Hacker News Reader

Comment by dudul | Hacker News Reader

The fact that it applies to naturalized citizens is quite scary. This is essentially creating 2 classes of Americans. Up until now, the only difference I know of between "born Americans" and "naturalized Americans" was the right to run for President. I never understood the restriction, but it's not like it impacted a lot of lives.

View on HN

The application to naturalized citizens but not born Americans won't stand up to the barest Constitutional challenge. Specifically, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment:

""" All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. """

The Supreme Court held in Bolling v. Sharpe that the due process clause of the 5th Amendment imposes the equal protection responsibility on the federal government as well as the individual states.

This is really the strongest argument I've seen of any of this being a problem. Coming to any country as an immigrant is a privilege, and it the immigrants prerogative whether or not they feel the terms are acceptable. It is, however, completely unacceptable to put a special burden on their citizenship like this. Once they're a citizen, they should be a citizen, period. If there's not confidence that they're acceptable, they shouldn't become a citizen in the first place, otherwise they should be treated with full rights.

I'm not clear on how dual-citizenship works when you naturalize to the US, but are there not situations where they have to give up citizenship to their country of origin? Does that mean these people are permanently left in a degraded legal state with no home country, where they would have full legal rights, to return to should the DHS decide they've over stepped their bounds on Facebook?

As far as I know (and I'm not an authority), the US never requires that you give up your first citizenship. Some countries (like Japan) do however. So a Japanese citizen wishing to become American would have to give up his birth citizenship.

However, the US do not recognize the concept of dual citizenship. Meaning that an Italian-American is always seen as just an American by the US government. Once you become American you are American, you are not a XXX-American.

> there not situations where they have to give up citizenship to their country of origin?

One such a case is China. If a Chinese citizen gets the passport of another country they lose their original Chinese citizenship (if China knows about the new passport.)

I wonder what happens if they are born in countries like the USA that give citizenship at birth. Do they have to forfeit one of the two citizenships? And when, at birth by decision of the parents or later on by their choice?

I do not think you need to be a US citizen just because you were born there. There are countries that allow a child born in the US to acquire the citizenship of its parents.

Also "This would also affect all US citizens who communicate with immigrants ..." so yes this is really quite bad actually.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com