Are dual citizenship passports linked?

Question

My wife is from Ukraine and fled, after the war started, to Austria for nearly 2 years until I met her. She is now here in Australia where we got married.

When she gets her Australian passport with my last name, would my wife's Australian passport show Ukraine border control that she was a nurse?

My wife would like to see her elderly parents and now with the new Ukrainian 18th May law that all medical people must return to Ukraine, she doesn't want to be trapped in Ukraine and not be allowed to return to Australia.

Answer 1

When she gets her Australian passport with my last name, would my wife's Australian passport show the Ukraine border control that she was a nurse?

The passport wouldn't show anything. Passports only contain the information you can read on them and some additional biometrics stored on the chip (portrait picture, fingerprints). There is some data exchange (Interpol notices or regional databases of visas, bans, and stolen documents) but no worldwide population registry or database of passports and obviously no global access to any country's intelligence data.

What border guards can typically do is look up information in national and international databases based on a person's name and date of birth. Some databases will also include aliases. I have no idea what those might be in Ukraine but it's reasonable to assume that your wife's first name, place of birth, and linguistic abilities will make it obvious that she might be or used to be a Ukrainian citizen.

If the border guards want to treat her as such or seek additional information on her status and profession, they will be able to do so irrespective of the passport she chooses to use. At that point, denying her (previous) citizenship or refusing to let them know about her birth name (if it's not already on the Australian passport) would be very risky. In this context, it doesn't really matter that the passports are not explicitly linked anywhere.

So the passport is a red herring, the real question is whether she can renounce her Ukrainian citizenship (if she is prepared to do that to escape the law) or how the law is actually enforced (if she chooses to remain a Ukrainian citizen). Using an Australian passport is unlikely to make a difference, legally or practically.

Answer 2

@Relaxed has already mentioned biometrics. I don't know what's the current practice in Ukraine, but assuming your wife has had a Ukrainian passport or other identity documents in the past, Ukrainian authorities may already have her fingerprints or facial images on file. Even if the raw fingerprints are not available, they may be stored in the form of a computer hash, which can confirm a match against future samples.

This is hypothetical, but if the entry point has equipment to check the biometrics of visitors, it is plausible that an alert would pop out. Remember, border guards have access to a database of Ukrainian citizens, so they can make searches. The "match" can be further confirmed by the fact that birth date, place of birth and surname are still the same in the "foreign" passport.

Some countries do not even allow dual citizenship. I understand that Ukraine doesn't, although changes to the law have been discussed recently. But they are still entitled to treat your wife as a Ukrainian citizen regardless. Even countries like the US that allow dual citizenship still require their citizens to enter and leave the country with their US passport.

To sum up:

• border control can make a reasonable assumption that your wife is, or used to be a Ukrainian citizen
• your wife potentially has something to hide
• border guards are used to asking questions
• the first question they may ask is, why don't you use your Ukrainian passport in the first place? Why are you trying to pass as a foreign national? <--- THAT looks like a risky bet in my opinion.

If they suspect anything, they can pull her out of the line, search her belongings, ask more inconvenient questions until they are satisfied about her identity and history.

Lots of men are still evading military service in Ukraine, and the authorities are actively looking for those people. Now regarding women I have done a quick search:

There is no mobilisation of women in Ukraine, but women who have a medical or pharmaceutical education and are fit for military service for health reasons and age are required to register for military service. They can be called up for military service only with their consent.

Source To be confirmed with official sources of course.

Answer 3

No, they aren't

But that doesn't mean that she doesn't have a legal liability in Ukraine. It just means that she could get away as a fugitive by using a passport not linked to her Ukrainian record, and even there, there is no guarantee that the border authorities could check for the local record through biometrics or other means. In some countries, like the US, local citizens have to enter using the local passport, even if they have a foreign passport with a valid visa or visa waiver, so she could be on even further legal trouble.

PS: If she is married to a foreign citizen, there is a good chance she is eligible to a waiver of the medical workers' law. IANAL, check with an attorney before doing dumb stuff and bear the consequences if something wrong is discovered.