Argentina dual citizenship: which passport you travel on and the 180-day limit

Argentina lets you keep your first passport and offers no way to hand back its own. At the border, where you live decides which passport works, and 180 days can be the limit.

In detail

Argentina allows dual citizenship. You can swear the oath, collect an Argentine passport and keep the one you arrived with, because Law 346, the citizenship statute that dates from 1869, never asks you to give anything up. The surprises come later, at the border, where a foreign passport does not automatically make you a foreigner. Live in Argentina and you need Argentine documents to leave. Live abroad on a passport from a country with no dual nationality treaty and you can come in on it alone, then leave on it, as long as you stay no more than 180 days in a row.

Two more facts should shape the decision before you file. Argentine citizenship cannot be given up once you hold it, and your first country applies its own law whatever Argentina says.

The oath asks for respect, not renunciation

Law 346 has no article announcing dual citizenship. Neither the law nor its implementing decree, Decree 3213/84, contains a word about renouncing a former nationality.

On the court route, once a federal judge grants citizenship, you swear before that judge. The decree offers three wordings: by God and the Holy Gospels, by God alone, or by the homeland and your honor. All three ask for the same thing, to respect faithfully the Constitution and the institutions of the Republic. Your old passport is not in the script.

Which authority hears your case is a separate fight over Decree 366/2025, covered on our page about Argentine citizenship through the courts. Neither side of that fight asks for your first passport.

Which passport works depends on where you live

Border officers work from Disposition 2742/2009 of the National Directorate of Migration. It was written for Argentines who took a second nationality abroad, and it starts from a principle that covers naturalized citizens too: Argentines travel abroad on an Argentine passport unless a treaty says otherwise. It then draws two lines: where you live, and whether your other passport comes from a country with a dual nationality treaty.

The official list of treaty countries includes Spain, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Italy, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama and Sweden. The United States counts only for people naturalized there up to October 20, 1981. A manager can check your passport against the list.

If you naturalize in Argentina, no row is written for you, so plan on the strictest one: every exit on an Argentine travel document. Make the DNI and the passport your first errand once citizenship comes through.

The trap sits in the first row. That "ARGENTINO" stamp does not clear the foreign passport for the way out: you still need a valid Argentine travel document, and the rule requires the officer to tell you so on arrival.

Live abroad and the picture flips. With no treaty behind your other passport, a three-week family visit can start and end on it. A seven-month stay cannot: past 180 consecutive days you leave on Argentine documents, so keep them valid even if you rarely use them. At the entry desk, if the foreign passport does not show that you are Argentine and you say you are, you prove it with your DNI.

A child born in Argentina is a citizen from the first day, the children of foreign diplomats aside. The 180-day allowance is written for someone who came in on a foreign passport, and a newborn never did. Minors also have exit rules of their own, which this table does not change. Our guide to giving birth in Argentina walks through the birth certificate, the DNI and the passport.

The citizenship you cannot hand back

Argentine citizenship cannot be renounced. Argentine consular guidance bases that on article 75(12) of the Constitution, article 16 of Decree 3213/84 and Supreme Court case law, and the rule even has its own paperwork. Austria asks new citizens to give up their previous nationality, but only where the law of that nationality allows it, so the Argentine consulate in Vienna issues a certificate stating that Argentine nationality cannot be given up.

The National Electoral Chamber confirmed this in 2009: a native-born Argentine can never stop being one, and a naturalized citizen who renounces gives up only the exercise of political rights. A federal judge in La Plata did grant a naturalized citizen's request in 2019, but for a prisoner under an expulsion order, so no ordinary applicant should count on it.

That makes the oath a one-way step, and it sets the order of your checks. If your first country treats naturalization abroad as the end of your citizenship, you cannot repair that afterwards by handing back the Argentine passport.

A later passport does not end your Argentine status either. Article 8 of Law 346 bars people naturalized in another country from exercising political rights in Argentina, and article 16 of the decree adds that this takes away no rights and lifts no obligations of nationality, native or acquired. You can lose the ballot, not the status.

Your first country holds the other half of the answer

Argentina can only speak for Argentina. Whether you keep your first passport is decided by the country that issued it, and some countries want to be told about a second citizenship. The British government tells its citizens that Argentina recognizes dual citizenship and that they need not renounce, and it still expects them to carry a valid British passport or a certificate of entitlement when they travel to the UK. The US warns dual citizens that the rules depend on when they became American, that Argentina can hold them to the rules for its own citizens and that American protection abroad has limits in some cases.

Our dual citizenship check compares two countries under the law, and our guide to the countries that allow dual citizenship gives the wider picture.

Spain has a treaty of its own

Spain and Argentina put this in writing on April 14, 1969, and the treaty has been in force since March 23, 1971. It covers Spaniards and Argentines by origin, and it is opt-in: those who do not invoke it stay under each country's ordinary rules. Those who do can take the other nationality and keep the first, which goes dormant. Its rights are suspended, and the law of the new country governs their rights and duties, diplomatic protection and passports included.

You register in the records the new country designates, and that entry makes you a national. The other state is notified within 60 days, and political rights at home are suspended from that notice. Move your home back and the first nationality wakes up in full, as long as you declare the move and prove the new home.

A protocol signed on March 6, 2001 softened the original text: people under the treaty can obtain and renew passports and identity documents in either country, or in both at once, and the first country's law still applies wherever it does not clash with the new country's.

"By origin" is the limit. An Argentine by naturalization who later wants Spanish nationality sits outside this treaty, and Spain treats them differently on timing, as our guide to MERCOSUR rights and Spanish citizenship explains.

How Murblz handles a two-passport plan

You can try to manage this on your own: read two countries' laws and take a citizenship case through Argentine institutions. It is safer with professionals, because the mistakes land on a status you cannot undo. Our process is clear and transparent: we begin with the law of your first country, then build the residence, citizenship and travel plans on that answer. Court representation is handled by Murblz specialists together with partners licensed in Argentina. The cost is available on request from a manager.

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