we see a drastic increase in December 2018.
As the total number of these new American-Luxembourgers is expected to be equivalent to a 1% net citizen population change in Luxembourg, it’s time to start understanding who these people are.
The following research is a one of a kind study on who these American-Luxembourgers are.
Qualifying Luxembourg ancestors needed to be alive on January 1, 1900. Most importantly, they either needed to be living in or born on the territory of Luxembourg.
241 / 46
For the 241 applicants studied as part of this research, there were 46 Luxembourg ancestors.
As we can see, most Luxembourg Ancestors who immigrated to the USA were born in the 1860s and 1870s. Furthermore, most of these immigrants were male.
Most ancestors who immigrated to the USA headed for the Midwest. Although the Midwest was still the “frontier”, most of them actually lived long lives.
Hover over the map to see where the ancestors of today’s American-Luxembourgers passed away in the United States.
Most of the applicants were born in the Northern Midwest. That said, applicants were also born all over the USA. However, these applicants were often born in generations further removed from their Luxembourg ancestor. Applicants are generally in their 30s-50s and seeking to apply for multiple generations in their family. It’s also important to note that more of these applicants were female than male.
A lot of the applicants are three to four generations removed from their Luxembourg ancestor. The applicants still live predominately in the Northern Midwest – especially Minnesota. In addition, you can find concentrations in Washington, California, Texas, and Florida.
As part of our research, we studied our applicants’ mobility. How much had these individuals moved around during their lifetime? While the majority were born in the same state where their ancestor passed away, most do not live in that state today. Above all, this is a rather mobile population.
The vast majority of the applicants have a Bachelor’s Degree and studied Business-related and Engineering/Science majors in school. Hence, the industries they work in are more varied.
It seems like the applicants might have many different jobs and titles. But, some words were repeated a lot. These include manager, president, engineer, and student.
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