Just think of the millions of sneaky infants who would try this ploy if the Pompeo were not so vigilant.
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My daughter was born in Peru. We were US citizens but because she was born less than five years after I became a US citizen, she was given a green card and after 5 years got her American passport. Why don’t they get their daughter a resident visa (green card) so she can travel? That shouldn’t be so hard! Also, she will never be able to run for President because she was not born in the USA.
I believe this child has the right to be an American citizen. I also believe that two intelligent men should have thought this through a bit more and gotten on a plane with their surrogate and had the child delivered in the US. Sure, they’d have to have paid the hospital bill, but there would have been no question as to the child’s citizenship.
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If children had rights and power to ask, how do we answer to questions like , why i cannot have a mothers care? where is mothers milk for me to drink? i do not support surrogacy. its against nature and human beings are just exploiting the technology.
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For an administration that calls itself pro family, their actions in this case, and others are anything but.
Heartless.
Cruel.
Absolutely inept.
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Republicans love children . . . until they’re born.
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The birth mother wasn’t American. The egg donor wasn’t American. The sperm donor wasn’t American. The only Americans involved in this enterprise were the people who put up the money. How American.
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Kind of like adopting a child from a foreign country, though, isn’t it?
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@Rick The sperm donor is one of the fathers and, although born in Britain, is an American citizen.
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@Steve Canale you have to be a citizen for at least 5 years before it’s transferrable
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Republicans, such amazing deep faith and believe in the sanctity of human life and family, but only when it meets their vary narrow definition. Anything one or situation that falls outside of their narrow definition, then sub-human and deserve no consideration; immigrants (children and families), poor children and families who need SNAP, medicare or health insurance, anyone not white or hetro, any child in this country in our underfunded public school systems.
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Idiocy. This is pure, unadulterated idiocy. If the parents were heterosexual, it’s possible there would be roadblocks, but fewer, as the parental relationship would not be in question; for that matter, a heterosexual couple wouldn’t have to be married.
It is time that this country updates such laws for a variety of issues; in this case, for both the orientation of the parents, and the adoption laws and how they apply in such cases. There are so many unwanted children out there - why make it so hard for the parent’s citizenship status to apply?
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Republicans, once again, showing their lack of family values. This is reprehensible, but not the least bit surprising.
This is MAGA!!
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Perhaps Melania's parents could become the Godparents. After all, they skated right in and became instant citizens.
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@C. Holmes no they didn’t. They’d lived in the US for over a decade.
I just looked at the state departments website and they have a new article 309a that contradicts the claims in your article. Unless I misunderstood. Here is a link : https://travel.state.gov/content/travel_old/en/legal-considerations/us-citizenship-laws-policies/citizenship-child-born-abroad.html
These laws actually protect people. The Times should have contextualized this situation in light of the more and more common practice of rich, white Americans (and other first worlders) going to impoverished third world countries and using cheap surrogates. Compassion for infertile couples should not blind people to the fact these practices can and will be abused. We need to keep or pass laws that make the abuse harder, not easier, to accomplish. Also, the assumption that a homosexual couple should, if they desire, have a child and raise it without the benefit of either a mother or father, is a degree of selfishness that should automatically disqualify them from parenthood.
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@Cold Eye
"...the assumption that a homosexual couple should... have a child... should automatically disqualify them from parenthood."
So your argument is not about immigration at all but instead that gay couples cannot be parents, ever. Just wanted to make that clear.
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Sarah Mervosh failed to include that the law does not extend to the offspring of the child who received citizenship at birth through an American parent, in this case, the father born in Britain. Had they done their due diligence they would have discovered as much.
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This is gratuitously crude and should be reversed.
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The U.S. also discriminates against children adopted abroad. I'm American. My husband and I have lived in South Africa for 15 years, and we recently adopted a baby girl. Because we adopted her here in South Africa, despite the country complying with all the Hague Convention rules on adoption, we can't directly apply for citizenship. We have to wait two years, apply for an immigration visa, move with her to the U.S. and then apply for citizenship. If we were living in the U.S. when we adopted her, she would have arrived with a U.S. passport.
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Infertile couples who cannot bear children and adopt internationally must jump through hoops to obtain citizenship for their foreign-born child. This case is little different. The biological father is a US citizen but lacks residency needed for the child to acquire citizenship. The non-biological father and other parents in the same situation should simply adopt, and the child will become a US citizen upon entering the US. This isn’t discrimination any more than requiring infertile couples to complete an international adoption according to The Hague Convention in order to establish US citizenship for the child. The surrogate is the biological mother, not some inanimate host. She willingly surrendered her parental rights but will always remain the biological mother who carried that child inside her for nine months.
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@Jan Allen. Wow so many incorrect assumptions in that first sentence. Many who adopt internationally are neither couples or infertile. And the only “hoop” they jump through is completing the adoption. Plenty of paperwork, but it’s about completing the adoption, not about hoops for citizenship. Single mother of 2 internationally adopted children, one under the “old” law (I had to apply for his citizenship) and one other the new law.
@Sharon Your response likewise contains inaccurate assumptions. I specifically cited infertile couples because their situation is most similar to the case of the married men detailed in the story. They are unable to conceive a child naturally as a couple and insist on the right to transmit citizenship based on the married US citizens rule in US Code. The requirements to establish citizenship through adoption are very specific. Failure to adhere to them means failure to establish citizenship.
in France, the surrogacy/citizenship problem is even more surreal.
1) Surrogacy is illegal in France.
2) French couples (straight or gay) who go to the US for surrogate births, wind up with American children who do not have French citizenship. (So at least there is no discrimination against gay parents.)
3) But worse, the French authorities don't even recognize the biological American children as the *children* of the French parent (because surrogacy is illegal!). (At least the US authorities recognize that the British child of the American couple *is* the child of the couple or at least the child of the biological father.)
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How hideous that they refer to the woman who donated the egg, the woman who carried it (one in the same), and the egg and sperm themselves as mere aspects of ‘reproductive technology’.
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@Thomas I notice that mainstream reporting on artificial reproductive technology increasingly erases the women involved. More and more you see phrases like "Jack and John had a baby."
And likewise the efforts to bypass the second-party adoption process, which at least forces the parties involved to acknowledge the biological parent before severing the child's connection to him or her and re-attaching it to the partner.
Because of marriage equality, law and culture must now pretend that there is no difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples when it comes to parentage. I understand the good intentions in that, but it seems to me an injustice to the child to completely erase half her biological origins as if they never existed. Even though I find the practice unethical, egg donors and surrogates should be honored more. It may be inconvenient for the adults to call them mothers, but to the child growing up wondering about her origins, that's exactly what they are.
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@Thomas, how is that different if a hetero couple had adopted a child? Would the biological mother have played any role in this debate? No. I fail to see the difference.
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. . . yet another reason to despise this administration.
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It's the pettiness of this administration that is so staggering. Is there no part of human life in the U.S. that they can not try to intrude their would-be theocracy, their cruelty?
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Are these laws only two years old? Did they not exist in other administrations?
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This is ridiculous. Aren’t adoptees from foreign countries considered citizens? Yes, they are. One of my children was born overseas and is still considered an American citizen. Children of American citizens are definitely citizens.
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@Rodin’s muse Parents adopting children overseas must complete the process according to US laws, the laws of the child’s home country, and The Hague Convention in order for the child to become a US citizen upon arrival in the US.
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I have friends that are going through the same thing. It's a law. They are a heterosexual couple.
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The state department is prosecuting anti-gay policy here.
If the child had been placed for international adoption, and to a gay parent or parents, the child would become a US citizen immediately upon arriving on US soil.... period.. full stop.
There is no reason for a selective double standard here... regardless of where you may fall on the personal view about a gay parent or parents adopting a child. In reality... surrogacy is no different as long as all national and international laws are followed.
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This is nothing less than cruel. Typical of this administration.
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I complain about the overly conservative Canadian government a lot but your federal government in the states is just crazy. it seems motivated by the crassest political considerations no matter the real cruelty that its positions perpetrate on people. It is so sad.
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@Greenfordanger typically so called compassionate Christians
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So let me get this straight... two US citizens have a baby overseas, albeit with some complexities to the conception, but their child is not accorded citizenship. Yet a couple here illegally (even if unmarried) can conceive as many children as they like, and each child automatically becomes a citizen under ridiculous birthright citizenship so long as he or she is born within the US border? Something is indeed very wrong here, and both situations need to be addressed with some radical change to our citizenship laws.
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@JAngelesThe use of the phrase "some complexities to the conception" is like the Squad saying that back on 9/11 something happened.
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@Rich Murphy, the "Squad" did not say anything of the kind. They are four individuals
One Congresswoman made a statement taken entirely out of context.
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Can the US citizen father file an immigrant visa petition on behalf of his daughter? Then upon receiving the visa, she can subsequently become a US citizen.
Bringing her to the US as a tourist was not a smart step since she will overstay her visa.
Get a sympathetic Congress person on board and push a special bill on behalf of the girl and other similar couples’ babies in the same situation
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@Peggy - the daughter is an immediate relative (child under 21). They can concurrently file an immigrant petition and application for adjustment of status. Doesn't matter that she came in as a tourist or if she overstays. She gets the green card and automatically becomes a citizen.
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I don't understand why the focus here is on why the "biology requirement" shouldn't apply. Who, if not Mr. Mize and Mr. Gregg, does the state department believe are Simone's biological parents?
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@Alfred The woman who supplied the egg? The woman who carried it? If, in fact, those two women are different persons.
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It is unknown because the name of the biological mother was not put on the birth certificate. There have to be some legal hurdles to ensure that children of unknown mothers abroad are not bought and sold.
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Did they not research this before deciding to have the baby born in a foreign country to a foreign citizen.
Maybe it’s just me but I always make sure to cross my T’s and dot my I’s, especially with grey areas like this. If I was really worried about my child’s future - I would have made sure they were born in the good ole USA. I feel like they were trying to make sure the babies had dual citizenship and miscalculated.
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@Chris That's a fair point, but they likely had other considerations to think about as well. As a British citizen, the surrogate would have the birth/hospital stay completely paid for there. Over here, she'd be uninsured and have to pay out of pocket (likely tens of thousands of dollars). Also, given the fact that, generally, the children of American citizens are automatically American citizens regardless of the place of birth, it's not so hard to imagine people not considering the possibility of such a logically bizarre exception.
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@Chris: The United States Constitution states that any child born to an American citizen is automatically a US Citizen no matter where born. The only caution is that said child has to legally accept US citizenship one it becomes an adult. The problem here is two fold. 1) For some reason they did not use the natural born US citizen as the father. 2) Neither the bio Father nor boi Mother may be able to prove that the test tube of sperm actually came from an American citizen. With the current makeup of the Supreme Court, I don't have much hope that a fair interpretation of the law will be made.
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"The children of American citizens are American citizens at birth."
Yes. That was the argument Ted Cruz made when he ran for president. He was born in Canada. One parent was an American citizen, one parent was not.
Tell me how this situation is different. Oh yeah, the parents are gay.
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And the cruelty continues. My heart aches for these families. Didn't the Republicans used to be the party of family values? Not that they ever really were; now they don't even pretend. Thank goodness these folks have good lawyers who are willing to fight for the rights of these parents and children. I wish them all the luck and happiness in the world.
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Another sparkling moment from our increasingly religious right led Government Departments … Trump talks one way on equal rights and secretly walks the other
I wish these families all the best … hoping their sacrifice yields positive outcomes
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Okay. Then where does one draw the line? Is there to be any line at all? Could adoption be a solution to the matter?
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