Dr. Tries to Renew His Passport, No Longer a Citizen

[kiminky]

Scary, frustrating story.


The Northern Virginia doctor was born in D.C. and given a U.S. birth certificate. At 61, he learned his citizenship was granted by mistake.

www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/11/25/virginia-doctor-passport-citizenship-nightmare/

[basilosaurus]

Well that's frightening.

[karinothing]

I should not have read the comments on that story. Poor man. Who knows if his father even know that his two-month temp job would have resulted in this outcome.

[mrsukyankee]

No one should lose their citizenship that way. No one. If you have been living here as a citizen for so many years, then it just should be granted. UGH!

[wawa]

Jesus what a mess. I'm really curious what kind of job his dad had for 2 months. What he actually doing direct diplomatic mission stuff, or nah?

[aurora]

I read that yesterday and was floored. Who could possibly think it's a good idea to make someone stateless after 61 years through no fault of their own? I hope they are able to resolve it quickly.

[Susie]

I read that article in WaPo yesterday and was blown.  It sounded like they just declined to renew the passport and suggested a website to apply for a green card?  wtf?  What complete, asinine, inhuman indifference.  This is a BFD!

[sent]

How did they even figure this out at this point? Maybe there is some new algorithm that looks at all the births at the Walter Reid hospital to diplomats from certain countries and his birth now shows up when their computers run the search.

I really hope his elected reps are able to resolve this quickly for him.

[wanderingback]

Would anyone be able to gift this article?

[ECB]

Nov 27, 2023 11:02:42 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Would anyone be able to gift this article?

Hopefully this works?  wapo.st/47O1B2m

[penguingrrl]

That's a terrifying story. That poor man.

[fryjack2]

This seems like a case where some governmental someone steps in ASAP and gives the man back his US passport, social security number, and citizenship.

I also 100% believe that if he were the son of an Englishman or Australian, and not Iranian, this would not be happening.

[mcsangel2]

I don't even understand why the statement dept says he shouldn't have been granted citizenship. Regardless of the circumstances that his parents were here under, he was BORN HERE. Our current laws say that automatically makes him a citizen!

[wanderingback]

Nov 27, 2023 11:04:00 GMT -5 ECB said:

Nov 27, 2023 11:02:42 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Would anyone be able to gift this article?

Hopefully this works?  wapo.st/47O1B2m

Thank you!

[karinothing]

Nov 27, 2023 11:38:55 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

I don't even understand why the statement dept says he shouldn't have been granted citizenship. Regardless of the circumstances that his parents were here under, he was BORN HERE. Our current laws say that automatically makes him a citizen!

Children born in the United States to accredited foreign diplomatic officers do not acquire citizenship under the 14th Amendment since they are not “born . . . subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”[2]

www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-o-chapter-3

[wawa]

Nov 27, 2023 11:38:55 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

I don't even understand why the statement dept says he shouldn't have been granted citizenship. Regardless of the circumstances that his parents were here under, he was BORN HERE. Our current laws say that automatically makes him a citizen!

they don't, if his father was actually in a full on diplomatic role. 


www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-o-chapter-3#footnote-3

Foreign diplomats enjoy certain immunities under international law. The spouse and child of a diplomat generally enjoy similar immunities. Children born in the United States to accredited foreign diplomatic officers do not acquire citizenship under the 14th Amendment since they are not “born . . . subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”[2]

which is why I'm curious what his father's actual job was, because not every person employed by an embassy is a full on diplomatic officer.

[bcv513]

Nov 27, 2023 11:28:56 GMT -5 fryjack2 said:

This seems like a case where some governmental someone steps in ASAP and gives the man back his US passport, social security number, and citizenship.

I also 100% believe that if he were the son of an Englishman or Australian, and not Iranian, this would not be happening.

Not necessarily. Something similar happened to my mom when she tried to renew her passport this last time. She also got a letter saying that she wasn't a citizen. She was born in Spain while my grandfather was serving in the military. Apparently the issue was that she was born in a regular hospital in Madrid and not on a military base. Her birth certificate is in Spanish, so even though she was born to two US citizens, according to the government she wasn't a citizen. It ended up taking almost two years to fix. At first she was sent to the Spanish embassy, but they only help Spanish citizens. Eventually her Senator had to call the State Department to sort things out. But in the meantime Social Security flagged her as a fraud and stopped her payments, and her Medicare lapsed. 

[wawa]

Nov 27, 2023 11:50:22 GMT -5 bcv513 said:

Nov 27, 2023 11:28:56 GMT -5 fryjack2 said:

This seems like a case where some governmental someone steps in ASAP and gives the man back his US passport, social security number, and citizenship.

I also 100% believe that if he were the son of an Englishman or Australian, and not Iranian, this would not be happening.

Not necessarily. Something similar happened to my mom when she tried to renew her passport this last time. She also got a letter saying that she wasn't a citizen. She was born in Spain while my grandfather was serving in the military. Apparently the issue was that she was born in a regular hospital in Madrid and not on a military base. Her birth certificate is in Spanish, so even though she was born to two US citizens, according to the government she wasn't a citizen. It ended up taking almost two years to fix. At first she was sent to the Spanish embassy, but they only help Spanish citizens. Eventually her Senator had to call the State Department to sort things out. But in the meantime Social Security flagged her as a fraud and stopped her payments, and her Medicare lapsed. 

greatest country in the world!

[karinothing]

The article says he is stateless. Does that mean he is not a citizen of Iran? I was a bit confused on that (not that I think he should go to Iran I just wasn't sure about the stateless part)

[jinkies]

Nov 27, 2023 11:38:55 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

I don't even understand why the statement dept says he shouldn't have been granted citizenship. Regardless of the circumstances that his parents were here under, he was BORN HERE. Our current laws say that automatically makes him a citizen!

From the article, this does not apply to children of diplomats since they are not subject to US jurisdiction, which is the wording of the 14th amendment: 


The U.S. government didn’t take away Sobhani’s citizenship because of anything he did. The letter points to a bureaucratic reason: Those born in the United States to parents who have diplomatic immunity do not acquire U.S. citizenship at birth.



“As a member of your parent’s household at the time of your birth, you also enjoyed full diplomatic immunity from the jurisdiction of the United States,” reads the letter. “As such, you were born not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Therefore, you did not acquire U.S. citizenship at birth.”


Relevant US policy: www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-o-chapter-3  

Having said that, I have no idea how they suddenly found out what his dad's occupation was 62 years ago. Is that on the passport renewal form? It's been a while, I can't remember. 

[wawa]

Nov 27, 2023 11:55:24 GMT -5 karinothing said:

The article says he is stateless. Does that mean he is not a citizen of Iran? I was a bit confused on that (not that I think he should go to Iran I just wasn't sure about the stateless part)

I would imagine if he never obtained any citizenship documents in iran (and why would they have if he had a US birth certificate/passport and they went to Turkey instead of back to Iran)), he would have a hell of time getting them now since he can't go there.  If he can prove his father's iranian citizenship at the time of his birth i think that means he's a legal Iranian citizen, but we don't have an embassy here for Iran, and he can't leave the country without a passport to go there, or even to go somewhere with a full embassy who can help him get a passport.  And if his family is on dissident lists in Iran, then Iran is certainly not going to go out of their way to help him.


This isn't that unusual.  There's millions of stateless people.  It's a terrible problem. 

[audette]

Nov 27, 2023 11:50:22 GMT -5 bcv513 said:

Nov 27, 2023 11:28:56 GMT -5 fryjack2 said:

This seems like a case where some governmental someone steps in ASAP and gives the man back his US passport, social security number, and citizenship.

I also 100% believe that if he were the son of an Englishman or Australian, and not Iranian, this would not be happening.

Not necessarily. Something similar happened to my mom when she tried to renew her passport this last time. She also got a letter saying that she wasn't a citizen. She was born in Spain while my grandfather was serving in the military. Apparently the issue was that she was born in a regular hospital in Madrid and not on a military base. Her birth certificate is in Spanish, so even though she was born to two US citizens, according to the government she wasn't a citizen. It ended up taking almost two years to fix. At first she was sent to the Spanish embassy, but they only help Spanish citizens. Eventually her Senator had to call the State Department to sort things out. But in the meantime Social Security flagged her as a fraud and stopped her payments, and her Medicare lapsed. 

I know another person that had similar fun with having been born abroad to US parents.  His Dad was stationed in Germany, and my buddy was born there at a local hospital.  Buddy has a German birth certificate.  And the parents _thought_ they had filed the appropriate paperwork needed for reporting the birth abroad.


Buddy learned they had not in his last year of ROTC in college, as he was gearing up to get commissioned in the (US) Army...  _After_ serving in the Army as an enlisted soldier, and returning to school.  You can't be a commissioned officer without citizenship (but you can enlist without US Citizenship), so that had to get resolved...  Thankfully, for my buddy, his mom was still around and able to answer the needful questions, and the buddy had it sorted out with the state department quickly (couple weeks, basically).

[Pom]

No words. JFC.

[wanderingback]

Ugh how fucked up. I Hope it gets resolved quickly.

[sonrisa]

Nov 27, 2023 11:48:09 GMT -5 wawa said:

Nov 27, 2023 11:38:55 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

I don't even understand why the statement dept says he shouldn't have been granted citizenship. Regardless of the circumstances that his parents were here under, he was BORN HERE. Our current laws say that automatically makes him a citizen!

they don't, if his father was actually in a full on diplomatic role. 


www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-o-chapter-3#footnote-3

Foreign diplomats enjoy certain immunities under international law. The spouse and child of a diplomat generally enjoy similar immunities. Children born in the United States to accredited foreign diplomatic officers do not acquire citizenship under the 14th Amendment since they are not “born . . . subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”[2]

which is why I'm curious what his father's actual job was, because not every person employed by an embassy is a full on diplomatic officer.

It's not about his father's job - it's about his father's status/visa. And it isn't just diplomats whose children aren't citizens if born on US soil. The same is true of cruise ship / shipping company employees on shore leave and other very specific types of entry and visas/status. 

20 years ago, this is something where he could contact his congress person and have them tack a rider onto a bill granting him citizenship (possibly retroactive to birth, maybe just from that date - there is precedent for it.) But with Congress in its current state of disarray, that would become a political football the right would happily vote down.

[sonrisa]

Nov 27, 2023 11:55:24 GMT -5 karinothing said:

The article says he is stateless. Does that mean he is not a citizen of Iran? I was a bit confused on that (not that I think he should go to Iran I just wasn't sure about the stateless part)

Not every country grants citizenship to children of citizens born abroad, especially if the child never lives in the country (or not for long enough) or the kid doesn't claim it by a certain age or within X years of turning 18. I lost one of my citizenships at 18 for lack of residency).  Plus, his birth would have been during the previous regime. That could complicate things if Iran changed their citizenship laws in the interim.

If he says he's stateless, he may very well be. A lot of people in the world are. Not every country grants citizenship to people by virtue of being born there, and others only pass citizenship through mothers, or only fathers, or political turmoil, or their country revokes their citizenship (which sort of happened here - although in this case he never had it, unlike the examples above), or other reasons.

[wawa]

Nov 27, 2023 14:41:07 GMT -5 sonrisa said:

Nov 27, 2023 11:48:09 GMT -5 wawa said:

they don't, if his father was actually in a full on diplomatic role. 


www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-o-chapter-3#footnote-3
which is why I'm curious what his father's actual job was, because not every person employed by an embassy is a full on diplomatic officer.

It's not about his father's job - it's about his visa. And it isn't just diplomats whose children aren't citizens if born on US soil. The same is true of cruise ship / shipping company employees on shore leave and other very specific types of entry and visas/entry status. 

20 years ago, this is something where he would contact his congress person and have them tack a rider onto a bill granting him citizenship (possibly retroactive to birth, maybe just from that date). (there is precedent for it.) But with Congress in its current state of disarray, that would become a political football the right would happily vote down.

that's not what anything I've read today indicates?  I am 10000000% not an expert, this is just today's google hole of choice, so can you point me at info on the visa thing?  specifically also shipping company visas?

Everything I've seen says it's specific to "not being subject to US rule/jurisdiction" (whatever the the wording of the 14th amendment is), so I assumed it would only apply to those with actual diplomatic immunity.  And not everybody who works in an embassy has that. The janitor still has to pay his speeding tickets.  Or am I misunderstanding that?  

[sonrisa]

Nov 27, 2023 14:54:11 GMT -5 wawa said:

Nov 27, 2023 14:41:07 GMT -5 sonrisa said:

It's not about his father's job - it's about his visa. And it isn't just diplomats whose children aren't citizens if born on US soil. The same is true of cruise ship / shipping company employees on shore leave and other very specific types of entry and visas/entry status. 

20 years ago, this is something where he would contact his congress person and have them tack a rider onto a bill granting him citizenship (possibly retroactive to birth, maybe just from that date). (there is precedent for it.) But with Congress in its current state of disarray, that would become a political football the right would happily vote down.

that's not what anything I've read today indicates?  I am 10000000% not an expert, this is just today's google hole of choice, so can you point me at info on the visa thing?  specifically also shipping company visas?

Everything I've seen says it's specific to "not being subject to US rule/jurisdiction" (whatever the the wording of the 14th amendment is), so I assumed it would only apply to those with actual diplomatic immunity.  And not everybody who works in an embassy has that. The janitor still has to pay his speeding tickets.  Or am I misunderstanding that?  

Honestly, google wouldn't give me a quick citation to why kids born to someone on a D visa don't get citizenship, either. But I can tell you [section redacted] that it was one of the rare exceptions we had to memorize.

I think C visa, too, but can't remember (that's for transitioning through the US - like a passenger who gets off a cruise and needs to board a plan or whatever). I don't have my immigration law stuff handy right now or I'd try to pull up the relevant regulation or case

[wawa]

thanks sonrisa

[wawa]

Ok...this is where I'm getting my strong impression that exactly what his role was at the embassy is relevant.

www.ecfr.gov/current/title-8/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-101/section-101.3

Person born to foreign diplomat —

(1) Status of person. A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States, as a matter of international law, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. That person is not a United States citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Such a person may be considered a lawful permanent resident at birth.

(2) Definition of foreign diplomatic officer. Foreign diplomatic officer means a person listed in the State Department Diplomatic List, also known as the Blue List. It includes ambassadors, ministers, chargés d'affaires, counselors, secretaries and attachés of embassies and legations as well as members of the Delegation of the Commission of the European Communities. The term also includes individuals with comparable diplomatic status and immunities who are accredited to the United Nations or to the Organization of American States, and other individuals who are also accorded comparable diplomatic status.

(b) Child born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. A child born in the United States is born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and is a United States citizen if the parent is not a “foreign diplomatic officer” as defined in paragraph (a)(2) of this section. This includes, for example, a child born in the United States to one of the following foreign government officials or employees:

(1) Employees of foreign diplomatic missions whose names appear in the State Department list entitled “Employees of Diplomatic Missions Not Printed in the Diplomatic List,” also known as the White List; employees of foreign diplomatic missions accredited to the United Nations or the Organization of American States; or foreign diplomats accredited to other foreign states. The majority of these individuals enjoy certain diplomatic immunities, but they are not “foreign diplomatic officers” as defined in paragraph (a)(2) of this section. The immunities, if any, of their family members are derived from the status of the employees or diplomats.

One would think what they did here involved cross referencing the dad's name to the 1961 Blue List, but bureaucrat are gonna bureaucrat*, and people make mistakes, so they may have just gone by some box checked somewhere that said his dad was employed by the embassy even if he wasn't on the blue list and this is all a stupid stupid mistake.  Or his dad was in fact a fancy ass attache for two entire months and this is actually correct.  I don't fucking know, but the fact that he doesn't either makes this all very confusing.


*bureaucrat is a stupid damn word to spell.  I tried like 6 times and spellcheck couldn't even suggest something to me.  It kept saying bearcat!  that's not even a thing!  I had to google it. Can I get a spellcheck as smart as google when it comes to guessing what I was trying to type?