Back in 2010, right around the time Avni was born, I started researching the options for her as she will be born in USA and the parents were Indian citizens. People had all different solutions, some were crazy as suggesting that she can pick her citizenship when she is 18 years and others that she can get Indian citizenship if registered right at birth.
Turned out all were wrong, since she would be born on US soil, by default she would be citizen of USA and also India does not support dual citizenship. In the end she could become either a PIO (person of Indian origin) or an OCI (overseas citizen of India).
We the parents were Indian citizens and not foreign passport holders, she could only apply to be PIO. Even further, for some reasons un known, being PIO had way more restrictions than being an OCI, few from top of my head are, it had to be renewed every 15 years and if the person had to stay for more than 180 days in India then they had to register with nearest police station. The only saving grace was that PIO was 1 step and OCI was a 2 step and longer process.
It always pinched me that the fact that we are citizens of India and my daughter had to be PIO but if we gave up our Indian citizenship then my daughter can be an OCI. To say in another way, government of India government rewarded non-Indian citizens better than Indian citizens. I was so annoyed with this that the last 3 times I took my daughter to India, I went with a visa for her.
Thanks to Modi and the new Indian government there is no more of PIO, only OCI and all PIO’s are being converted to OCI’s.
Great going, I am happy with this. I believe it is time to make Avni an OCI.
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