Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 3, 1888, Part I

No. 388.
Mr. Bayard to Mr. Vignaud.

Department of State,
Washington, June 7, 1888.

No. 341.]

Sir: Your dispatch No. 610, of the 25th ultimo, relative to the cir cum stances under which a qualified passport was issued to Mr. Asché, has been received.

Paragraph 173 and Form 11 of the Consular Regulations of 1881 were superseded in 1885, as far as the legations were concerned, by section 131 of the printed personal instructions to diplomatic officers, which omits any reference to qualified passports.

I am, etc.,

T. F. Bayard.

[Inclosure.—Paragraph 131 of personal instructions.]

It is provided by law that “all children born or hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or may be at the time of their birth citizens thereof, are to be declared to be citizens of the United States; but the rights of citizenship shall not descend to children whose fathers never resided in the United States.” That the citizenship of the father descends to the children born to him when abroad is a generally acknowledged principle of international law.