I read this story about this Mexican immigrant that snuck over the border in South Texas and had a baby on US soil. They said in the paper that the mother would have to go back but the baby is a US citizen now. Pretty touching story the lady had to end up cutting her emblidical(sp) cord with a beer can. Both the baby and mother are ok now btw.
That got me thinking if me and my wife were vacation in Mexico late in her pregnacy and she gave birth early, would our child be a Mexican or an American? This could of course would apply to any country. If the answer is Mexican, I guess you shouldn’t ever go abroad when you are carrying a kid huh?
Back to the baby that was born on US soil. I am sure the mother will keep him in Mexico until he is grown. After that could he come here and live without a visa or anything?
There are two ways to become a natural-born US citizen. One is to be born on US soil. This includes military bases abroad. The other is to be born to American parents. If your wife were to travel to Mexico and give birth there, her child would be a United States citizen by virtue of her own citizenship.
I cannot address the question of whether the kid could be a Mexican citizen if he wanted to. I suspect the answer is yes, but I don’t really know.
Anybody born on U.S. soil should be considered an American citizen (although a child born to Kosovar refugees on Guantanamo a few years ago was denied citizenship). A child born to an American mother is a U.S. citizen regardless of where the birth takes place.
As far as dual citizenship, I’m sure every country has their own rules about granting citizenship to the newborn.
Sort of correct. For full treatment of acquiring citizenship when born abroad, see http://travel.state.gov/acs.html and look under “Citizenship and Nationality.”
Absolutely incorrect. The military bases overseas are neither the property nor the territory of the United States of America. They are leased from the host countries. Also, the base itself, as in Japan, are “co-located” with the host country’s base command; thus, US Naval Air Facility Atsugi shares the same land with Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force Naval Air Station Atsugi. I, personally, have handled the record-keeping part for a Navy enlisted member who was not a US citizen, his wife was not a US citizen, neither was a Japanese citizen, and their home country would not grant recognition of the child as a citizen of that country due to its birth abroad and certain other circumstances involved. The child was born a stateless alien. Sounds cool, but it’s not.
Now, the Embassy and Consulates are a different story. Those are considered US territory.
Please refer to the link provided. If one’s wife, herself, is not a US citizen, and the child is not the husband’s, then the child is not a US citizen. Obviously, you’re (we’re/the OP’s) assuming the wife is, in fact, already a US citizen.
Since I’m bored with doing my reading assignment for tonight’s class, I’ll see what the Mexican embassy or one of its consulates has to say on the issue.
The base on Guantanamo Bay is on Cuban soil, and thus is not US territory - it’s leased from the government of Cuba. One isn’t “denied [US] citizenship” in such a case - one does not qualify for it. I suppose she could petition the Cuban government for the child to be considered Cuban, though.
Unless Mexican law has changed in the past few years, the child will have dual citizenship. OTOH, considering how a lot of Mexican authorities feel about how Americans treat Mexicans in the USA, I’d half expect one official or another to try to deport the parents without the baby.
Actually, the U.S. consular authorities will require that you first register the kid as a Mexican citizen, as all persons born on Mexican soil are natural born Mexicans. The Mexican registry office will require that you show evidence of your legal presence in Mexico, as well as a hospital birth certification or other documents to show that the mother was in fact pregnant and underwent delivery.
The child would have lifelong dual citizenship. Young males have compulsory military service in Mexico, but dual citizens are given an automatic waiver from actual service.
[[The child would have lifelong dual citizenship. Young males have compulsory military service in Mexico, but dual citizens are given an automatic waiver from actual service.]]
And best of all, s/he would be able to buy land in Mexico.
There are restrictions for coastal properties, but inland real estate is fair game.
When I bought my house, there was the minor formality of getting a nearly rubber-stamp permit and signing an attested oath not to invoke the protection of my government with respect to the property. But I’m the owner of record, with no intermediary trusts or other go-betweens.
[[When I bought my house, there was the minor formality of getting a nearly rubber-stamp permit and signing an attested oath not to invoke the protection of my government with respect to the property. But I’m the owner of record, with no intermediary trusts or other go-betweens.]]
Not all children born to US citizens outside the US are automatically US citizens themselves. You didn’t think it was that easy, did you?
If the child is the biological offspring of two US citizens, the child is automatically a citizen with no further requirements. (I believe - but check this with your local US consulate if this applies to you!) If, however, only one of the child’s biological parents is a US citizen, that parent must prove s/he lived in the US for at least five years (not necessarily in one block of time), and at least 2 of those years must have been after the individual’s 15th birthday. This is what we had to do for the little flodnaks, since fella bilong missus flodnak is of course a Norwegian citizen. But the little guys ended up dual citizens, no problem.
Humorous side point: I was able to do everything I needed to do to register the little flodnaks as US citizens without so much as a signature from fella bilong missus flodnak. The US government has been making noise for years about kids being kidnapped from the US by non-citizen parents… yet they make it fairly easy for citizen parents to kidnap kids to the States! (To get Norwegian passports for the little flodnaks, both of us parental units had to be there in the flesh.)
Flodnak hit the nail on the head. I was pretty shocked with the US embassy asked me to prove I had lived in the US for 5 years after my 15th birthday. But, since I was born in the US and a white guy, it was pretty easy. Now if I had been born abroad and wasn’t Caucasian, I would hate to put money on it. I’ve lived abroad 19 out of 20 years since I was 21, so I just squeaked by.
Now, the hardest part I had was getting the US consul to put the name I wanted on the Consulate Report of Birth Abroad. The US embassy will not issue a birth certificate. There can only be one original birth certificate and that is issued by the country where the birth takes place. Now, the US consul wanted to put the exact name that was on the birth certificate onto the Consulate Report of Birth Abroad. Problem. My daughter was born in China, her name, mother’s name and my name were all in Chinese characters. I wanted my daughter to have an English first name, her entire Chinese name in romanization as her middle name, and to have my family name. That took a few weeks to sort out. Finally, I found that the US embassy in Japan would take an affidavit. Eventually, the embassy here in China decided they could take it as well.
The other funky thing was what mother’s name to put on it. Ms. China Guy had her name on the first passport incorrectly romanized. As China modernized and began issuing computerized passports, they caught the error and changed her romanized name. Her green card was an amalgamation of her first erroneously romanized name and my family name. Thus, on the Consulate Report of Birth Abroad, for the mother’s name it has a whole bunch of aka’s as in Jiang Ching aka Jiang Qing aka Qing China Guy.
Whatever you do, don’t let the pimply kid that knows nothing force you to accept anything but the name you want on the Consulate Report of Birth Abroad. Otherwise, you have to go back to the US, petition a judge and go through all sorts of trouble to effect a legal name change. In addition, whenever you have to show the birth certificate, you’ve got to prove that the changed name is the same person and blah blah blah.