Dear mojohojo,

Wow! How do you do that, holding both malaysian and australian passport without malaysia authority discovering it?

what passport do you use/declare when purchasing airline ticket to malaysia, leaving australia's border and entering malaysia's immigration check point?

As noted above by other posters, there are sometimes exit passport checks (by the passport people, I mean) on leaving the UK. They were abolished (around 2000, I think) but then the government had a change of heart and announced that they were to be introduced again. So far the re-introduction has been been halting and sporadic, and it may have stumbled a bit recently. Sometimes I am checked (most commonly at Heathrow, but not always even there), but often I am not. As far as I can see it is fairly random as to whether the passport desks are staffed or not.

In the past 5 years, I have had my passport checked every time when leaving through LHR, LGW and STN - at varying times of day. It simply was not possible to pass through to security and the secure area without having passport checks.

Interesting. As I say, for me it's been variable. There was no check on my last trip out of Gatwick, from the South Terminal (about three weeks ago). I was also not checked on my last trip out of Heathrow (Terminal 3), although that is where I am most commonly checked (certainly more often than not).

You are talking about checks conducted by the Home Office/UKBA for the purpose of immigration checking, not checks conducted by the security people for the purpose of identity checking?

Yes. Checks by the people who look at your passport, to see the entry stamp (if you are not a UK or EU national). They are concerned with immigration/emigration, not security.

i notice cases of passport confiscated are often a story from someone else, it's always someone's friends or someone's someones' someones' friends... i wish the real person can put some comments here.

my sister was mad, she has aussie and msia passports, she went back using aussie passport and renewed her msian IC, guess what? she did it without a problem, and this happened in mid 2010, just few months ago. this is a real story from my sister, not someone's sister.

i once talked to a malay lady who ran curry buff and shipping business for students, she said the some msia embassy officers in London do have dual nationality too, with extra passport it greatly reduces the tuition fee for their kids. i suspect our BN leaders might also have other passports too, you never know.

I'd be concerned if I were you. It sounds like British immigration is stalking you. Since exit checks were abolished however many years ago that was, I have encountered UK immigration a grand total of once and that was in T3 at LHR and I must have departed a couple of hundred times from LHR (T1, T3, T4, T5), LGW (S and N), STN, LCY and EDI to destinations outside the UK.

Why would they need to stalk me? I am a UK citizen.

They're only stalking me if they are stalking all the other people who have their passports checked as they depart on the same day at the same time!

By the way, immigration applies to entering the country, not to leaving it.

As others have stated, the abolition of exit checks was rescinded and is now applied on a sporadic basis - although in my case it has been done every time. I have even had to submit to it when flying from STN to Edinburgh, as STN does not have a separate facility for domestic (within UK) flights.

Sorry, I forgot to add the to my post.... All I was trying to say is that you seem to have met with UKBA on departure a lot more than normal.

This makes me think you are confusing UK immigration officials (who deal with both entry and exit from the UK) with someone else (maybe airport security?). You do not need a passport to travel domestically within the UK. You don't even need ID, though the LCCs insist on photo-ID as part of their conditions of carriage (as a revenue protection method). I'm guessing you were flying easyJet out of STN and if so you can use a UK driving licence which proves absolutely nothing about one's immigration status.

What normally happens at UK airports that have common departure areas (which is most of them these days I think) is that they take a photo of you at security if you are flying on a domestic flight and that photo then appears at the gate for them to ensure it is still you when you go to board.

I know that certain countries, Malaysia especially, do not acknowledge dual citizenship - even if the person is not holding, nor ever held Malaysian citizenship (i.e. someone who is a dual US/Canada citizen).

I thought I recall reading about a situation where someone entering Malaysia was found to have two passports (non Malaysian) due to dual citizenship while being inspected - and the Malaysian authorities confiscated one of the passports. Is this situation possible? Or would they only apply this law to someone attempting to hold Malaysian citizenship along with that of another country?

We need to be careful when we say that a country doesn't "acknowledge" dual citizenship, since this can have more than one meaning. A country like the USA, for instance, expressly does not attempt to prohibit its citizens holding another citizenship, but it will deal with US citizens only in that capacity (i.e. as US citizens). A country like Denmark, on the other hand, generally prohibits its citizens from holding another citizenship (there may be some exceptions) – so that, for example, a Danish citizen who naturalises as the citizen of another country automatically, by operation of Danish law, loses his or her Danish citizenship; and equally it is not generally possible to naturalise as a Danish citizen unless one gives up one's other citizenship(s).

Both these countries (and many others) are often said not to acknowledge dual citizenship, but obviously there's a huge difference in both the intent and the outcome in that lack of acknowledgement.

Malaysia does not allow its own citizens to hold another citizenship (again, there might be minor exceptions). We can't say that what you read about didn't happen, of course, but if it did I think most people would say that the Malaysian authorities were in error. A passport remains the property of the government that issues it or, sometimes, the issuing government authority. It is not open, generally, to other authorities, including other governments, to confiscate somebody's passport if it is legally held.

But sometimes people, even apparent experts, do get it wrong. On a more light-hearted note, I remember reading about someone applying for a driving licence in one of the south-western US states (it might have been Colorado, I think). In order to prove identity, applicants had to provide a certain number of documents from certain different classes. A primary document was listed as "a passport". A secondary document was listed as "a second passport of another nationality from the passport used as the primary document" – or words to that effect. Despite this being in the rules, the person behind the counter refused to countenance the second passport (legally held) as a legitimate document of identity because, she said, "It is not possible to have two passports of different nationalities." People often have very fixed erroneous ideas.

These threads seem to appear every few months. They're always interesting. My spouse and I have dual Brazil/US citizenship and use Brazil for everywhere that we do not need a visa, US where that confers a benefit. Even after SecureFlight it has been no problem. On my last trip I presented the brazilian ones by error to check in in the US and was told "we need your Brazilian ones too". Both are in the profile.

For people who consider getting US citizenship it is good to remember that you'll then be taxed on your worldwide income regardless of where you live. That is why there's a long wait for an appointment to renounce US citizenship in most US Consulates, and even then you'll be subject to US taxes for, if I recall, ten years after renunciation (I have no idea how they'd collect that. Of course once on renounces US citizenship one has a hard time getting a visa to return, so 'they' say. Anyway, think carefully before you choose to naturalize in the US.

For Danish citizens, when it comes to adults, there are currently still some exceptions living lawfully with citizenship of more than one country for the duration of their life.

For Malaysian citizens, when it comes to adults, I can't recall there currently being any living lawfully with citizenship of more than one country for the duration of their life; however, it may be worth finding out from some intimately familiar with the deals cut by some of the Sultans/Rulers of the Malay States if accession to the federation had special conditioning that opened a legal door in this regard for a highly-privileged, very small subset of Malaysian passport holders.

Your "one of the south-western US states" driving license examples is interesting but it speaks more to the ignorance of a clerk at some local government DMV than it does to official US Government policy/practice with regard to those holding, lawfully or otherwise, passports of different nationalities.

Indeed for US citizens, it's highly likely that such persons are or will be subject to US taxation policy (inclusive of tax filing and disclosure requirements) on worldwide income.

About the US going after taxes from former citizens (and LPRs) even after renunciation of the status, that can be done by means of mutual legal assistance clauses of tax treaties where tax treaties exist (and the US pushes/pushed hard to get those tax treaties in place by linking issues together) with such elements.

Oh, yes, absolutely. The point I was really trying to make, obliquely and by anecdote, was that there people, including officials, who hold an opinion about dual citizenship that is erroneous and not supported by the facts: as you say, in this case it was just a petty official (to be perhaps unkind, but fair) with nothing to do with nationality matters or passports, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that a passport official of some sort would hold, and act on, similarly ill-grounded beliefs. Hence, the Malaysian story might well be true (e.g. "we've been told that a Malaysian citizen can't hold two nationalities and therefore can't hold two passports" being extrapolated to "no one can legally hold two passport and therefore someone who apparently does is breaking the law and/or up to no good": that sort of thing.