Citizenship of the United States


Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails citizens with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, such as freedom of expression, due process, the rights to vote, live and work in the United States, and to receive federal assistance.
There are two primary sources of citizenship: birthright citizenship, in which persons born within the territorial limits of the United States are presumed to be a citizen, or—providing certain other requirements are met—born abroad to a United States citizen parent, and naturalization, a process in which an eligible legal immigrant applies for citizenship and is accepted. The first of these two pathways to citizenship is specified in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution which reads:
The second is provided for in U.S. law. In Article One of the Constitution, the power to establish a "uniform rule of naturalization" is granted explicitly to Congress.
United States law permits multiple citizenship. Citizens of other countries who are naturalized as United States citizens may retain their previous citizenship, although they must renounce allegiance to the other country. A United States citizen retains United States citizenship when becoming the citizen of another country, should that country's laws allow it. United States citizenship can be renounced by Americans via a formal procedure at a United States embassy.
National citizenship signifies membership in the country as a whole; state citizenship, in contrast, signifies a relation between a person and a particular state and has application generally limited to domestic matters. State citizenship may affect tax decisions, eligibility for some state-provided benefits such as higher education, and eligibility for state political posts such as United States senator. At the time of the American Civil War, state citizenship was a source of significant contention between the Union and the seceding Southern states.

Rights, duties, and benefits

Rights

  • Freedom to reside and work. United States citizens have the right to reside and work in the United States. Certain non-citizens, such as lawful permanent residents, have similar rights; however, non-citizens, unlike citizens, may have the right taken away. For example, they may be deported if convicted of a serious crime.
  • Freedom to enter and leave the United States. United States citizens have the right to enter and leave the United States freely. Certain non-citizens, such as permanent residents, have similar rights. Unlike permanent residents, United States citizens do not have an obligation to maintain residence in the United States – they can leave for any length of time and return freely at any time.
  • Voting for federal office in all fifty states and the District of Columbia is restricted to citizens only. States are not required to extend the franchise to all citizens: for example, several states bar citizen felons from voting, even after they have completed any custodial sentence. The United States Constitution bars states from restricting citizens from voting on grounds of race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex, failure to pay any tax, or age. Historically, many states and local jurisdictions have allowed non-citizens to vote; however, today this is limited to local elections in very few places. Citizens are not compelled to vote.
  • Freedom to stand for public office. The United States Constitution requires that all members of the United States House of Representatives have been citizens for seven years, and that all senators have been citizens for nine years, before taking office. Most states have similar requirements: for example California requires that legislators have been citizens for three years, and the Governor has been a citizen for five years, upon taking office. The United States Constitution requires that one be "a natural born Citizen" and a United States resident for fourteen years in order to be president of the United States or vice president of the United States. The Constitution also stipulates that otherwise eligible citizens must meet certain age requirements for these offices.
  • Right to apply for federal employment. Many federal government jobs require applicants to have United States citizenship. United States citizens can apply for federal employment within a government agency or department.

    Duties

  • Jury duty is only imposed upon citizens. Jury duty may be considered the "sole differential obligation" between non-citizens and citizens; the federal and state courts "uniformly exclude non-citizens from jury pools today, and with the exception of a few states in the past, this has always been the case".
  • Military participation is not currently required in the United States, but a policy of conscription of men has been in place at various times in American history, most recently during the Vietnam War. Currently, the United States Armed Forces are a professional all-volunteer force, although both male United States citizens and male non-citizen permanent residents are required to register with the Selective Service System and may be called up in the event of a future draft. Johns Hopkins University political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg writes, "The professional military has limited the need for citizen soldiers".
  • Taxes. In the United States today, everyone except those whose income is derived from tax-exempt revenue is required to file a federal income tax return. U.S. citizens are subject to federal income tax on worldwide income regardless of their country of residence.

    Benefits

  • Consular protection outside the United States. While traveling abroad, if a person is arrested or detained by foreign authorities, the person can request to speak to somebody from the United States Embassy or Consulate. Consular officials can provide resources for Americans incarcerated abroad, such as a list of local attorneys who speak English. The United States government may even intervene on the person's behalf. Non-citizen United States nationals also have this benefit.
  • Increased ability to sponsor relatives living abroad. Several types of immigrant visas require that the person requesting the visa be directly related to a United States citizen. Having United States citizenship facilitates the granting of IR and F visas to family members.
  • Transmission of United States citizenship to children born abroad. Generally, children born to two United States citizen parents abroad are automatically United States citizens at birth. When the parents are one United States citizen and one non-United States citizen, certain conditions about the United States citizen's parent's length of time spent in the United States need to be met. Non-citizen United States nationals also have an analogous benefit.
  • Protection from deportation. Naturalized United States citizens are no longer considered aliens and cannot be placed into deportation proceedings.
  • Other benefits. The USCIS sometimes honors the achievements of naturalized United States citizens. The Outstanding American by Choice Award was created by the USCIS to recognize the outstanding achievements of naturalized United States citizens, and past recipients include author Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize; Indra K. Nooyi who was CEO of PepsiCo; John Shalikashvili who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and others. Further, citizenship status can affect which country an athlete can compete as a member of in competitions such as the Olympics.

    Civic participation

is not required in the United States. There is no requirement to attend town meetings, belong to a political party, or vote in elections. However, a benefit of naturalization is the ability to "participate fully in the civic life of the country". Moreover, to be a citizen means to be vitally important to politics and not ignored. There is disagreement about whether popular lack of involvement in politics is helpful or harmful.
Vanderbilt professor Dana D. Nelson suggests that most Americans merely vote for president every four years, and sees this pattern as undemocratic. In her book Bad for Democracy, Nelson argues that declining citizen participation in politics is unhealthy for long term prospects for democracy.
However, writers such as Robert D. Kaplan in The Atlantic see benefits to non-involvement; he wrote "the very indifference of most people allows for a calm and healthy political climate". Kaplan elaborated: "Apathy, after all, often means that the political situation is healthy enough to be ignored. The last thing America needs is more voters—particularly badly educated and alienated ones—with a passion for politics". He argued that civic participation, in itself, is not always a sufficient condition to bring good outcomes, and pointed to authoritarian societies such as Singapore which prospered because it had "relative safety from corruption, from breach of contract, from property expropriation, and from bureaucratic inefficiency".

Dual citizenship

A person who is considered a citizen by more than one nation has dual citizenship. It is possible for a United States citizen to have dual citizenship; this can be achieved in various ways, such as by birth in the United States to a parent who is a citizen of a foreign country, by birth in another country to a parent who is/are a United States citizen/s, or by having parents who are citizens of different countries. Anyone who becomes a naturalized United States citizen is required to renounce any prior "allegiance" to other countries during the naturalization ceremony.
The State Department states that "A United States citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to his or her United States citizenship."
The earliest recorded instances of dual citizenship began before the French Revolution when the British captured American ships and forced them back to Europe. The British Crown considered subjects from the United States as British by birth and forced them to fight in the Napoleonic Wars.
Under certain circumstances there are relevant distinctions between dual citizens who hold a "substantial contact" with a country, for example by holding a passport or by residing in the country for a certain period of time, and those who do not. For example, under the Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2008, United States citizens in general are subject to an expatriation tax if they give up United States citizenship, but there are exceptions for those who are either under age upon giving up United States citizenship and have lived in the United States for less than ten years in their lives, or who are dual citizens by birth residing in their other country of citizenship at the time of giving up United States citizenship and have lived in the United States for less than ten out of the past fifteen years. Similarly, the United States considers holders of a foreign passport to have a substantial contact with the country that issued the passport, which may preclude security clearance.
United States citizens are required by federal law to identify themselves with a United States passport, not with any other foreign passport, when entering or leaving the United States. The Supreme Court case of Afroyim v. Rusk, declared that a United States citizen did not lose his citizenship by voting in an election in a foreign country, or by acquiring foreign citizenship, if they did not intend to lose United States citizenship. United States citizens who have dual citizenship do not lose their United States citizenship unless they renounce it officially.