U.S. nationals born in American Samoa sue for citizenship
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
I went to American schools in the Canal Zone. I don’t speak Spanish and I always thought of myself as American. When I came to the U.S. to live my expectations about America did not correspond to reality. As time goes on this chasm is increasing. I’ve been in the U.S. for 30 years now. Samoans may end up regretting if they win!
And technically the Canal Zone was always part of Panama proper with the US leasing the land on a perpetual basis while US Samoa is "owned".
https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/citizenship-through-par...
In general, a Child Born Outside the U.S. is a Citizen at Birth when the Child’s Parents Are Married to each other at the Time of Birth IF... Both parents are U.S. citizens at the time of birth, AND... At least one parent lived in the U.S. or its territories prior to the birth
Canal Zone is a US territory.
OP's case is interesting because the petitioner's parents are not citizens.
Those requirements boil down to this:
- One parent must be a citizen.
- That parent needs some connection to the US, measured by how much time they've spent living there.
- If the citizen parent is male, he must prove that the child is related to him.
- If the citizen parent is male, he must swear a binding legal oath to financially support the child.
The rest resolves these questions:
- How much residential connection to the US must citizen parents have, based on the couple's total Americanness? (more Americanness, less time)
- Can we just assume that married men are the fathers of their wives' children? (yes)
- What counts as being "in America"? (government service abroad counts)
My sister in law was born and raised in America. She now lives in the EU and has a child with her wife. Despite gay marriage being legal in the US, her child is currently unable to obtain American citizenship because she was not the biological mother.
You are having the same issues my brother in law is having. You need to live in the US to make the process easier. It actually been a pain to get his wife a work permit because they haven’t lived here in 10 years.
Not sure it's all that simple. Say, for example, he was born in Kenya to American parents. Would that make him a "natural born citizen" eligible to become president?
According to the wikipedia:
> The consensus of early 21st-century constitutional scholars, together with relevant case law, is that natural-born citizens include, subject to exceptions, those born in the United States.
Complicated stuff -- if you're born on a US military base in a Germany vs a hospital next to the base &etc...
How is that okay? Totally skip all laws and regulations by simply flying a couple weeks prior to the due date and voila! Screw everyone else waiting in line.
source: know people who have done this for each of their four kids.
What law are they breaking or skipping? This is perfectly legal (in fact, backed by the US Constitution) and IMHO one of the great aspects of the US (policy of jus soli).
Shittier is the second class status for anyone not born in the US. Pretty disgusting.
I’m actually pro free borders. But as it stands this is a weird way of abusing the current system.
I wonder why the government wouldn't want that, and what ways they think it would jeopardize the culture.
https://books.google.com/books?id=e_tKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA87&lpg=P...
American Samoa has laws that say that only American Samoans can own land or be a member of their local government. What the 14th Amendment may give them in terms of US citizenship, the 14th Amendment takes away with regard to these exclusionary laws.
Except it doesn't. Even if the term “United States” in the first clause might be argued to include the whole territory of the nation called the “United States” and not just specifically the constituent states (which is the crux of the citizenship argument), that doesn't imply that the word “State” in the remainder of the Amendment means something other than the individual states of the Union. And all the restrictions are of the form “No State shall...”
So you're arguing that people born in the District of Columbia aren't US citizens either?
No, I'm arguing that the debate about the scope of the term “United States” in the first clause of the Amendment has no impact on the scope of term “State” in the rest of the Amendment.
The essential element for the territories is whether the federal US has jurisdiction there in addition to sovereignty. The US definitely has sovereignty over American Samoa, as it is a territory not a protectorate, but the jurisdiction remains in the local entity of American Samoa, under its constitution and statutes, except where it has been explicitly ceded or shared, or seized.
As such, the court would have to examine whether he was subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time he was born. As the United States makes a distinction between "incorporated" and "unincorporated" territories, one could argue that the "unincorporated" status is an indicator that the US refuses to extend its jurisdiction there.
So he does not have a valid claim under the 14th Amendment. It would be up to American Samoa to petition Congress to be "incorporated", and thereby subject itself to the federal jurisdiction of the US, and also to make that status retroactive beyond the birthdates of the class plaintiffs, in order for the court decide the case has merit. If it were to do so, the exclusionary local laws that favor island natives would then be subject to examination under equal protection and federal nondiscrimination clauses. If they want equal rights as the mainlanders, they have to erase the distinctions on the island, too.
If Samoa becomes incorporated, all the normal constitutional protections apply.
I think we should offer automatic citizenship and cheap transportation for all citizens of US territories to the mainland, though.
How many tickets do you want to purchase? I am collecting donations. Unless you are just talking...
Statehood won the last two status referenda in Puerto Rico.
I'm a Democrat and would like to see PR a state, but it's not honest to pretend that this is a cut-and-dried decision. There are benefits to the limbo PR is in right now: US citizenship without income tax and much more control over the operation of their territory than they'd have as a state.
The operative word is probably: the most recent referendums were designed to provoke the statehood option, leading to the results being ignored as not providing a clear mandate. Constant relitigation of the issue over the past decade doesn't help with apathy. It doesn't help that status quo may not be a realistic option: there's a lot of unclear legal issues with little appetite to litigate them.
I suspect that Puerto Rico will eventually become a state, but it's politically difficult for that to happen without a clear mandate, and there doesn't seem to be much appetite for providing a truly fair and clear referendum in this matter.
Lot harder to ignore them when they have 2 senators and a rep to raise hell.
The most recent referendum was held only because the federal government preferred another referendum to honoring the statehood win in the prior referendum, which had 78.19% turnout, and a two-question format where a clear majority chose not to continue territorial status and a clear majority chose statehood as the new status.
> I suspect that Puerto Rico will eventually become a state, but it's politically difficult for that to happen without a clear mandate
There was a clear mandate after the 2012 status referendum. It is difficult when a majority of Congress doesn't want it to happen for reasons for mostly partisan political reasons, and will seize on any excuse to ignore thr clear desire to end the colonial relation.
Furthermore, the population is tiny. There are dozens of college footballs with better attendence. It doesn't make sense to give them two senators and a congressman.
If they really wanted to be part of state, lump it in with Hawaii.
I'd be fine giving them citizenship.
It is also becoming an issue in Hawaii, where relatively poor locals are priced out of housing by relatively rich mainland transplants. There are some Hawaiian activists who would prefer their island be independent, though I think unicorporated and have some form of commonwealth (like the Northern Marinaras) would be more realistic. In the end, sovereignty is a spectrum.
Our senate is undemocratic enough, where a state with 1/7th the population of California, viz. Wyoming, gets the same numbers of senators.
Guam, including resident military personnel, has 1/4 the population of Wyoming. Does it make sense to grant 160K people all the powers of full statehood? American Samoa has 1/3 the population of Guam, so two senators for slightly over 50K people. That's 84 times the per capita representation in the Senate.
The Pacific territories should really just become part of the state of Hawaii. They can have special status within the state, so their needs don't get ignored by the larger Hawaiian population.
That doesn't change the fact that the American three branch bicameral system has not aged well and is profoundly undemocratic by design.
The first restriction has now expired. It stated that prior to 1808, no amendment could give Congress the power to forbid the importation of slaves, and no amendment could establish or grant power to establish a direct ("capitation") tax.
The second restriction is still in force, but what it actually says is that "no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate".
So equal representation in the Senate could be abolished by an amendment, if every state ratified it (since that would satisfy the requirement of each state giving consent to "be deprived of its equal suffrage"). It's also arguable that the 17th Amendment -- which changed election of Senators to be by the people of each state rather than by the legislature of each state -- already violated this clause by causing the Senate to cease to represent the states.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+californ... https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+californ...
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1994/01/saving-samoans/
Since unincorporated territories are not meant to be thought of as the United States proper, provisions like birthright citizenship don't apply. I don't think all of the relevant claims have been litigated before the Supreme Court. Since the Insular Cases in the early 20th century, the Supreme Court has slowly walked back some of the distinctions. In addition, Congress has expressly granted many rights (such as citizenship, not mere nationality) to Puerto Rico, which is the substantial portion of the territories.
One complication is that, as the Declaration of Independence forcefully points out, the fundamental issue is the right of people to alter their government if they view it as destructive to inalienable, natural rights--and most of the people in these territories actually like the status quo political situation (cf. the several Puerto Rico status referendums which generally all signify a plurality preference for status quo, even if the legal viability of the status quo is questionable).
Now if only we could get citizens to follow suit.