8/28/19
(Reuters) - Some children born to U.S. citizens stationed abroad as government employees or members of the U.S. military will no longer qualify for automatic American citizenship under a policy change unveiled on Wednesday by the Trump administration. Effective Oct. 29, certain parents serving overseas in the U.S. armed forces or other agencies of the federal government must go through a formal application process seeking U.S. citizenship on their children’s behalf by their 18th birthday, the policy states. Currently, children born to U.S. citizens stationed by their government in a foreign country are legally considered to be “residing in the United States,” thus allowing their parents to simply obtain a certificate showing their children acquired citizenship automatically. But in an 11-page “policy alert,” the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency said it found the prevailing rules contradictory and at odds with other parts of federal immigration law and State Department procedures. Beyond that, the rationale for the policy revision remained unclear.
“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” Tennessee-based attorney Martin Lester, who chairs the military assistance program for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told Reuters. But the change could conceivably give Trump room to argue that his administration curtailed birthright benefits that a citizen with little or no actual U.S. residency can automatically confer to their foreign-born offspring. The new policy, which is not retroactive, sparked immediate consternation on the part of some organizations representing members of the armed forces. “Military members already have enough to deal with, and the last thing that they should have to do when stationed overseas is go through hoops to ensure their children are U.S. citizens,” said Andy Blevins, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America. He urged Congress to take action to address the situation to “ensure our military families don’t suffer the consequences of a reckless administration.”