Some children born to U.S. citizens stationed overseas as government staff or U.S. military members will no longer qualify for automatic American citizenship as the Trump administration unveiled a policy shift on Wednesday.
Effective Oct. 29, some parents serving abroad in the U.S. military or other federal government agencies must go through a formal application process requesting U.S. citizenship on behalf of their children by their 18th birthday, the policy states.
However, a government fact sheet listed several caveats that seemed to exempt many of these children from the new requirement, including those with at least one U.S. citizen parent living in the U.S. prior to the birth of the child.
Currently, children born to U.S. citizens stationed in a foreign country by their government are legally regarded to be “residing in the U.S.,” enabling their parents to simply receive a certificate indicating their kids automatically obtained citizenship.
But in an 11-page policy alert, the U.S. The Agency for Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) stated that it found the prevailing rules to be contradictory and contrary to other parts of federal immigration law and the procedures of the State Department.
The rationale for the policy review stayed uncertain beyond that.
“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” Tennessee-based lawyer Martin Lester, who chairs the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s military assistance program, informed journalists. He added that the extent of the change seemed to be quite restricted.
“I’m sure, to be fair, it’s a relatively small number of people,” Lester said.
Acting USCIS director Ken Cuccinelli stressed on Twitter that the new rule “does NOT impact birthright citizenship” – the doctrine – criticized by President Donald Trump – by which anyone born in the United States or its possessions automatically acquires U.S. citizenship.
But the change could possibly offer Trump space to argue that his administration has curtailed the advantages of birthright that a citizen with little or no actual U.S. residency can automatically confer on their foreign-born descendants.
“It only affects children who were born outside the US and were not US citizens,” Cuccinelli tweeted.
The wider group of American expatriates is also unaffected. Children born abroad to non-military, non-governmental relatives still automatically receive U.S. citizenship as long as at least one parent is a U.S. citizen who has resided in the U.S. for five years or more before.
The new policy, which is not retroactive, triggered instant dismay on the part of some armed forces representative organisations.
“Military members already have enough to deal with, and the last thing that they should have to do when stationed overseas is go through hoops to ensure their children are U.S. citizens,” said Andy Blevins, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America.
He urged Congress to take action to address the situation to “ensure our military families don’t suffer the consequences of a reckless administration.”