Do you forfeit pension earned before you were Japanese?
I saw a post on another site a few weeks ago that implied that you lose either your Japanese national retirement pension (年金) (that you earned as a non-Japanese) or your Social Security (that you earned when you were an American citizen before you relinquish your citizenship for naturalization) because when you naturalize, it's as if the "old you" is destroyed and a "new you" with a new nationality is legally created.
This is 100% false.
In the eyes of both of these programs, since both allow either non-citizens or citizens to participate, your citizenship is irrelevant to whether you can participate in them or not. To them, when you naturalize, the only thing you need to do is inform them of any legal name change. The same thing is done when a person marries and changes their name, or changes their legal name for other reasons.
I can personally confirm that I still have access to both my Japanese pension (earned prior to naturalizing) and my U.S. social security, which sends me updates. It's not much, since I haven't contributed to it in years due to me working in Japan for Japanese companies with Japanese yen for many years, but it's available. I even properly registered my legal name change in the States and had this reflected on my Social Security Card. My social security number did not change when I changed either nationality or my name.
Now, there are some types of pensions you may indeed forfeit due to naturalizing or renouncing your citizenship: U.S. military pensions are an example of this — due to their unique nature of being associated with an oath to a country. So if you're concerned about a pension other than U.S. Social Security or Japanese National Pension, you should check with the appropriate bureaus.
Otherwise, don't worry about it.
This is 100% false.
In the eyes of both of these programs, since both allow either non-citizens or citizens to participate, your citizenship is irrelevant to whether you can participate in them or not. To them, when you naturalize, the only thing you need to do is inform them of any legal name change. The same thing is done when a person marries and changes their name, or changes their legal name for other reasons.
I can personally confirm that I still have access to both my Japanese pension (earned prior to naturalizing) and my U.S. social security, which sends me updates. It's not much, since I haven't contributed to it in years due to me working in Japan for Japanese companies with Japanese yen for many years, but it's available. I even properly registered my legal name change in the States and had this reflected on my Social Security Card. My social security number did not change when I changed either nationality or my name.
Now, there are some types of pensions you may indeed forfeit due to naturalizing or renouncing your citizenship: U.S. military pensions are an example of this — due to their unique nature of being associated with an oath to a country. So if you're concerned about a pension other than U.S. Social Security or Japanese National Pension, you should check with the appropriate bureaus.
Otherwise, don't worry about it.
