Huffington Post: "Whoops! The Department of Justice Admits That It Misunderstood U.S. Citizenship Law"

The US government has been misinterpreting certain citizenship statutes since 2008 and has consequently been incorrectly ordering US citizens deported, reports Laura Murray-Tjan, the Director of the Federal Immigration Appeals Project. The Department of Justice (DOJ) admitted their mistake in a recent decision saying that they "misread" the legal requirements for legitimation. Murray-Tjan writes:

The DOJ's error involved what is known as "derivative citizenship." If a parent naturalizes while a child is under 18, the child automatically becomes a citizen, if some other conditions are met. For example, if a father naturalizes, his out-of-wedlock children must be "legitimated" to derive citizenship.

This recent DOJ decision overturned an immigration judge's order to remove (i.e., deport) Oshane Shaneil Cross, a twenty-six-year-old man who was born out of wedlock in Jamaica to parents who were not American citizens at the time. Cross had been arrested for burglary in Connecticut and argued that he became a US citizen when his father naturalized. The immigration judge, however, said that Cross had never been legitimated under Jamaican law because his biological parents never married. In response, the decision clarified that "a person born abroad to unmarried parents can qualify as a legitimated 'child'...if he or she was born in a country or State that has eliminated all legal distinctions between children based on the marital status of their parents or has a residence or domicile in such a country or State[.]" This was true in Cross's case as Jamaica had passed a law in 1976 that eliminated legal distinctions between children born to married and unmarried parents.

What about those already deported? Murray-Tjan asks. "Will the DOJ communicate its error to affected individuals? How? When?...Will the government make any effort to identify them and bring them home?"

USCIS to Honor Veterans During Naturalization Ceremonies

In honor of Veterans Day, US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) is celebrating service members, military spouses, and veterans becoming US citizens by taking the Oath of Allegiance at naturalization ceremonies across the country from November 7th through the 14th. More than 3,000 will become new citizens at nearly forty naturalization ceremonies. USCIS reports that since September 2002 more than 102,000 service members, including those serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, and Germany, have naturalized.

USCIS Director León Rodríguez, who yesterday administered the Oath of Allegiance and presented candidates for naturalization at a ceremony at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia, stated: “'On Veterans Day, we honor the men and women who have pledged to defend our nation, as we cherish the freedoms we enjoy because of the sacrifices of our service members, and their families...Today, we honor those who pledged to defend our nation before they were even citizens of our nation.'”

The USCIS fact sheet explains that special provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) authorize USCIS to expedite the naturalization process for current members of the US armed forces and recently discharged members as well as spouses. 

Immigrants generally must be US citizens or Green Card holders to enlist in the military, but last year Representative Jeff Denham proposed under the ENLIST Act to amend the US military code to allow young undocumented immigrants who arrived in this country by age fifteen to serve in the armed forces in exchange for legal status and a path to citizenship. When he tried earlier this year to introduce †his measure as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, it was struck down.

Most recently, after announcing the military would allow young immigrants in the US under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to join through the specialized program called Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MANVI), the Pentagon has put this program on hold.

It's unclear if President Obama's long-promised executive action on immigration reform will include a path to citizenship through the military for the undocumented.

USCIS has invited users to share photos of new citizens on Twitter under the hashtag #newUScitizen (which along with today's new citizens includes a photo of actor Jonny Lee Miller becoming a citizen as well as an one-hundred-year-old woman who become a citizen earlier this year).

New York Times: "The Immigrant Advantage"

Immigrants born abroad who later acquire US citizenship have a distinct advantage as compared to native-born Americans, Anand Giridharadas writes, including higher earnings on average, higher rates of marriage and lower rates of divorce, more stable careers, and less instances of poverty. He notes:

What’s interesting about so many of America’s immigrants is how they manage to plug instincts cultivated in other places into the system here. Many are trained in their homelands to behave as though the state will do nothing for them, and in America they reap the advantages of being self-starters.

Mr. Giridharadas first observed this phenomenon when reporting for his book, The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, about the shooting of a Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh, Raisuddin Bhuiyan, by Mark Stroman in a 9/11 revenge attack that killed two other immigrants and blinded Mr. Bhuiyan in one eye.

Mr. Bhuiyan realized that he was among the lucky Americans. Even after the attack, he was able to pick up and remake himself, climbing from that minimart to waiting tables at an Olive Garden to six-figure I.T. jobs. But Mr. Bhuiyan also saw the America that created Mr. Stroman, in which a battered working class was suffering from a dearth of work, community and hope, with many people failing to form strong bonds and filling the void with escapist chemicals, looping endlessly between prison and freedom.

The article is here.

The Wall Street Journal: "Why I Chose the Red, White and Blue"

Author and journalist Philip Delves Broughton writes in the Wall Street Journal on his decision to become a United States citizen:

I had been told that the 2013 model of U.S. citizenship was the lemon on the international lot. The Internal Revenue Service would have its claws into me for life. The jihadists would mark me as a demon of the Great Satan. Canada and Australia were more welcoming. Europe has a stronger social safety net. Asia has more economic opportunities. What was I thinking?...

I could simply have renewed my green card. But it no longer seemed enough, either in terms of rights or responsibilities. I was receiving the privilege of living here on the cheap.

And so he became a citizen at a ceremony conducted by the "89-year-old federal judge, Ellen Bree Burns, and an official from the Department of Homeland Security wearing a Stars and Stripes necktie." There was also a flag flown over the Capitol to mark the occasion.