Can the U.S. Government Have Different Standards for Unwed U.S. Citizen Fathers and Mothers to Pass Their Citizenship to Foreign-Born Children?

UNITED States citizenship; UNITED States. Immigration & Nationality Act; CITIZENSHIP lawsuits; UNITED States politics & government; UNITED States. Supreme Court; UNITED States. Board of Immigration Appeals

In 1952, the U.S. Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which set out the U.S. citizenship requirements for a child with one American parent born out of wedlock on foreign soil. The child is automatically a U.S. citizen if the mother was an American who spent at least one continuous year on U.S. soil. If the child's father was American, then he would have to have spent at least 10 years on U.S. soil, five of which had to come after his fourteenth birthday. In 2011, Luis Ramon Morales-Santana filed a lawsuit challenging what he said was the discriminatory nature of these standards. His father was a U.S. citizen who had not lived in the United States long enough to meet the more stringent requirements for passing citizenship to his children. After the Board of Immigration Appeals denied his request for citizenship (which would have halted deportation proceedings following his felony conviction in 1995), the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed, saying that fathers should be held to the same standards as U.S. citizen mothers. The United States then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari on June 28, 2016. Heath Gershengorn has served as acting U.S. solicitor general since June 25, 2016. Prior to that, he worked as principal deputy solicitor general and deputy assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Division. The following is excerpted from the Brief for the Petitioner as submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on August 19, 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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