# Do children of US citizens always get citizenship? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 11, 2010, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530 "2010-01-11T17:49:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/21 "2010-01-12T08:00:06Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > Actually, the case is that some countries do not recognize dual citizenship (for example, China) and others actively discourages it (for example, USA). How does the USA “actively discourage” it? The State Department website has a line or two about the (highly hypothetical) problems it can cause, but I wouldn’t say that amounts to a serious effort. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/22 "2010-01-12T12:19:46Z")
I have some old pit threads on this subject. For China specifically, chinese passport holders need a valid visa to leave the country. The Chinese passport holders have very few visa free countries they can travel to, and the US is not on that list of countries. Therefore, a child born in China and is a Chinese passport holder, even if they hold a US passport, need to leave on their Chinese passport. Therefore, they require a US visa in the Chinese passport if travelling directly to the US. However, US citizens are not allowed to get US visas, since by being a US citizen then don’t need a US visa. The US embassy can provide a pro-forma (aka official fake visa) visa in the Chinese passport to facilitate a baby born in China to leave the country. Then if you come back to China one does so on the American passport. Furthermore, if you do that, the Chinese require a birth certificate or they will not issue a visa (alternatively, you can surrender their Chinese passport for cancellation and there goes the Chinese citizenship). Or the child can come back to China using the Chinese passport. But when you want to leave again, you’re back to needing an official visa or Chinese immigration won’t let you out of the country. Still with me? Hookay, at this point you need to get another pro-forma visa from the US citizen services in the US consulate (or visa to a third country). Second time I tried that with my eldest around 1992, when she was 2 years old. We had to apply like a Chinese citizen (eg pay a stupid application fee weeks in advance with no choice on the interview day or time) instead of using US citizen services. We had a 8:00 am appointment. By an amazing coincidence, we were the last people at 13:30 to be interviewed. So, all those people that had appointments up through 11:00 were magically able to be interviewed before us. Actually, quite an enlightening experience even though I was late for work and had a very unhappy 2 year old. I witnessed for myself what complete and total fucking bastards \*\*\*some \*\*\*of the US interviewers were to the Chinese visa applicants. It made me embarrased to be an American. As bad as any stereotypical movie you’ve ever seen. Visa denied based on I’m having a bad hair day type thing. No explanation, no discussion, 10 seconds and “sorry you can’t go on that PhD program with a full scholarship in the US.” And I’ll just close the blinds and turn of the speakers so I can’t hear you try to make a case in English as a second language before you collapse as all your hopes, dreams and aspirations get crushed like an insignifacant ant because I couldn’t be bother to pay attention this morning… So, after waiting 5 1/2 hours when maximum 1 would be the norm. I got the third degree on why I wanted to keep dual citizenship for my daughter. Finally, they grudgingly agreed to provide this hours later. I went through variations of that experience a few times before giving up. We would only take a trip home to the US once a year or two. To be fair, I also gave up on this when my Chinese citizen wife was pregnant with our twins. Family planning came down on us, because the one child policy follows the nationality of the mother and child. So, because my wife is a Chinese national, then we are bound by the 1 child policy (if both parents are not Chinese nationals then the one child policy does not apply). However, they only count the kids that hold a Chinese passport. So, given the hassles and fines that come with breaking the one child policy, we finally gave up on the chinese citizenship. when I went to the US citizen services after the twins were born, I simply said we gave up and needed a pro forma visa for all three kids and would give up their Chinese passports at the Chinese embassy before returning to China. 5 minutes later I’m out the door with the pro forma visas. That’s my real life example of “active discouragement” ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/23 "2010-01-12T17:49:31Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > We’ve discussed this before, but one complicating issue in Obama’s case is that the rules were different when he was born, and indeed if he had been born outside the US to the same mother and father he would not be a US citizen, because his mother was too young to have satisfied the relevant rule. It would be different today. What was the story with his mother? Was she a naturalized citizen who had only recently moved to the US? A while back, I read on Snopes that Obama’s birth certificate is supposed to be filed in three different places, but only one copy can be found. (They didn’t say what the locations were, but if I had to guess I’d say: hospital, county archives, and state archives.) That does seem rather odd. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/24 "2010-01-12T18:09:33Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > What was the story with his mother? Was she a naturalized citizen who had only recently moved to the US? No. Ann Dunham was born on November 29, 1942, in Wichita, Kansas, so she was born a US citizen. Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, so she was 18 years old when he was born. According to [the Wikipedia article on United States nationality law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_nationality_law): > [@](#): > > For persons born between December 24, 1952 and November 14, 1986, a person is a U.S. citizen if all of the following are true: > > 1. One of the person’s parents was a U.S. citizen when the person in question was born > 2. The citizen parent lived at least ten years in the United States before the child’s birth; > 3. A minimum of 5 of these 10 years in the United States were after the citizen parent’s 14th birthday. Ann Dunham had lived less than 5 years after her 14th birthday, so she could not have lived 5 years in the United States, and so, if Barack Obama had been born outside the US, he would not have been born a US citizen. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/25 "2010-01-12T18:14:52Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > What was the story with his mother? Was she a naturalized citizen who had only recently moved to the US? She was native born. However, at the time of Obama’s birth she was only 18. At that time, the requirements for a parent to pass on citizenship for a child born outside the country were that the parent have lived 10 years in the US, five of which had to have been after the age of 14. According these requirements, she was too young to qualify to pass on citizenship. All of which is moot, given that Obama was born in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/26 "2010-01-12T20:25:02Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > I went through variations of that experience a few times before giving up. We would only take a trip home to the US once a year or two. To be fair, I also gave up on this when my Chinese citizen wife was pregnant with our twins. Family planning came down on us, because the one child policy follows the nationality of the mother and child. So, because my wife is a Chinese national, then we are bound by the 1 child policy (if both parents are not Chinese nationals then the one child policy does not apply). However, they only count the kids that hold a Chinese passport. So, given the hassles and fines that come with breaking the one child policy, we finally gave up on the chinese citizenship. One can always hope that someday China will become more reasonable about this sort of thing (and the U.S., for that matter). And that when that day comes, your kids will be able to regain their Chinese citizenship. (This happened to a Spanish friend of mine; she naturalized in the U.S. at a time when Spain didn’t allow dual citizenship, so she lost her Spanish citizenship. But she reapplied for it when Spain changed their rules about dual citizenship, and got it back.) ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/27 "2010-01-12T20:48:54Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I’m willing to believe that racism could have played a role here, but it’s not obvious to me that this distinction made between children of American mothers and children of American fathers is race-based rather than gender-based. I mean, after all, it’s usually a lot harder to misidentify a child’s mother than its father. > > So it seems to me that if an American woman overseas is said to be the mother of a new baby, then she probably is, and her parenthood can probably be easily corroborated by evidence. But if an American man overseas is said to be the father of a new baby, that’s much harder to prove. > > So why wouldn’t it make sense to have a gender-differentiated system of recognizing parentage, where recognition of fatherhood requires formal and official acknowledgement by the man in question, while recognition of motherhood requires a lot less red tape? Paternity was just as difficult to prove for the war babies of WWII. The rules were _changed_ for the Korean War & stayed the same during our involvement in Vietnam. Seems to me that race was a consideration. ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/28 "2010-01-12T20:51:10Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Some laws up until the 60’s or 70’s, for some countries - the father’s citizenship could be inherited but not the mother’s. Most countries that accept sexual equality have updated these laws. Side note: This extended to marriage as well. The 1907 Expatriation Act stipulated that an American-born woman with U.S. citizenship who married a non-citizen would lose her U.S. citizenship and acquire the citizenship of her husband. The [1922 Cable Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Act) changed this for most women (except for those who married men who were simply ineligible for citizenship), giving them the status of naturalized citizens (as opposed to native citizens) rather than aliens. The Cable Act was amended in 1931 to remove the restriction regarding marriage to a man ineligible for citizenship, and it was repealed in 1936. ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/29 "2010-01-13T03:13:48Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Well at least one statesman did not get citizenship despite having an undeniably American parent. I am of course talking about Winston S Churchill, I hear he reached pretty high in the United Kingdom instead. Not so fast **AK84** , Sir Winston S. Churchill was bestowed _Honorary Citizen of the United States_ by president Kennedy (Public Law 88-6 [1963]). ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/30 "2010-01-13T03:31:51Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > A couple of weeks ago, during a family dinner, the subject of Barak Obama’s birth certificate came up. The man’s first name is “Barack.” ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/31 "2010-01-13T05:41:47Z")
> [@user\_hostile](#): > > Not so fast **AK84** , Sir Winston S. Churchill was bestowed _Honorary Citizen of the United States_ by president Kennedy (Public Law 88-6 [1963]). Took long enough. Why did he not get it from Mummy? ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/32 "2010-01-13T06:26:14Z")
Mummies are Egyptian. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/33 "2010-01-13T11:32:57Z")
Ha ha. I repeat, why did he not get citizenship from his mother who was the daughter of a one time New York Assemblyman. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/34 "2010-01-13T11:58:41Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Ha ha. I repeat, why did he not get citizenship from his mother who was the daughter of a one time New York Assemblyman. Because under the laws at the time of his birth, a married woman’s citizenship generally followed her husband’s, and a child’s citizenship generally followed his or her father’s. A child born in similar circumstances today would be an American as well as a British citizen, but the law can’t be made retroactive to 1874. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/35 "2010-01-13T12:11:42Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Ha ha. I repeat, why did he not get citizenship from his mother who was the daughter of a one time New York Assemblyman. I found a summary of the relevant laws at [http://www.aca.ch/hisuscit.htm](http://www.aca.ch/hisuscit.htm) : > [@](#): > > 1790 First Congress, Act of March 26th, 1790, 1 Stat. 103. > > “And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States”. > > … > > 1855 Act of February 10, 1855. Section 1, 10 Stat. 604. > > “All children heretofore born or hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or may be at the time of their birth citizens thereof, are declared to be citizens of the United States; but the rights of citizenship shall not descend to children whose fathers never resided in the United States.” Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had never resided in the United States, so Lady Jenny Churchill (nee Jenny Jerome)'s citizenship did not help. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/36 "2010-01-14T07:40:45Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > So, after waiting 5 1/2 hours when maximum 1 would be the norm. I got the third degree on why I wanted to keep dual citizenship for my daughter. Finally, they grudgingly agreed to provide this hours later. Dude, you could have boiled it down to this! A lot of really unnecessary info in that post 😉 Anyway, it sounds like in the case of a Chinese-US dual citizen there might well be a reason to discourage it. I’m not sure if they would do in other cases, say for US-Canadian or US-Irish dual citizens. Does anyone else have any experience in this area? ---
**Author:** ![kidneyfailure](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9f8e36/32.png) [@kidneyfailure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidneyfailure)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/37 "2010-01-14T08:43:43Z")
> [@ruadh](#): > > Dude, you could have boiled it down to this! A lot of really unnecessary info in that post I found that info very useful, TYVM ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2010, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/38 "2010-01-15T07:55:30Z")
> [@kidneyfailure](#): > > I found that info very useful, TYVM I meant in terms of answering the question. Also, note the 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2010, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530/39 "2010-01-15T09:09:14Z")
> [@cwthree](#): > > Side note: This extended to marriage as well. The 1907 Expatriation Act stipulated that an American-born woman with U.S. citizenship who married a non-citizen would lose her U.S. citizenship and acquire the citizenship of her husband. Even if the marriage took place in the US, or only if it took place abroad? That would royally suck, “marrying an immigrant automatically makes you an immigrant.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-children-of-us-citizens-always-get-citizenship/524530.md?page=1)