So you come to America, become a citizen, and to show your pride and gratitude, you join the Army. Uncle Sam sends you and your family to a foreign country to use your education, your language skills, your global experience, what-have-you, for the good of our great nation.
All of us regular folks say, “Thank you for your service!” and throw you and your family a nice party when you get back. But Donald Trump’s Citizenship and Immigration Services shrugs and says, “That kid you had while you were overseas? She’s not an American.”
USCIS said yesterday that it will no longer consider children of naturalized citizens serving the U.S. government overseas to be citizens if their parents haven’t lived in the U.S. for long enough:
The rule appears to primarily affect the children of naturalized US citizens serving in the armed forces who have not lived in the US for a required period of time, a relatively small number — estimated to be approximately 100 annually, according to a Defense Department official.
…”The policy change explains that we will not consider children who live abroad with their parents to be residing in the United States even if their parents are US government employees or US service members stationed outside of the United States, and as a result, these children will no longer be considered to have acquired citizenship automatically,” said a USCIS spokesperson, referring to a section of the immigration code about residence [Priscilla Alvarez, Geneva Sands, and Ryan Browne, “Citizenship Will No Longer Be Automatic for Children of Some US Military Members Living Overseas,” CNN, 2019.08.28].
No compelling security interest underlies this policy change. The overseas workers in question are citizens. They work for the U.S. government. They wouldn’t be in the positions they occupy if previous background checks had indicated they couldn’t reliable serve and protect American interests overseas. And there’s no evidence that any bouncing bundles of joy they produce while in that service in Wiesbaden, Okinawa, or other exotic places are going to break our codes or budgets or anything else when they come back to their proper homeland with their proud American parents. This is just Donald Trump being a jerk to new Americans.
Support the troops: elect a new President in 2020.
Barron Trump was born March 20, 2006. Did Melania become a US citizen before that date or after? Just wondering. Regardless, I imagine to some, Barron was conceived with a foreign national and his citizenship should be questioned by real patriots.
“Being a jerk” is much more kindly than the thoughts in my head.
Does Imbecilic Immigrant have the legal ability to do that? It’s a policy, not a law? I thought it was US law that children born of US citizens are automatically US citizens, regardless of place of birth.
I think I’ve read that the House is planning to stop this, though I don’t know more than that. If the Senate would join with the House in reasserting the role of the legislative branch, they could check most of what Imbecilic Immigrant has done. Apparently Pootie doesn’t want Moscow Mitch to do that.
Why does the GOP hate our military?
Melanoma became a citizen in 2006. She worked illegally w/o proper visa for awhile.
Retroactively would have applied to 2 of my 3. And likely hundreds with whom I served overseas for 10+ years. What a flaming jerk. Can we end this nightmare and get back to the American experiment with democracy before the necons and nationalists trash it.
Never forget the American Nazi’s rally in Madison Square Garden: https://vimeo.com/237489146
Show them no quarter. No safe respite.
Cavuto at Fox, finally seems to have a belly full of Chubby trumpy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwc9K5W6fgw
Of course, this all fits into to what chubby is doing to keep us in chaos. We will somehow figure it out that this is still all about corruption and will keep this going until he changes his mind in 10..9..8.. Dude is playing us all while his hand is in our pockets.
I rarely comment here, but….this policy is likely to result in chaos for some family members and is something that I have passing knowledge about. As somebody who had children born abroad, here’s what happens when your new bundle of joy arrives and you’re NOT living in your country of Citizenship:
You run from the hospital/delivery room straight to the embassy (or equivalent) to get a passport for the newborn, complete with a picture of your very generic newborn (yes, the passport is good for 5 years, by which time they START to look unique). You fill out things like ‘hair color” and “eye color” that become permanent record for citizenship registration, even though pretty much all babies have the same eyes and similar hair and both change over the first 15 years of life. But without this, your new baby won’t be traveling anywhere, since there’s no proof of identity to allow free movement across borders.
I don’t fully understand this policy, but now imagine that the naturalized parents gave up their home country citizenship when they became US Citizens (after all, we all renounce foreign citizenship in the oath). So what are these new babies? In theory, they could be citizens of nowhere, born on US soil as far as the “foreign country” is concerned, but not according to the US. Even if there are just some hoops for the parents to jump through in order to gain citizenship for their new new child, this can easily add months or years to the process of getting that passport so the child can be taken off that military base, even out to the “host country” for a meal in a restaurant, walk in the local park, etc. I sure hope the parents don’t get redeployed while that is taking place.
So, in general, this is going to be a mess, even if it’s only for 100 people.
Thanks for your especially informed perspective, Naturalized! You raise a good question: if those newborn children of American citizens aren’t American citizens, then what are they? Do they have any rights under any law? Could a foreign country assert some claim over those children to exert pressure over their American servicemember parents?
Waaayyy off topic…. another mass murder/shooting spree in Texas.
At least 24 people were shot and five people were killed Saturday in a series of shootings in the area of Midland and Odessa, Texas, an Odessa city official told Fox News.
A suspect, who local police identified only as a white male in his mid-30s, was shot and killed at an Odessa movie theater, local police said.
At least three cops were shot. Happy Labor Day to most of you.
A legal podcast did a deep diver on this. The implications are pretty vindictive against people who serve in the armed forces as a path to citizenship and also ramifications for us citizens who use surrogates when abroad.
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/atheistically-speaking-2/opening-arguments/e/63567779
But as the day on the show: “#DontTakeLegalAdviceFromAPodcast”