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Comment by UncleEntity | Hacker News Reader

Yep, can run for president too as was determined when John McCain ran even though he was born in the Canal Zone.

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".

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We did have a governor appointed by the President. I believe it was considered a territory of the United States. We were part of a federal court circuit. I don’t think it was a lease. My understanding is that the Bunau-Varilla treaty gave the U.S. rights over the land in perpetuity but that this was not a lease. It was a weird entity though as all the land was owned by the Panama Canal Company or the military.

John McCain also had American parents, so he was a natural-born citizen anyhow.

I was looking up to see if that was true, and boy does it get complicated!

https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/citizenship-through-par...

The basic case (John McCain's case) is simple:

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.

My parents were citizens. They were born in Minnesota and later in life moved to Panama for work.

So, if both of my parents are US citizens, but not married, and I'm physically born in India(which doesn't have birthright citizenship) - am I a citizen of no country?

Assuming your mother has ever spent one continuous year within the US, you are a US citizen from birth.

Which is exactly why Obama qualified as a citizen regardless of where he was born. Since his parents were not legally married, only the mother's citizenship mattered.

If the mother is an American, it's not complicated. There are other cases, but the "both parents are American citizens" case is pretty straightforward.

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)

> If the mother is an American, it's not complicated. > Can we just assume that married men are the fathers of their wives' children? (yes)

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.

I would assume the same applies to straight parents who adopted, in fact I have a family member on my wife’s side who adopted from China.

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.

> John McCain also had American parents, so he was a natural-born citizen anyhow.

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...

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