Child Citizenship Act Expands Acquired Citizenship

IMMIGRATION LAW & POLICY

Naturalization and Citizenship

CHILD CITIZENSHIP ACT EXPANDS ACQUIRED CITIZENSHIP
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 14, No. 7, Nov. 28, 2000

The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA), which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on Oct. 30, 2000, liberalizes in several ways the requirements that must be met for children born abroad to acquire United States citizenship. The act allows immigrant children who are adopted by a U.S. citizen parent to automatically become citizens when certain conditions are met. In addition, the act relaxes the requirements for derivative naturalization, allowing children with two non-U.S. citizen parents to automatically naturalize when just one of the parents naturalizes, as long as certain conditions are met. The act also amends the grounds of inadmissibility, the statutory bars to good moral character, and certain criminal statutes in order to protect individuals who falsely claimed U.S. citizenship or voted in an election, if they reasonably believed that they were in fact U.S. citizens.

The CCA provides that a child born outside the U.S. automatically becomes a U.S. citizen when all of the following conditions are fulfilled: (1) at least one parent of the child is a U.S. citizen, whether by birth or naturalization; (2) the child is under 18 years of age; and (3) the child is residing in the U.S. in the legal and physical custody of the citizen parent pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence.

This provision expands the ways in which requirements for derivative naturalization can be met. Under current law a child with two noncitizen parents automatically naturalizes only if both parents naturalize, unless the parent who did not naturalize is dead or is legally separated from the naturalizing parent or is the father of a child born out of wedlock for whom paternity has not been established by legitimation.

Under the new law, children who are adopted by a U.S. citizen parent can meet the citizen parent requirement for acquiring citizenship if they also meet the requirements for adopted children contained in paragraph (E), (F), or (G) of section 101(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Paragraph (E) requires that a child reside for a period of two years in the legal custody of the adopted parent and that the adoption take place before the child reaches age 16 (in the case of the adoption of siblings, the older sibling must be adopted before reaching age 18; see "INS Issues Instructions on New Law Allowing Immigration of Older Adopted Siblings," Immigrants' Rights Update, June 6, 2000, p. 2). Paragraph (F) applies to children who are considered "orphans" because of the death or disappearance of, abandonment by, or separation from one or both parents. Orphans must be adopted abroad before reaching age 16 (age 18 for older siblings). Paragraph (G) was added to the INA by the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000, enacted on Oct. 6, 2000 (106 Pub. L. 279, 114 Stat. 825). This paragraph recognizes adoptions conducted pursuant to the Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. It applies both to children who have been adopted in foreign countries signatory to the convention and to children emigrating to be adopted in the U.S. In either case, an immediate relative visa petition must have been filed on the child's behalf before he or she reached age 16.

Under the CCA, adopted children who arrive in the U.S. as lawful permanent residents (LPRs), as is generally the case with orphan adoptees, will automatically become U.S. citizens upon arrival. U.S. citizen parents who adopt undocumented children in the United States will still have to petition for LPR status for their children before they can become citizens, but if they obtain LPR status before reaching age 18 they will obtain citizenship at the same time. Children who are admitted to the U.S. in a lawful status may also be able to apply for a certificate of citizenship under another provision of the new law, discussed below.

Under the CCA, a U.S. citizen parent can apply for a certificate of citizenship for a child born abroad who does not meet the above-listed requirements for automatically acquiring U.S. citizenship if the following conditions have been met: (1) at least one parent is a U.S. citizen; (2) the citizen parent has been physically present in the U.S. or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years and at least two of which were after the parent reached 14 years of age; (3) the child is under 18; and (4) the child is residing outside the U.S. in the legal and physical custody of the citizen parent, is temporarily present in the U.S. pursuant to a lawful admission, and is maintaining such lawful status. Again, adopted children may be naturalized under this provision if they meet the requirements set forth in INA section 101(b)(1).

The act establishes exceptions to a number of the civil and criminal penalties imposed by the INA for making false claims to U.S. citizenship or voting in U.S. elections. These exceptions are available to individuals whose parents are citizens, who permanently resided in the U.S. before they turned 16, and who reasonably believed they were U.S. citizens at the time they represented themselves or acted as U.S. citizens. The penalties to which these exceptions apply include (1) the bars to establishing good moral character for individuals who make false statements or claims of citizenship, or who register to vote or vote in an election in violation of law; (2) the grounds of inadmissibility for unlawful voting and for falsely claiming citizenship; (3) the grounds of deportability for unlawful voting and for falsely claiming citizenship; and (4) criminal penalties for unlawfully voting in a federal election (18 U.S.C. § 611) and for making a false claim to citizenship (18 U.S.C. § 1015).

The act's provisions regarding acquisition of citizenship are to take effect 120 days after the law's enactment (i.e., on Feb. 27, 2001), and the provisions apply to individuals who meet the act's requirements as of that date. The act's amendments of criminal and immigration penalties for false citizenship claims apply as if they were included in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

Child Citizenship Act of 2000, 106 Pub. L. 395, 114 Stat. 1631 (Oct. 30, 2000).