Speech #890273603

It is not uncommon for the children of a Foreign Service officer to spend most of their youthful years abroad accompanying the parents from one assignment to another. The proposed amendment. in effect would treat the time spent abroad in such cases as constructive physical presence in the United States for the purpose of transmitting U.S. citizenship. A second inequity corrected by my bill concerns section 301(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This section sets up certain requirements which a U.S. citizen child born outside the geographical limits of the United States with one parent an alien and the other a U.S. citizen must meet in order to retain his citizenship. If the citizen parent had the required physical presence in the United States the child is automatically a citizen at birth subject to the retention requirements of 5 years actual physical presence in the United States between ages 14 and 28 years. Under the provisions of section 301 (a) (7) if the U.S. citizen parent of such a child did not have the required 10 years residence in the United States before the childs birth. such child is not a citizen at birth. However. section 320(a) permits such a child to acquire derivative citizenship if the alien parent is naturalized while the child is under 16 years of age and if he begins to reside permanently in the United States while under 16 years of age. No retention requirements are placed as a condition upon his citizenship. Thus a child who acquired U.S. citizenship at birth under section 301(a) (7) must reside in the United States for a continuous period of 5 years in order to retain that citizenship while a child obtaining derivative citizenship through the naturalization of his alien parent need not meet any such requirement. This means a child who acquired automatic citizenship at birth has a lesser status than one who acquired citizenship much later through his parents naturalization. My bill would merely extend the same provisions. as an alternative. to the child who is a citizen at birth. thus providing his citizenship would not be lost if his alien parent were naturalized while he is under 16 years of age and residing in the United States at the time of naturalization. This additional ground for retention of citizenship places the child who became a citizen at birth in no less a favorable position than the child who acquired citizenship by derivation. The amendments I propose not only will correct obvious inequities. they will save the time of Members and staff. Enactment will eliminate the necessity of considering private bills designed to waive the provisions of section 301 (a) (7) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. I see no reason why this time cannot be saved and these inequities corrected by the passage of my bill.