Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of H.R. 1109. which I introduced with my colleague. the gentleman from California . to correct an error that was part of last years immigration bill. the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. H.R. 1109 would make a technical change regarding requirements for citizenship for people born overseas. I want to say that I am particularly appreciative of the gentleman from Texas . who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims. that deals with this product. for bringing it forward and recognizing the fact that we need it today. Unfortunately his commitments kept him from being here to be a party to this discussion. I am very happy to handle it for him today. The gentleman from California and I had the pleasure of working together in 1994 on this issue. The Immigration and Nationality Technical Corrections Act of 1994 granted Americans abroad the possibility of obtaining U.S. citizenship for their minor children who had not acquired citizenship at birth. It allows certificates of citizenship to be granted to a child of a U.S. citizen if the child is under 18 and if either the American parent or the American parents parent. that is. the American grandparent. has spent 5 years in the United States with two of those five being after the age of 14. There were no policy problems brought before Congress with regard to this. However. the immigration bill in the last Congress included a change in this policy buried in the technical corrections part of the bill. This was most likely an innocent attempt to clean up an admittedly complicated statute. but this cosmetic change is doing harm. The change doubles the amount of time the parent or grandparent must have been in the United States for children born before November 14. 1986.
Keywords matched
Immigration Illegal Immigration Immigrant immigration