Citizenship Change Will Affect a Handful, but the Backlash Is Fierce
Source: New York Times
Citizenship Change Will Affect a Handful, but the Backlash Is Fierce
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Aug. 29, 2019
WASHINGTON A new homeland security policy that will restrict the conferral of automatic citizenship for some children born abroad to active service members will affect only a handful of families each year, but the botched rollout of the policy this week incited a fierce backlash against President Trump, who has hailed himself as an advocate of veterans.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency released policy guidance on Wednesday that would make some parents serving abroad who adopted children or who had spent limited time in the United States apply for citizenship for children not born on American soil. Immigration lawyers and military groups predicted that for those families, citizenship would have to come through an onerous, expensive application process if it comes at all.
Some involved in the planning for the policy even delayed its unveiling for months because they were so opposed to it, according to government officials.
But the policy will probably affect fewer than 100 families at the moment and does not affect anyone born in the United States. Agency officials said an analysis of the past five years of applications showed that the change would apply to about 25 people a year.
That left some critics asking why bother, even as the hashtag #TrumpHatesMilitaryFamilies was trending Thursday on the presidents favorite communications channel, Twitter.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/us/politics/citizenship-service-members.html