Update: USCIS clarifies that this new policy applies in large measure to adoptions rather than natural births, which will limit the number of service members it affects.
A new policy issued today says that children of U.S. citizens born abroad to military members and government employees no longer automatically become U.S. citizens.
Parents will have to apply for citizenship on their child’s behalf (before their 18th birthday). Children entering the U.S. with their citizen parents will need appropriate permissions (including visas, if applicable) until they do.
Children of non-military parents will have to obtain a visa and enter the U.S. to formally become a citizen. Military parents can complete the paperwork abroad.
This policy change generally does not change a child’s eligibility to become a citizen based on the U.S. citizenship of parents (except “There are very rare cases in which a US gov employee could be a US citizen by birth but not have lived in the US for 5 years (over whole life) b4 having a kid.”)
What’s doing the work here is a prior assumption that children of U.S. servicemembers and government employees abroad were residents of the United States, and will no longer be treated as such.
(HT: @TalKopan)
What happens if they are born in a military base or diplomatic mission and the host country does not give them citizenship? (Dubai, Japan, etc etc)
Are the children then without any citizenship?
Trump is still fighting with the late Sen. John McCain. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone to his Navy Admiral father and mother. Had this rule been in effect 80+ years ago McCain would not have had automatic citizenship. More craziness.
Rob is right. Trump denying the citizenship of the late Senator McCain. Otherwise, what logic is there to asking citizens to serve their country abroad and then deny,even temporarily, their children citizenship?
This is outrageous. We ask young Americans to volunteer to risk their lives in service of their country all over the world and then say that their children are not automatically entitled to the US citzenship the children of bone-spur cowards get.
Trump, and all Republitards that support him, should be shipped off to NK and let the rest of the world live in peace
Despicable. Maybe this will be the thing that finally turns my sister, who has served in our nation’s military for 10+ years, against Donnie Bonespurs.
In fact, his humiliation of Mattis may have already done that. Haven’t yet had that conversation.
I dunno guys, seems pretty reasonable like maybe the rule is intended to make sure due process is followed. Have a kid somewhere other than here and file the paperwork. If you’re military you can do it while you do substantially more paperwork for a birth certificate and social (in)security card.
I typically lean toward Republican ideologies. There has NOT been a single day that I regret not voting for Trump. What a buffoon.
Maybe this is fake news? At least we can hope.
Until this Trump Admin change, US citizens’ time in service abroad as US Govt employees abroad — in civilian USG or US DOD military service — was time counted as being good toward the parental 5 year US residency requirement to pass on US citizenship to children abroad at time of child’s birth.
It would help if everyone read the proposed reg (link provided in the blog post) before coming unglued. The reg concerns the definition of “Residence” for citizenship purposes. This blog seems to be the only place I’ve found that raises this reg to the level of an outrage. Not even the NY Times seems concerned.
“USCIS issued a clarification to the rule later Wednesday, explaining that the new rule would only affect three categories of people: Children of non-U.S. citizens adopted by U.S. citizen government employees or service members; children of non-U.S. citizen government employees or service members who were naturalized after the child’s birth; and children of U.S. citizens who do not meet residency requirements.”
People are making this to be a bigger issue than it is.
While I’m not happy about the change — a change that also screws over the children of naturalized US citizens working for the USG abroad for long periods of time and is an insult to people who really do work for our country — this change won’t affect but a very tiny sliver of civilian and military employees of the US Government. Most US citizens assigned abroad for USG/US DOD work have lived in the US for five or more years and/or are likely to have done so prior to having a child born outside of the US. This change, if it were to be applicable at the time or McCain’s birth, wouldn’t have impacted McCain’s becoming a US citizen at birth.
There’s no problem with this. Service-members serve in areas where fraud to gain citizenship is rampant. This ruling does NOT deny military children citizenship… it simply requires the parents to fill out U.S. paperwork for their overseas-born children. We’re closing the loopholes on fraud, duplicated birth certificates, smuggling, etc. In recent decades, govt has managed citizenship issues, so sloppily, so abysmally. I’m grateful that somebody is trying to clean it up, close the abused loopholes. Give everyone a paper trail so citizenship can be verified.
Those of you who think this has to do with McCain are ignorant about the loopholes that allow & encourage illegal entry.
Those of you who think this will cause babies to have zero citizenship are speaking without seeking facts.
Government is so sloppy, so corrupt. Let’s all encourage solid legal processing of citizenship.
This seems to be either a case of someone not really reading the changes, not understanding the legal terminology or wanting to make the Trump Administration look bad (i.e. everyone sees the breaking story, but not the correction). The NBC reporter Ken Dilanian has already issued a correction via his Twitter account and deleted the tweets with the incorrect info. The new paperwork deals with US military members who adopt a child overseas. If that is the case, then it makes sense to me that anyone who adopts has to provide more paperwork, whether US military or not, overseas or on US soil.
Anyone saying this is not a big deal, or won’t affect service members, or very few of them, why make the policy change to begin with?
@Lindy. Exactly how many times has citizenship been granted as a result of this rampant fraud, duplicate birth certificates and smuggling you describe? I suspect about as often as voter fraud.
This change will deny US citizenship to some children of US military and other US service personnel working abroad for the US.
There is just no getting around that this change will result in some US military personnel facing additional family problems with getting their foreign-born children into the US and it’s another sign of the Trump Admin’s hostility toward Americans abroad, including that of American military personnel stationed abroad.
This change isn’t being done to crackdown on fraud by US military personnel. It’s being done because the Trump Admin is ironically hostile to immigrants and those with foreign backgrounds.
Got it. November ’20 can’t come soon enough.
Waiting for our resident RATS (RAcist Trump Supporters) to come out of the woodwork here…
I don’t have an opinion about the rule. However, it is great seeing UA-NYC (aka the Manhattan Waterbug) flying about. There were a bunch of your brother Waterbugs in the basement, but the clever Super put out a Shell pest strip and it killed them all. Not that I have anything against Waterbugs you know. I have been told the discrimination against Waterbugs is racist.
Gary, did you even read the regulation? Are you off your TDS medication again?
Awesome! #MAGA
Trump is the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11. And we voted him in! (not me)
Michael said: “Anyone saying this is not a big deal, or won’t affect service members, or very few of them, why make the policy change to begin with?”
I think Michael inadvertently hit on the question in my mind. Why did the Trump administration make this change? What was it trying to correct? Was this a problem? Without knowing the answer to these questions, there is no way to evaluate whether this change was a good idea or not.
WTH: I am not even sure it is a “change” in policy. Have you ever dealt with regulators. I have. Seems like every couple of weeks they come out with new clarifications or guidance. It is actually their job to spew out such changes. Most of the changes were nothing-burgers.
stick to travel.
Why is this post still up??? This isn’t true and deserves more than a one sentence correction at the top of the article. This post should be taken down and a new article should be posted that clearly states the information in the previous article was false. Very unethical to keep this post up.
Stick to aviation. I don’t come here for liberal opinions. If I wanted that I’d turn on cnn or read the New York Times.
Not much more than a year before the nightmare ends and the lunacy can be reversed.
Gary, is this is now an extreme left-wing political blog? No more travel reports? Maybe you should stay in your lane…
Back in 1971 I was stationed in Okinawa and my daughter was born in a US Army hospital at Camp Kue. Before rotating back to the US in 1972 I had to apply for US citizenship for her through the US consulate (Okinawa had reverted back to Japan after 26 years of US occupation on May 15, 1972) to obtain her US passport. I still have the papers where she was granted US citizenship even though I was serving in the military and she was technically born on US soil.
Leave it to Trump to make people angry.
How does this apply to travel????
Gary, it’s clear you are a Trump hater. I get it.
Stick to travel. I don’ want to read this crap from you or followers.
As I read the regulation, this rule just abolishes the exemption for military and Govt employees to the residency requirement.
I was born overseas to American citizen parents who had satisfied the residency requirement, and so they went to the US embassy, and got my US passport at birth. I’m pretty sure that still holds now.
I had to go back to the US and satisfy my residency requirement to pass on US citizenship to my children automatically. I knew I had to live in the Us for 5 years to do so. I also knew that my foreign born US classmates who were posted abroad with military or foreign diplomat passports didn’t have a residency requirement.
Bottom line, I don’t see this as a big change. We have a rule that foreign born citizens need to come back to the US and establish residency for 5 years and now it applies to everyone- no exemption for military or diplomatic kids.
Now, the optics of this move are bad- it says the Trump administration doesn’t value overseas foreign service and military enough to give them an exemption. But the real life impact is small, and I think it’s reasonable that all overseas born Americans follow the same rules.