Fewer than 8,000 native Czechs opted to reacquire citizenship during a five-year period that ended last September, according to government records. The government estimates that there could be as many as 200,000 eligible émigrés living around the world.

Convoluted laws and difficulties in processing restitution claims are among the factors that explain the low number.

"If we compare the number of people who left the country between 1948 and 1989, [8,000] could seem very small," says independent Senator Jitka Seitlová, a member of the Committee for Czechs Living Abroad. "However, 8,000 people represent any small city in Bohemia or Moravia."

On Feb. 9 President Václav Klaus signed a new law that indefinitely extends the amount of time in which Czechs can reacquire citizenship in their native land. Seitlová says lawmakers proposed extending the deadline because they said they feared that some émigrés might have not yet have heard about the possibility of reacquiring their citizenship.

There are an estimated 500,000 people born in the Czech Republic currently living abroad, the highest numbers of which are found in the United States and Canada.

Some say that there are still some laws on the books that make reapplying for citizenship less desirable — primarily a 1928 treaty between Czechoslovakia and the United States that prevents dual citizenship.

The Committee for Czechs Living Abroad late last year proposed a liberalization of the multiple-citizenship law, which for the first time would have allowed native Czechs who have become U.S. citizens to also hold citizenship here. The Chamber of Deputies is expected to begin debate on the measure soon.

The Czech Republic allows dual citizenship with other countries.

Seitlová says it would be hard to estimate the number of people who would attempt to reacquire citizenship if the country allowed dual citizenship with the United States.

"There is no doubt that the number would increase though," she says.

Convoluted codes

Since the closing of borders in 1948, Czech émigrés have had a clouded view of what options they have to return here, says Jiřina Fuchsová, who is currently living in Los Angeles and is the director of the International Association of Czechs for Dual Citizenship, Restitution, and Voting Rights.

"The Czech laws have had so many twists and turns throughout the years that it would take a treatise to explain everything fully," she says.

And they have problems with the law once it is decoded, Fuchsová says.

In the wording of current law, the government "grants" citizenship rather than "returns" it.

What appears on the surface to be a simple semantic difference turns out to be a significant setback for those who seek to regain property in the Czech Republic they lost during the communist regime.

The difference means that Czechs granted citizenship now cannot apply for any restitution they may have qualified for if they had remained citizens, Fuchsová says.

And there is a loophole in the current law: For example, people who fled Czechoslovakia in 1987, but didn't get citizenship in their adopted country until 1993, would not be able to regain citizenship.

Unfulfilled expectations

Many of those who fled Czechoslovakia during communist rule expected to have their citizenship restored to them in the early 1990s, after the revolution. Instead, many legal barriers were set up to prevent an influx of émigrés, some argue because of fears that they would try to reclaim property taken from their families during the communist era.

One such law required émigrés to have all of their finances transferred into Czech banks before they could regain citizenship.

A series of mid- and late-1990s changes made it easier for Czechs to return to their native land.

But many are still unsure of their basic rights.

"Unfortunately, many Czechs today still live with the conviction that even dual citizenship is not possible," Fuchsová says. "And Czech authorities, criminally, in many Czechs' opinion, do absolutely nothing to admit to the truth."

Expatriate problems

A bill that passed the Senate almost unanimously two years ago would have given Czech expatriates the right to vote by mail, but failed to pass the Chamber of Deputies due to amendments and political haranguing.

"Therefore in this year's elections, despite all the effort of the Senate, the possibility to vote via mail is out of question," Seitlová says.

Czechs living abroad are allowed to vote in the general election this June, if they are willing to travel distances that would take pretty extreme patriotism to cover.

A Czech living in the middle of the United States, for example, has to travel at least 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) to one of three voting stations — in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.