File No. 130/508a.
[Untitled]
Washington , July 27, 1914 .
To the Diplomatic and Consular Officers of the United States in China and Turkey.
Gentlemen: The Department’s attention has been drawn of late, through applications for passports and registration in consulates, to the question of the citizenship of persons born in China and Turkey, whose fathers were also born therein and claimed American citizenship under the provision of Section 1993 of the Revised Statutes of the United States but had never resided in the United States.
Sections 1992 and 1993 of the Revised Statutes of the United States read as follows:
Sec. 1992. All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States.
Sec. 1993. All children heretofore 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 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.
The provision of section 1992 is similar to the following provision of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, so far as it applies to native citizens:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
It is obvious that persons of the class mentioned can not claim American citizenship under the provision of section 1993 of the Revised Statutes, since their fathers had never resided in the United [Page 16] States when such persons were born. Moreover, the Department considers that these persons were not born citizens of the united States under the provision of section 1992 of the Revised Statutes or the provision of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution just quoted, which, in the Department’s opinion, are applicable only to cases of persons actually born within the territory and jurisdiction of the United States. Consequently the Department holds that persons of the class mentioned are not citizens of the United States, even though their fathers may have resided in American communities and submitted themselves to the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the United States. Therefore, such persons are not entitled to the protection of this Government.
It is important to observe that this ruling is contrary to the ruling of the Department set forth in the instruction No. 22, of August 9, 1887, to the Consul at Smyrna, Turkey, (Foreign Relations of the United States for 1887, page 1125: Moore’s International Law Digest vol. 3, pp. 287–288), and to the similar ruling contained in the Department’s instruction No. 28, of January 6, 1888, to the Consul-General at Apia, Samoa, (Moore’s International Law Digest, vol. 3, pp. 288–289).
A copy of the opinion of the Solicitor, dated June 22, 1914, in the case of Ben Zion Lilienthal is appended hereto.9
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