Brazilian citizenship

History

Decree No. 6,948, of 14 May 1908, stipulated that a foreigner, regardless of gender, who married a Brazilian, or who had Brazilian children, and resided in Brazil derived Brazilian nationality unless they declared in the proper legal manner that they chose to retain their original nationality. In 1932, Decree 21,076, which established the first Electoral Code of Brazil, outlined in article 2 that the rights of citizenship were not dependent on sex, and in article 3(b) that Brazilian women could not lose their nationality as a result of marriage. In 1933, Gilberto Amado and Lucillo Antonio da Cunha Bueno, the Brazilian delegates to the Pan-American Union's Montevideo conference, signed the Inter-American Convention on the Nationality of Women, which became effective in 1934, without legal reservations. That year, a new constitution was adopted, keeping most of the provisions of naturalization specified by its 1891 predecessor. It specified that nationality could be lost by obtaining dual citizenship. From 1907 to 1934, racial exclusions were not specified in immigration law, but in the latter year, a quota system was devised to limit immigration from certain countries. Since 1995, consent is required for loss of Brazilian citizenship for dual nationals.