Child Citizenship

Child Citizenship

"MY husband and I have lived in the U.S. for 10 years. We are both American citizens and have been very grateful for our time here. Now we are returning to Ireland to start a family, and to reconnect with our own families. Will any children we give birth to have a claim to U.S. citizenship, should they ever need it?"

GOOD news there - your future children will automatically be U.S. citizens at birth.

As you and your husband are citizens, the requirement for passing on citizenship to children through derivation, as it's known, is as follows - for children born to married citizen parents on or after December 24, 1952, citizenship is transmitted provided that one parent had a prior residence in the U.S.

To obtain proof of a child's citizenship, a parent should notify the appropriate U.S. consular post abroad of the birth and apply for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA). This report, once obtained, entitles a child to apply for a Social Security number and a U.S. passport.

There are full details on the various embassy websites that the State Department maintains. The Dublin Embassy's address is http://dublin.usembassy.gov.

Reader Advice

LAST week's question came from a reader planning an imminent return to Ireland without the benefit of U.S. citizenship, even though the person was eligible to immediately apply for naturalization.

There's nothing like first hand experience to illustrate a point. Here's a response from a reader with a similar experience, and a happy ending:

"Just wanted to contact your column in response to the letter printed last week from the green card holder who was moving back to Ireland but contemplating U.S. citizenship. I had to write and urge this person that if at all possible to apply now and obtain your citizenship before you leave.

Myself and my husband made the same mistake when we moved back to Ireland after being green card holders for almost five years. We did not plan on coming back. However we obtained re-entry permits before we left just in case things didn't work out.

The permits allow you to remain out of the country for up to two years, and I have to say that all the time we were home we were regretting not having applied for our citizenship. We constantly felt under pressure that we were going to lose our green cards if we did not return in two years, and so, almost two years later we returned to New York as we realized we really wanted to obtain citizenship.

Had we not obtained re-entry permits we would not have been able to use our green cards to re-enter the country as we would have broken our residence without permission.

We returned to New York and after four years and one day we applied for our American citizenship. The whole application only took six months from the date we applied until our swearing in ceremony this month, and I have to say the interview was very quick and easy and all in all the whole experience at Federal Plaza was quite pleasant. This applies to both myself and my husband.

With this experience I felt compelled to contact the person in last week's column and say how quick the whole procedure was, and to say that it was very frustrating for me in Ireland thinking that I had almost compromised my green card, broken my continuous residence and had to begin my residency requirement again upon my return before I could apply.

So, please try and decide if you can wait six months. Myself and my husband are planning to return to Ireland next year, but at least we know now that we will always have peace of mind that we can return if we want."