[bdesimone]

Citizenship is already weird. My wife and I both being born in the US, we are tri-citizens and our descendants will also have tri-citizenship in perpetuity.

It would have been quad-citizenship if Norway allowed for multiple passports.

[davidw]

> our descendants

You can't pass on your US citizenship unless you have lived in the US for N years, with N being 5, IIRC.

[desdiv]

Any child born on US soil is a automatically a US citizen according to the Fourteenth Amendment. Even the children of illegal immigrants and tourists automatically gain US citizenship at birth.

[tzs]

> Any child born on US soil is a automatically a US citizen according to the Fourteenth Amendment

I wonder how this interacts with 8 USC 1401(b)? That says:

   The following shall be nationals and citizens of the
   United States at birth:
   ...
   (b) a person born in the United States to a member of an
   Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal tribe: Provided,
   That the granting of citizenship under this subsection shall
   not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of such
   person to tribal or other property;

The 14th says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside". Shouldn't that make the "Provided, [...]" part of 1401(b) not be effective?

I suppose that 1401(b) would still be meaningful in the case where someone is born in the United States to an Indian, Eskimo, etc., but is not considered to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States for some reason. Then the 14th would not grant them citizenship, but 1401(b) would as long as that did not impair their tribal rights.

That raises the question of when someone can be born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

[schoen]

I think you might be reading the "provided" differently than the drafter intended. I think you're parsing "provided" as meaning "so long as" or "only when". I think the drafter intended for it to mean "additionally".

I realize that "provided that" in common speech more often means "so long as" or "only when", but "provided, that" or "provided: that" in statutory text could be read as simply introducing an additional and slightly indepedendent statutory provision. I think the comma is significant here for encouraging this reading.

[tzs]

Ahh...that sounds right, and looking at how provided is used elsewhere in 1401 it fits.

[schoen]

I think the parent commenter knew that, but assumed that the original commenter doesn't currently live in the U.S. If that's the case, getting U.S. citizenship for their descendents could require a more difficult and expensive trip to give birth inside the U.S.

[davidw]

Yes, exactly:

> our descendants will also have tri-citizenship in perpetuity

is probably wrong. If the descendants never reside in the US, they won't be able to pass on the citizenship to their own children unless they traveled to the US just to give birth.

[schoen]

You could do it by going to the U.S. to give birth, assuming that the other countries of citizenship didn't then deny it to the children as a result.