Safe Havens

(B)  Acquired Citizenship.  The person may have acquired citizenship at birth from his or her parents if one or both natural parents was a United States citizen at the time s/he was born, even if s/he was born outside the United States.[2]

[2] See INA § § 301(c), (d), (e) & (g), 301a, 303, 8 U.S.C. § § 1401(c), (d), (e), & (g), 1401a, 1403; and INA § 309, 8 U.S.C. § 1409 (child born out of wedlock).  The formulae for determining the citizenship of the child of one or more parents, who were U.S. citizens when the child was born, are described in I. Kurzban, Kurzban’s Immigration Law Sourcebook 775 (2004); Swanson, Challenging Alienage – Is Your Client a U.S. Citizen, Appendix 9-A, in K. Brady, california criminal law and immigration (2004).  Other sources with more information on citizenship include Naturalization: A Guide for Community Advocates (ILRC, 1663 Mission St., Suite 603, San Francisco CA 94103); D. Levy, U.S. Citizenship and Naturalization Handbook (West Group 2000); B. Hing, Handling Immigration Cases (Federal Publications); National Lawyers Guild, Immigration Law and Defense (West Publishing 2002); the multi-volume Mailman, et al., Immigration Law and Procedure (Matthew Bender 2002); Mautino, Acquisition of United States Citizenship, Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 1 (January 2001).  It is also possible that the defendant’s grandparents were U.S. citizens, thus transmitting U.S. citizenship to the defendant’s parents, who in turn transmitted it to the child.  Ibid.