Babies and American citizenship

[Greg Charles]

If a baby is born to a non-American woman travelling in the U.S. on a legal tourist's visa, does that baby automatically become a U.S. citizen? A friend of mine thinks so, but I thought this might have been true once, but now has been changed. Also, assuming the woman and her baby return to her home country, does the child's U.S. citizenship stay with him/her throughout his/her life, or are there prerequisites to maintaining it?

[Antonius Block]

Your friend is correct.

From the website of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services: (http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/citizen.htm):The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship at birth to almost all individuals born in the United States or in U.S. jurisdictions, according to the principle of jus soli. Certain individuals born in the United States, such as children of foreign heads of state or children of foreign diplomats, do not obtain U.S. citizenship under jus soli.

Since the OP says that the woman is on "a tourist visa", it is unlikely that she is one of the exceptions (i.e. foreign diplomat or head of state).

Not only is the child automatically a US citizen, but if he/she fulfills the residency requirements later in life he/she (being a "natural-born citizen") is eligible to run for US President!

[ruadh]

Keep in mind, though, that tourist visas are typically granted for 90-day-or-less stays only. Which means that a woman legally in the US on a tourist visa would probably have been obviously pregnant upon entry. Immigration officials would be entitled to use their judgement and deny her entry for that reason.

Also, even if she did get away with it, she would still be subject to deportation once her visa expired. Having a child born in the States does not confer automatic right of residency.

[China Guy]

Child is an American citizen and will be entitled to that status unless revoking citizenship in an accepted fashion. There are no prerequisites to maintaining citizenship. However, proof such as a birth certificate or passport may be required.

[irae]

Are you sure about that, ruadh? Not to be argumentative, but about every third pregnant woman I knew while living in Taiwan was planning on delivering in LA, and there are even Taiwanese maternity hospitals there where they stay beforehand and for the requisite month-long lay in afterward. If immigration were regularly turning away the obviously pregnant, I doubt the industry would be doing as well as it apparently is.

Slightly OT question: The Sprout of Irae was born overseas, and we went to the American Institute to register her birth and get her a passport. Is she precluded from the presidency (not that she'd likely be interested. A step down, as it were, from her current position as Vertically Challenged Extremely Bossy Tiny Little Majesty)? I'm a US citizen, but her mother isn't.

[scout1222]

I hate to do this, so I'll keep it short:

Good to see you, Greg!

Pop on over to MPSIMS and tell us what it's like in Vietnam!

[Telemark]

This is from what I've gathered here on the message board, I don't have an authoritative cite, but here goes.

Sprout of Irae is a natural born US citizen, meaning she was a citizen at birth and never needed to become naturalized. The fact that she was born overseas shouldn't enter into it because she was born of at least one US citizen who has lived in the US. (A little vague on that last part, it was mentioned in some of the other threads that if there was only one US citizen parent they needed to reside at some point in the US)

So, since the sprout was a citizen at birth, she is all set to become President. When Sen McCain was running for President this came up. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone but as he was a citizen by birth, he is eligable.

http://www.richw.org/dualcit/faq.html#borndual

[Antonius Block]

Originally posted by irae
Slightly OT question: The Sprout of Irae was born overseas, and we went to the American Institute to register her birth and get her a passport. Is she precluded from the presidency (not that she'd likely be interested. A step down, as it were, from her current position as Vertically Challenged Extremely Bossy Tiny Little Majesty)? I'm a US citizen, but her mother isn't.
This subject has come up a fair amount recently on the SDMB (search for "natural-born citizen"). If you, irae, have lived in the US for five years or more, then the Sprout is eligible to take those megalomaniac qualities to the World's Biggest Playpen.

From USConstitution.net (http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_citi.html):Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in those gaps. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are "citizens of the United States at birth:"
<snip>
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time).

[Greg Charles]

Well, U.S. tourist visas are very strange. They are granted a certain term of validity, say one year. What that means, is the tourist can enter the U.S. anytime within that one year. How long he or she can actually stay is determined at the port of entry (e.g. the airport), and is independent of the original term of validity of the visa. Sometimes that's 90 days, but often it is five to six months. It can even extend beyond the limit of the visa, since that limit only applies to entry. While in the U.S., the tourist can apply for an extension to the time of stay. He or she can legally remain in the U.S. until that application is accepted or rejected and since the application takes approximately six months to process, applying is essentially equivalent to being accepted. I think it would be easy to enter the U.S. before being obviously pregnant, and remain there until giving birth ... assuming you could get the visa in the first place that is.

[disponibilite]

My youngest brother was born in Tokyo, Japan ---of American parents.

We always assumed that, although an American citizen, he could never be President.---because the Constitution requires a native born citizen.

Were we in error? Not that my brother has plans to become President---but I would like to be the first to tell him he could be.

[friedo]

Yes, you were mistaken, disponibilite. The Constitutional requirement is "natural-born," which just means a citizen at birth, as opposed to a naturalized one. A baby born to American parents, (and in certain cases, only one American parent) in another country is a natural-born citizen.

[irae]

Many thanks for the dope! I hope that when Sprout of Irae becomes President for Life and Most Exalted Excellency she does us all proud.

[NoCoolUserName]

I just hope that Sprout and my daughter Scarlett--the One and Only Princess, Queen of Everything--are never in the same room. Mayhem would probably be the best of what could happen.

Note that some countries--China, for instance--do not allow dual citizenship. To become a citizen of China you must renounce your Americanism...or vice versa (Scarlett's case).

[ruadh]

Originally posted by irae
Are you sure about that, ruadh? Not to be argumentative, but about every third pregnant woman I knew while living in Taiwan was planning on delivering in LA, and there are even Taiwanese maternity hospitals there where they stay beforehand and for the requisite month-long lay in afterward. If immigration were regularly turning away the obviously pregnant, I doubt the industry would be doing as well as it apparently is.

I'm not trying to be argumentative either, but that has "urban myth" written all over it.

[Broomstick]

Why would immigration turn away an "obviously pregnant" women entering the country legally? (Illegally is quite another matter)

The US doesn't really care if a legal tourist or foreign national gives birth here or not. It's not like we're particularly stingy about handing out citizenships.

For that matter, even the illegally here pregnant women are still given medical care if they're in labor, and their children are still citizens. Now, afterwards mama might be deported, but the kid remains a US citizen.

[ruadh]

Broomstick, children born in the U.S. are given U.S. citizenship because it's a constitutional requirement. This requirement arose out of the treatment of blacks in the slavery era and was never intended to facilitate tourists from all over the world who just wanted to have a U.S. citizen child - that was an unintended consequence which U.S. immigration officials would gladly eliminate if they could.

[ruadh]

I'm having trouble finding a cite because Googling turns up pages and pages of irrelevant material, but here (http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200309/20/200309200222462009900090409041.html) is something worth reading. I can't speak for the accuracy of the source but it does seem to confirm the existence of Asian maternity clinics catering to these tourists, as irae stated. However, it also seems to confirm that U.S. immigration is not prepared to turn a blind eye to the practice.

[quicken78]

My parents are both English. My father was doing an MBA in Boston they discovered that my mother was pregnant. They extended their stay for two months just so that I could get a US passport. I was on US soil for approximately two weeks and didn't return for 21 years.

I have a US passport and am considered a US citizen. I also have to pay US taxes even though I don't live there. It sucks.

[irae]

quicken, if you're making less than ~US$70,000 per year, and paying taxes in the country in which you reside, you still have to file a US income tax return but likely won't owe any taxes.

[Greg Charles]

Actually, it's now something like $84,000 per year that's not taxable, but that's just for salary. Any other income abroad is, I believe, still taxable. Still, there are tax treaties between the U.S. and the U.K. that probably apply to all types of income. You'd think quicken would have easy access to an expert though. Don't they teach tax accounting at business school?

[China Guy]

Originally posted by NoCoolUserName
Note that some countries--China, for instance--do not allow dual citizenship. To become a citizen of China you must renounce your Americanism...or vice versa (Scarlett's case). More accurately, China does not recognize dual citizenship. Not quite the same thing. My daughter is a dual citizen of both China (by birth) and the US (one parent being US citizen).

There is a proportion of Taiwanese that go to the US to give birth, and there are private hospitals in the LA area that cater to this crowd. I personally know of several cases. That said, 1/3 of all pregnant Taiwanese is just a slight exaggeration:rolleyes:

[KarlGauss]

If a child is born in the USA and then, within days of its birth, is adopted by foreign parents and taken to their country, is the adopted child a US citizen? Can the child one day sponsor its adoptive parents to live in the US?

Thanks

[China Guy]

Prerequisite is being born in the US. That child may have to prove being born in the US such as a birth certificate. The conditions are either born in the US (regardless of parental nationality or legality of residence in the US), or born of at least one US citizen parent and registered as such (for example, certificate of foreign birth issued by a US embassy or consulate).

[NoCoolUserName]

So, China Guy, Scarlett and Jett, my daughters, have Chinese birth certificates and passports. Are you saying that they are Chinese citizens--as well as US--but the government doesn't recognize it? How can one be an unrecognized citizen?

In any case I'll have those birth certificates and passports locked away in case the Chinese government changes its collective mind some day!

[istara]

Many countries do not recognise dual citizenship, but that does not mean it is not possible to hold it.

The difficulty would be getting citizenship of a country that did not recognise dual, as you would probably have to renounce your former citizenship to get the new one. HOWEVER, if you were American-born, what is to stop you getting that citizenship again? It is your birthright after all. (Or does renouncing it once permanently negate your right to ever hold it again?)

The easy thing is to get citizenship of a country that does recognise dual nationality, even if the country of your original citizenship does not. They won't necessarily find out about it.

It is also very easy - even as I understand it "tolerated" in this part of the world, to "lose" a passport, get a new one, and keep the old one. Businesspeople travelling to many countries in the Middle East including Israel often need two passports.

[China Guy]

Originally posted by NoCoolUserName
So, China Guy, Scarlett and Jett, my daughters, have Chinese birth certificates and passports. Are you saying that they are Chinese citizens--as well as US--but the government doesn't recognize it? How can one be an unrecognized citizen?

In any case I'll have those birth certificates and passports locked away in case the Chinese government changes its collective mind some day! Depends. I haven't gone through foreign adoption so there may be some things I don't understand. That said, how did they leave China? did you go to the US consulate and get an American visa placed in their Chinese visa and leave on their Chinese passport?

If that is the case, then the last official immigration bureau record of the Chinese government is that your daughters left China on a PRC passport. Then in the eyes of the Chinese government, they are Chinese citizens.

If you go to the Chinese embassy in the US and say they are now US citizens, the Chinese embassy will try to impound the Chinese passports (remember passports belong to governments and not individuals). If you come back for a visit to China, do not go to the Chinese embassy and say you've got two passports. :o

If your daughters have since become naturalized US citizens, then they have US citizenship. If you haven't informed the Chinese government, then the Chinese government doesn't know this.

Now to get complicated, if you come to China using the Chinese passport, they will be considered Chinese. To leave China, they will require an official visa. To leave China for the US, they will require a US visa. The US can not grant them an official visa because they are already US citizens. Catch-22.

The consular officials can issue a "pro-forma" visa, which is essentially a fake visa issued by the US government to facilitate leaving China and can not be used for entry into the US. In other words, your daughters can not get a visa to enter the US on their Chinese passport.

If for some reason your daughters are in China on a Chinese passport and require the intervention of US Consular officials, then the US is powerless to intervene. There have been cases of traffic accidents and the kids needed an emergency airlift and could not leave China because they did not have a valid visa in their Chinese passport and couldn't leave on their US passport because they didn't enter on a US passport. (trust me, I've heard this lecture about 10 times now from the consulate.)

If your daughters enter China on their US passport with a valid Chinese travel visa, then they are considered US citizens and the US consulate could in fact intervene.

To be 99.99% sure of being treated as an American citizen in China, you should officially renounce the Chinese citizenship at a Chinese embassy or the entry/exit bureau in China.

There have been numerous cases of Chinese born businessmen gaining foreign passports and entering China with their Chinese passport. Then getting into sometimes dubious business disputes and going to jail. The foreign countries have not been able to offiically intervene. James Peng of Australia was a famous case about 10 years ago.

So, to answer your question, unless officially informed otherwise, the Chinese government considers your daughters Chinese if they travel in China on their Chinese passports and do not know about their US citizenship.

The US for example tolerates dual citizenship. I've started a pit thread or two about my adventures with that toleration...

[Tapioca Dextrin]

The 14th amendment is still in force, of course, but there are some politicians (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d107:190:./list/bss/d107HR.lst:@@@P|TOM:/bss/d107query.html|) who don't like it. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (http://www.fairus.org/ImmigrationIssueCenters/ImmigrationIssueCenters.cfm?ID=1190&c=13) want to see it changed - the proposed bill seems to have sunk without trace though.

[flodnak]

Originally posted by istara
The difficulty would be getting citizenship of a country that did not recognise dual, as you would probably have to renounce your former citizenship to get the new one. HOWEVER, if you were American-born, what is to stop you getting that citizenship again? It is your birthright after all. (Or does renouncing it once permanently negate your right to ever hold it again?) Here's where it gets weird... current legal practice in the US holds that merely taking an oath of citizenship in another country, even if that oath includes renouncing previously held citizenships, does not result in American citizenship being revoked! So you don't have to get your US citizenship back... you never lost it.

For more than you ever wanted to know about the US and dual citizenship, but which some of us need to try to comprehend, see Rich Wales' excellent Dual Citizenship FAQ (http://www.richw.org/dualcit/).