I was reading an article in Time magazine on the USA constitution where it mentioned that a child born in a European country does not automatically become a citizen of that country, The article then goes on to state that a child born to American citizens in Paris would not become an American citizen until paperwork has been filed with the State Department which could take months or years. It seems to me then that if the paperwork was never completed the child would be stateless. I doubt this a correct assumption but what would happen regarding the citizenship of the child in such a case?
Me, my brother and sister were all born in Japan to American parents
in 1949, 1955, and 1957 respectively. Our US citizenship has never been
an issue, to the extent that Social Security didn’t even ask to see my
birth certificate when I signed up for benefits last month. US passports
never involved any extra work for us either.
Hopefully no legislators, judges or bureaucrats have screwed things up,
but with so many of those birds who love rules and change no good reason
who knows what a modern child might face under the same circumstances
faced by my family.
A child born of American parents abroad is a United States citizen at birth. The paperwork with the embassy is necessary for acquiring a passport and useful as proof of citizenship, but it is not necessary to become a citizen. That’s automatic.
Registering a foreign birth with the American embassy is a pretty straightforward procedure, according to a couple people I know who have done it.
While I have heard before that the child is automatically an American citizen the article in Time says “a child born to an American mother and father working for IBM in Paris, France must apply for certificate of citizenship and file months or years of paperwork with the State Department to show evidence that the child qualifies for American citizenship”. So it seems to me although the child is an American citizen according to the article it may take a while for the paperwork, then again friedo mentions that it may not be so difficult.
That line stopped me too when I read the article.
What I think they’re saying is that anyone in Paris can claim that their child is an American citizen. Not surprisingly, especially these days, the State Department now requires all possible proof and paperwork on the issue. That doesn’t mean that the child isn’t automatically an American citizen, just that the State Department is undoubtedly woefully underfunded and backed up in its processing.
Citizenship by birth, once filed, is retroactive to birth. In other words, the kid may not have citizenship for a while, but by the time the State Department registers it, history will be rewritten and little Jean-Claude will have been a citizen all along.
I believe I’d say it differfently – the child is a citizen from birth, but the paperwork is necessary to prove it if it is challenged. It might be a trifle metaphysical to pursue the difference, but for example, what if the parents are killed in a terrorist attack before registering the child? That the child already is automatically a citizen may make all the difference to what the grieving grandparents must go through to bring him/her back home.
Having a US citizen parent does not automatically make you a US citizen if you are not born in the United States or its outlying territories. There are certain residency requirements for the parents that must first be fulfilled. This is to prevent forming colonies of US citizens abroad whose ancestors had not been in the United States for generations (for example, this avoids making most residents of Liberia US citizens despite the fact that they may have descended from US citizens).
In the simple case where the parents are married and both US citizens, the residency requirement is that at least one of the parents had to be a resident of the United States or its outlying territories at some time prior to the child’s birth. The further you move from that simple case, the more restrictive the residency requirements become.
Polycarp: I must say I like your version better. I lifted the phrase “retroactive to birth” from some of my Canadian citizenship paperwork. In my case, my parents assumed that claiming Canadian citizenship would have affected my American citizenship (not true), plus the Canadian half of the set was in the US illegally, so they didn’t register me. I registered myself as an adult, and voilà, it turns out I was a citizen all along regardless of their actions or lack thereof.
The same would be true of these hypothetical stateless French kids unless they’re part of the exceptions Alley Dweller mentions. This wikipedia article says that French citizenship is acquired at birth if the child is otherwise stateless, so if its American parents can’t pass on their citizenship for whatever reason, it’s French.
One of the UN conventions guarantees children a right to citizenship. Every country in the world has signed on with a few rare exceptions of countries that didn’t have governments. The US is the only country that has failed to ratify it.
Basically if a child is born or simply found stateless, in a country, that country will take all necessary steps to ensure that the child obtains citizenship, though it does not have to be citizenship in the fostering country.
So if a child was born to an American couple, who was subsequently killed, France is obligated to pick up the case and make sure that the child’s necessary paperwork goes through and the child is recognized with their rightful citizenship.
This makes a lot of practical sense. If citizenship just descended by blood without requiring continuing contact, I would be eligible for, in addition to US citizenship, citizenship in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Bahamas, and possibly Canada or France.
I think this is pretty much right. If the conditions for citizenship are met, then the child is a citizen regardless of whether or not the child or the parents are able to locate the correct documents. If I were to lose my birth certificate, passport, and social security card, I don’t thereby lose by US citizenship. Children are born here with citizenship from birth, and their birth certificate is just evidence of that citizenship.
My understanding of the situation (as a foreign-born US citizen) is closer to Polycarp’s. A child born abroad without a “Certificate of Citizenship” (formerly a “Report of Birth Abroad”) is in the same situation as a child born in the States whose birth certificate is lost — they’re still a citizen, they just don’t have the document to prove it. (Stipulating, of course, that it’s more difficult for the child born abroad to obtain their respective document of citizenship.)
I was born in France, to parents who were both American citizens, my father by birth and my mother by naturalization. As I was told the story, my father had to travel to Paris to file a Consular’s Report of Birth to Americans Living Abroad. I also have a French birth certificate, a birth certificate issued by the US Air Force hospital in which I was born, and a short form birth certificate issued by Passport Services. Recently, my son, who is in the US Air Force, was requested to supply copies of my proof of citizenship papers ( the aforementioned consular’s report) as a part of his security clearance renewal. I was a bit offended by the implication that I might be less of an American for being born in a US Air Force Hospital because my father was serving his country there at the time! How much more American could I be?
For what it’s worth, when I applied for a security clearance over 20 years ago, they needed to see my parents’ naturalization certificates. My parents were born in Europe, they came to the US in 1958 and were naturalized five or six years later; I was born in the US.
This was the first time they had taken their naturalization certs out of the safe deposit box in about 25 years.
I haven’t done this in 37 years, but two of my children were born out of the US and all I had to do was go to a US consulate with the birth certificate, fill out a simple form and show my and my wife’s passports. No one questioned the assertion that we had lived in the US the requisite amount of time and the form was issued on the spot. Of course a lot of things have grown more bureaucratic in the last 37 years. But I have no idea how I would, even today, prove that I was a US resident for my first 31 years. How do you prove a negative?