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Is Everyone Born in the United States an American Citizen?
Transcript of the above video:
As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing birthright citizenship in the United States.
There are some common misconceptions with respect to how citizenship works and I am not going to get into things involving the insular jurisdictions like American Samoa for example or some of the places like Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands or US Virgin Islands, some of the US territories, as there are some specific rules with respect to birthright citizenship and US citizenship, with respect to those specific jurisdictions; I am not going into that. We are talking about the 50 US states. The contiguous 48 states as well as Hawaii and Alaska specifically.
So “If someone is born in America, are they always a US citizen?” That is a question that some folks don’t really understand. In point of fact, probably 99.5% of the time, the answer is “yes”, but there are exceptions to that rule. Quoting directly from USCIS.gov, “A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States is not subject to the jurisdiction of United States law. Therefore that person cannot be considered a US citizen at birth under the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution. This person may however be considered a permanent resident at birth and able to receive a Green Card through creation of record”.
So the thing to take away from this video, in point of fact “NO”, not everyone born in the United States, is necessarily a US citizen; again, minus the insular jurisdictions where that may also be true but for very different reasons usually historically, sort of anomalous circumstances. But with respect to the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution, Diplomats pursuant to the Vienna Convention are not subject to US law in that way and for that reason, the children of those kinds of folks, don’t go ahead and just have US citizenship attached to them at birth. So it is sort of an interesting caveat but in point of fact, not everyone born in the United States is necessarily a US citizen.