Hacker News Reader

Comment by braindead_in | Hacker News Reader

"These include people who have never set foot in the United States in their entire lives... "

Can you elaborate on that? It sounds a bit incredulous.

One can be a US citizen without ever having been in the US. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_nationality_law#T...

Being granted US citizenship when born abroad to an American parent is an enormous benefit.

If you don't want the citizenship, all you have to do is renounce it.

The article seems to imply that renouncing citizenship isn't that easy; particularly, they will still want you to pay back taxes.

I imagine that if you were born abroad you might not realize that you ever need to submit any tax documents to the US, and then I'm pretty sure they will want to collect money before allowing you to renounce.

Renouncing citizenship is not unilateral in the US, unlike some countries. The US state department has to agree to it. And you have to realize that you have to do it, of course.

I agree that the law is there for a good reason, obviously. but it can lead to people having US citizenship without even realizing they have it.

I imagine they're referring to the fact that a person born to parents with U.S. citizenship is also a U.S. citizen, whether they ask to be or not, and whether they were born abroad or not.

Just US citizens. FYI a person can be credulous, meaning gullible, and a claim can be incredible, meaning hard to believe, but I'm not even sure incredulous is a word.

Incredulous is basically the opposite of credulous. It totally is a word, though the grandparent used it incorrectly.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/incredulous

Reply on news.ycombinator.com