posted by [identity profile] lili-beth.livejournal.com at 11:30am on 12/02/2009
I love it even more when these questions come from left field, not students or professors looking for the oddball thing (so they can write a paper)!

The answer to both your questions, I believe, is no. Father came to the US as a laborer to work on building the railroad and somehow became a citizen despite the exclusionary laws. Mom stayed in China.

I suspect the son was never declared a citizen - that they just never knew to jump through the hoops. And now he wants to travel back to China one last time, and can't because he's not recognized by either country.

It would be great if you have ideas; my only idea is to tell them to start petitioning for a private law to have him declared a citizen after all these years.

(Congratulations about Colorado! I hope you can make it your last move, and that you land right where you and your family want to be!)
 
posted by [identity profile] ste-noni.livejournal.com at 12:38pm on 12/02/2009
Well, if there was a way, he would need to file an N-600 with USCIS. I used to adjudicate those petitions when I worked there so I'm fairly familiar with them.

I can't find my nifty chart here at work - it's a very hard issue to research because you have to use the law in place at the time of birth and those laws aren't usually in the books anymore. (Maybe not hard for a legal librarian, but always super frustrating for me.)

Anyway, I will go home and double check but I suspect that either both parents had to be USCs before the guy was 18 or some variation on that (like if his mom died or the parents were divorced or something). If the guy is 84, that means he was born around 1925, right?

My immigration law professor was a stateless person for a while. His parents were of Japanese descent but were US citizens. He was born in Japan but somehow, because his parents weren't citizens, he was not one either. He came here when he was very young and was stateless until he was maybe 3 or 4.
 
posted by (anonymous) at 01:31pm on 12/02/2009
Nope, still hard for a law librarian to research 1925 (he may have said he was born in 1924) laws considering the Federal Register didn't come into being until 1936.

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