re: #9 Anymouse 🌹🎃

This doesn’t just affect people who are overseas on government orders, for example, a tourist overseas who suddenly goes into premature labour. That child under this policy would not be a citizen, even if both parents are.

It is also unequal treatment concerning military personnel.

If a man is in the military, it would be a hardship but he could send his wife back to the States for the birth.

If a woman is in the military, she cannot leave her post to return to the States for a birth.

It really only affects children without one US citizen parent that meets the somewhat confusing residency requirement for passing along citizenship.

Child Born Between November 14, 1986, and the Present

If at the time of your birth, both your parents were U.S. citizens and at least one had a prior residence in the U.S., you automatically acquired U.S. citizenship, with no conditions for keeping it. If only one parent was a U.S. citizen at the time of your birth, that parent must have resided in the U.S. for at least five years, and at least two of those years must have been after your parent reached the age of 14.

Even with only one U.S. citizen parent, there are still no conditions to keeping your citizenship. If your one U.S. citizen parent is your father and your birth was illegitimate (took place when the parents weren’t married), the same rules apply so long as you were legally legitimated (your father acknowledged paternal responsibility) before your 18th birthday. In addition, your father must have established paternity prior to your 18th birthday, either by acknowledgment or by court order, and must have stated, in writing, that he would support you financially until your 18th birthday.

What they’ve done away with is the rule that automatically considers children born to US government employees and US military personnel stationed overseas as being born “inside the US.” It’s still very shitty, in no small part because it actively disincentivizes US citizens who grew up overseas from seeking to apply their valuable linguistic and cultural skills in service of the United States military and diplomatic corps. Those people used to be able to count on their own children automatically becoming citizens if they worked for the US in the very countries where these skills would be most applicable. Now that’s over, and we will suffer a brain drain that directly affects our diplomatic abilities and national security.