morpheus
Member
- Aug 15, 2008
- 86
- 13
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A lot of people keep ignoring what Abelian Sea and RetiredGySgt pointed out several times.
A person born abroad to at least one American parent, automatically becomes an American citizen by birth.
I have American citizen cousins born abroad (and they've lived most their lives abroad). There's some additional preconditions as Abelian Sea pointed out. The American parent must have lived in the US at some point. So, if any of you have a child that's born abroad, that child is an American national at birth, provided that you declare the child at your nearest US consulate (I would assume that for military personnel, the base does all the paperwork for you?).
Thus McCain is a naturally-born American citizen. Obama, having an American mother, would have been a naturally-born American regardless of where he was born: Hawaii, New Hampshire, Indonesia, Finland, Timbuktu, or Easter Island.
Being born on a military base is not the reason people become US citizens when born abroad. The United States tehcnically does not have legal sovereignty over the vast majority of US bases. These are -legally- US bases on foreign land, although I think that the Panama Canal Zone was considered US soil before the handover to Panama. But US bases in Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, Korea, etc, are on foreign soil. Even Guantanamo Bay is technically not US soil, which is why the Bush administration claimed it had found a loophole regarding how it can treat Guantanamo Bay prisoners (although the loophole was hogwash, because the Geneva Conventions still apply). Guantanamo Bay is on loan to the United States by 1903 treaty, but is still Cuban soil. Castro's government contests the legality of this treaty, but they've never done anything to retake the area after the 1959 revolution.
A person born abroad to at least one American parent, automatically becomes an American citizen by birth.
I have American citizen cousins born abroad (and they've lived most their lives abroad). There's some additional preconditions as Abelian Sea pointed out. The American parent must have lived in the US at some point. So, if any of you have a child that's born abroad, that child is an American national at birth, provided that you declare the child at your nearest US consulate (I would assume that for military personnel, the base does all the paperwork for you?).
Thus McCain is a naturally-born American citizen. Obama, having an American mother, would have been a naturally-born American regardless of where he was born: Hawaii, New Hampshire, Indonesia, Finland, Timbuktu, or Easter Island.
Being born on a military base is not the reason people become US citizens when born abroad. The United States tehcnically does not have legal sovereignty over the vast majority of US bases. These are -legally- US bases on foreign land, although I think that the Panama Canal Zone was considered US soil before the handover to Panama. But US bases in Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, Korea, etc, are on foreign soil. Even Guantanamo Bay is technically not US soil, which is why the Bush administration claimed it had found a loophole regarding how it can treat Guantanamo Bay prisoners (although the loophole was hogwash, because the Geneva Conventions still apply). Guantanamo Bay is on loan to the United States by 1903 treaty, but is still Cuban soil. Castro's government contests the legality of this treaty, but they've never done anything to retake the area after the 1959 revolution.
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