The citizenship rules are pretty clear in the U.S. Constitution. If you are born in the United States, you are a citizen.
If your parents are U.S. citizens, you are too at birth, even if you are born abroad. The caveats to this are few and far between, but none of them apply to families in which parents are abroad while serving the United States in the military or other federal posting.
But a new rule issued by the Trump Administration would place a big asterisk by the citizenship of some children born abroad to government workers and the military.
By law, in order for the children born abroad to U.S. citizens to automatically get citizenship, their parents must have lived in the United States for a minimum of five years. But this rule has always been relaxed for people in the military and federal agencies who are deployed abroad as part of their service.
The logic is simple: someone serving their country should not be punished for doing their duty if it takes them overseas.The Trump Administration has gone to great lengths to point out this rule wouldn't affect that many people. But at the heart of it, this is just another way the administration is trying to limit who gets to be an American based not on our laws and national values, but on the president's own racist and discriminatory ideas.
If we let this policy stand, we set a dangerous precedent that undermines the very idea of what it means to be an American. Sign the petition to demand that the US Customs and Immigration Service reverse this cruel policy.
