American Politics during the Bush Presidency

True story:

My best friend marries an Argentine, after they get married while she is waiting for her visa to move here (49 weeks, obviously she might be a terrorist) she got pregnant (yes by him) went to full term and had a baby. The child was conceived in Mexico brought to term and delivered in Argentina. Because my buddy still resided in the EEUU she (child) was granted an American passport at birth and is considered a native born US citizen.

Six months ago they all, moved to BsAs. My buddy of course has not renounced his membership in the land of the somewhat free and home of the kinda brave, he just lives down there like Dickhead and Davey. He called me last night and his wife might be, probably is, pregnant. Because he resides there, this next child of the same parents will not be issued a US passport and will not be considered a native born American. If at some point if they decide to come back here, she (the wife) still has a visa he will have to apply for a residency visa for his on fucking child! What if he doesn't come back for years, could the child be denied the ability to live in his own fathers homeland? What if it's later and the child is an adult, my buddy moves back gets in an accident, could only one of his kids come and see him in the hospital?

Seriously how fucked up is this? Is it right or does he have something wrong here? I'm having a hard time believing it.

[QUOTE=Daddy Rulz]True story:

Because he resides there, this next child of the same parents will not be issued a US passport and will not be considered a native born American. If at some point if they decide to come back here, she (the wife) still has a visa he will have to apply for a residency visa for his on fucking child! What if he doesn't come back for years, could the child be denied the ability to live in his own fathers homeland? What if it's later and the child is an adult, my buddy moves back gets in an accident, could only one of his kids come and see him in the hospital? [/QUOTE]I am pretty sure that children of US citizens born outside of the US can get a US passport, though there may be age restrictions. (For example, they would have to get their passport before 18)

I have a coworker here who is a US citizen and has two children who were both born here, have never been to the US, and have US passports. Also, I know many other expats in other countries whose children were born overseas but have US passports.

It is my understanding that children born overseas to amercian citizens have citizen status. Not necessarily the wife who must go through visa process.

When I was doing this at the embassy here in BA there were a couple of Arg. Young people (18-23 years old) getting visas for US because their Dad was American.

A trip to the embassy would be worthwhile.

I dunno but I had a GF whose parents were both 100% American and she was born in the UK while the dad was in the military and she had to be naturalized. I know a bit about what you are talking about Daddy and my question is: [b]why[/b] should this potential person have a right to US citizenship? Not trying to flame and don't care one way or the other. Just want to explore the concept of citizenship and what it means.

Certainly the reverse is true in that any non-US citizen who can sneak into the country and give birth, the kid is a citizen automatically. Let's explore that concept too.

Not sure about your ex-GF but a child born to US citizen parents anywhere in the world is definitely a US citizen as is any child born within the territory of the United States.

There are a few caveats around residency of the parents in the first case which might be the source of the problems for your ex and DL's buddy.

[url]http://www.uscitizenship.info/en_US/faq/citizenship/ans/c15.jsp[/url]

I'm sure both of these paths to citizenship seemed reasonable when the US Constitution was written and the US was a nation of immigrants looking to grow. We seem to get worked up about it over the years whenever "we" don't like the immigrants (which has been about everyone at some point) and we usually use words like "security", jobs, or "national identity" to cloak our bigotry.

Personally, I support citizenship by birth. But I'm not sure there's much to discuss as it strikes me as purely a matter of personal preference. Kind of like blondes vs brunettes.

I always wondered about that whole thing as it was contrary to my own understanding. It came up when we went to Jamaica. She told the immigration people that she had been naturalized at the age of 10. Her dad was US military, and her mom was 100% American. They gave her a ration of shit coming back into the country. Later she showed me her naturalization papers. My guess would be, her dad was so fucking ignorant he had her naturalized unnecessarily. He was one dumb son of a be@tch and she was not too swift herself. She had big tits, though.

Didn't FDR have some kid who was born in Canada and they decided he was not eligible to be president? Isn't there some other rule about that which supersedes citizenship?

[QUOTE=Dickhead]Didn't FDR have some kid who was born in Canada and they decided he was not eligible to be president? Isn't there some other rule about that which supersedes citizenship?[/QUOTE]Article Two of the Constitution sets the principal qualifications to be eligible for election as President. A Presidential candidate must:

Be a natural-born citizen of the United States; (No foreign born citizen allowed.)

Be at least thirty-five years old;

Have been a permanent resident in the United States for at least fourteen years.

That is why Arnold Schwarzenegger can never be president, unless they amend the constitution.

[QUOTE=Tessan]Article Two of the Constitution sets the principal qualifications to be eligible for election as President. A Presidential candidate must:
Be a natural-born citizen of the United States; [b](No foreign born citizen allowed.)[/b][/QUOTE]From the website Easy Go provided, here is some interesting additional info:
[url]http://www.uscitizenship.info/en_US/faq/citizenship/ans/g68.jsp[/url]

[b]Is a child born outside the US to American parents legally eligible to become President?[/b]

Most likely yes.

The US Constitution (Article II, Section 1, Subsection 4) says: "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States."

The term "natural born citizen" is not used anywhere else in the Constitution, and it has never been the subject of any federal court ruling. Hence, its exact meaning could be subject to controversy.

While some have suggested that perhaps a "natural born citizen" must have been born on US territory (i.e., in keeping with the definition of a citizen given in the 14th Amendment), other legal experts believe the term refers to anyone who has US citizenship from the moment of his or her birth -- i.e., someone who did not have to be "naturalized" because he/she was born "natural" (i.e., born a citizen).

The first Congress enacted a citizenship law which stated that "the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens". [Act of Mar. 26, 1790, ch. 3, 1 Stat. 104.] This strongly suggests that the phrase was understood by the framers of the Constitution to refer to citizenship by birth.

At least three Presidential candidates in recent memory were born outside the US proper:

* Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican candidate, was born in the Arizona Territory in 1909 (Arizona did not become the 48th state until 1912). Goldwater lost the 1964 election to Lyndon Johnson.

* George Romney, a 1968 Republican hopeful, was born in Mexico in 1907 to American parents who had moved there to escape anti-Mormon persecution in the US. (Contrary to a widely held popular misconception, by the way, Romney's parents were settlers in Mexico, not missionaries.) Romney's campaign fizzled following a gaffe about his having been "brainwashed" by the military establishment into supporting US involvement in the Vietnam conflict.

* John McCain, an early Republican hopeful in the current (2000) campaign, was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 to American parents. McCain dropped out of the campaign in favor of the Republicans' eventual nominee, George W. Bush.

Some questions were raised at the time regarding both Goldwater and Romney's eligibility for the nation's highest office, but no formal legal challenge was mounted in either case.

We will probably never really know whether an American citizen born outside the US can become President (or Vice-President) until a lawsuit involving such a candidate finds its way into the courts. This could happen, of course, if a foreign-born candidate were elected and the electoral college's choice were challenged in court; or, more likely, if such a candidate's right to federal campaign subsidies (matching funds) were questioned.

Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock: A child born abroad to one U. S. Citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U. S. Citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) INA provided the citizen parent was physically present in the U. S. For the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen are required for physical presence in the U. S. To transmit U. S. Citizenship to the child.

Or his child actually, he won't satisfy the residency requirement.

Why is this important? Well for one reason, say things go very bad, very quickly in La Republica, some tin hat sends the tanks rolling down Libratador to Plaza de Mayo and the juntas are back. My buddy decides, "hmmm maybe this isn't such a great place to raise kids" and wants to return his family to the States. He can go, he's part of the club, his wife can go she has a green card, his daughter can go she's considered native born even though the placenta that sustained her through gestation went into a dumpster behind the Spanish Hospital in BsAs. But his bouncing baby boy (or whatever) well I guess they can leave him in Chaco with the crazy inlaws and start working on his paperwork when they get here. I'm sure there is something he could do after the kid is born to start getting the ball rolling on a green card. But it's his FUCKING KID, born in wedlock he, she or it should be able to follow the family where ever mom and dad can go.

It's kind of fucked up here in the EEUU but overall it's still in the top 20 as far as quality of life (unless you wanna bang skinny women) and his kid won't be part of the club, the only member of the family without the shitting eagle passport.

Argentina is proud of it's citizenship, if any of your parents are Argies no matter how long they have been gone, why they have been gone, if you have never in your fucking life been to Argentina they will give you a passport.

They could solve the problem by coming back for the birth. The mother is Argentinian so getting the kid back to BsAs is as simple as a trip to any embassy. I may suggest this to him.

DH why shouldn't the kid have citizenship, his dad is a citizen.

So is this saying he had to be in the US for the five years prior to the birth? That doesn't make sense. That implies she had to be in the US at the time of conception. I read that to say he had to be in the US for a total of five years overall when the kid was born, which he was, right? I mean, he grew up in the US, yes?

I don't have kids and won't so I have no position on whether the kid should or shouldn't be a citizen. I am just interested in people's views on citizenship and what it means. My friend in the States who was born and raised in Buenos Aires until age 16 had to renounce her Argentinean citizenship to get US citizenship. That seems kind of bogus too.

The requirement says nothing about the physical presence being immediately prior to the birth of the child so I'm guessing it's during the parent's lifetime prior to the birth of the baby. Which sounds like a way to ensure that citizenship doesn't become multi-generation hereditary right without physical ties to the US, e. G. The kids of a dual nationality citizen that has never lived in the US don't automatically become citizens. Apparently, we only want citizens that are not too far removed from physical ties to the US. Works for me.

DR, if your friend's first baby is a citizen despite being born outside the US, he must have satisfied the physical presence requirement at that time which means all his within-wedlock children are going to automatically be US citizens. He just needs to file an FS240 form at the US embassy. But if the word of some random guy looking up stuff on the Internet isn't good enough, he could actually go to the embassy and ask. I'd be interested in hearing what he needs to do to prove he has met the physical presence requirement. Five years of resident tax returns?

My guess is that every country has some limitations on the way citizenship is passed through birth. I'd want to know the dirty details before proclaiming comparing the process in Argentina to that of the the US.

You are only forced to renounce citizenship in another country if you become a naturalized citizen of the US. Unlike dual citizenship through accident of birth (where you didn't make a choice) making a choice to become a US citizen requires becoming exclusively a US citizen. I've got no problem with that being one of the requirements for naturalized citizens.

To DH's larger question, I'd say that citizenship has two different meanings. First, it's an emotional question of identity. That's going to be a very personal thing. For example, I can't imagine being a citizen of any country other than the US. In my mind, the US is an ideal that I can't turn my back on rather than a reality that can be more easily rejected.

Second, it's a matter of practicality. My guess is that's somewhat specific to your circumstances, your country of citizenship, and your country of residency. If you are not a citizen of the country where you live, you have to screw around with visas, understand when you are going to be treated differently than citizens, and deal with the laws of your home country that still pertain to you, e. G. A non-resident US citizen is still subject to US taxes on worldwide earning so you still have to do tax returns following an extra set of confusing rules for non-residents. I've got to think life is easier when citizenship and residency are the same.

Here's a good FAQ I ran across. Pretty interesting stuff about dual citizenship. I like it because he appears to be a really smart guy, I. E. He agrees with me on the issue of physical presence. Although I'm a bit suspicious because he's a US / Canadian dual citizen and any country that thinks all things involving ice and sticks is a sport is deeply suspicious.

[url]http://www.richw.org/dualcit/index.html[/url]

Sydney.

As you must know, Newsmax.com is a far-right political website with an axe to grind about the Democratic Party. Do you really expect anyone to take this kind of stuff seriously?

Generally speaking you do have to renounce allegiance to all other nations when naturalizing. But that declaration made to the new country means nothing to your native country and you don't lose your native citizenship.

Treason may strip your native citizenship, other than that it's nearly impossible even if you want to.

And, in the case of USA, even if you do manage to successfully renouce your citizenship before US officials, which is unlikely, you're usually still liable for US taxes as a "US person" on your worldwide income until the day you die (later for your estate).