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To: Nero Germanicus; All

Speaking as a woman, that age thing seems terribly unfair. Was there ever a Supreme Court test case? Of course the men only was even more unfair, as a hundred years ago, paternity was a lot harder to prove than maternity before DNA testing existed.


75 posted on 09/25/2015 5:29:44 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: gleeaikin

Which ever parent is the United States citizen has to have been present in the United States for five years after the age of 14, that could be the male parent or the female parent.


76 posted on 09/25/2015 5:39:17 PM PDT by Nero Germanicus
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To: gleeaikin
Speaking as a woman, that age thing seems terribly unfair. Was there ever a Supreme Court test case?

It's not clear what about the age-residency requirement you find objectionable. Congress is determining under what conditions a child born abroad is granted citizenship at birth. Requiring the U.S. parent (of of "mixed" nationality couple) to have spent a stated amount of time in the U.S. after that person has attained what might be called an "age of reason" (high school age) seems related to the goal of assuring the child has a parent who has a grasp of the meaning of U.S. citizenship.

This particular element of the law has not, to my knowledge, been challenged. But in related contexts, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld challenges to post-citizenship residency requirements (Rogers v. Bellei (1971)) and to rules for out-of-wedlock births which make citizenship for the child more stringent when the U.S. parent is a male than when the parent is female. (Nguyen v. INS (2001)).

83 posted on 09/26/2015 6:23:42 AM PDT by CpnHook
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