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Military children will no longer automatically be considered US citizens if they are born outside of the US if their parents do not “make the cut” with these new requirements that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced yesterday.
While these news rules only apply to a small amount of US military members, some see it as a troubling start. Just last week, President Trump said in an interview that his administration was taking a “serious” look at birthright citizenship.
This could very well be just the first step towards that.
It’s estimated that only about 100 children a year will be affected by this change in policy, so not a whole lot.
The new ruling mainly just applies to children of naturalized US citizens that serve within the armed forces, but had their child before they were naturalized, and have not lived in the US for a required amount of time.
An official spokesman for the USCIS said that they will “not consider children who live abord with their parents to be residing the United States, even if their parents are US government employees or US service members” that happen to be stationed outside of the US.
This could also apply to children born to US military personnel overseas who have naturalized but not lived in the US for the required amount of time, or foreign-born children of US military members who were adopted.
These military members could literally be serving their country, having uprooted their lives and their family’s lives to serve overseas, and still, they would have to jump through hoops to get their children declared US citizens.
Last week, Trump spoke extensively about ending birthright citizenship. A spokesman for the administration has already come out to say that this is in no way ending birthright citizenship, and is actually a completely separate issue.
Birthright citizenship is the act of granting citizenship based on where you are born. If a child is born in the United States, they are a US citizen.
This has been a talking point for Trump’s campaign for a long time, and as we grow closer to the election cycle, we can expect to hear more about it soon.
These new military guidelines go into effect on October 29th.
