Hi all,
anyone with our nationality?
me, italian, my wife, US citizen.
We just got a baby. What nationality should the baby be?
Also is it mandatory to have the US passport for him?
can't he just be italian?

thanks

Dual US/ITA.

Mine are triple CH/US/Canadian.

Tom

Our house US/Ireland, Japan/UN, and Japan/US. Apparently the cat will get a Swiss one.
Obviously seek legal advice from a lawyer, but I believe the US passport can be added much later - provided that you can demonstrate mom’s citizenship (shouldn’t be hard). EU citizenship seems more valuable to us. Wish that I had had Irish sooner to pass down to my daughter and eventually will try.

I'd say it's up to you. Do you travel to the States much? If so, then the US passport will make things easier in that respect.

If not, then you could leave it for the children to decide for themselves when they're older.

https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/le...f-a-us-citizen

Just because you don’t get them the passport, doesn’t mean they are not American.

No, but it does mean they don't necessarily have to claim that citizenship if they don't want to. They don't have to register the birth with the US embassy/consulate if they don't want to. As far as the rest of the world is concerned the child would only be Italian if that's what they opt to put on the birth certificate.

Unfortunately, if a person enters the USA on an Italian passport, but it is clear that they should have birthright citizenship through Mom, it may cause problems Entering the USA on a non- American passport when you are a citizen is a crime and you don't get to decide if you want to be an American citizen, you just are. But the baby can give it up at 18 years old before tax complicates life. However if you never travel to the USA, no need to hurry and get a passport.

is being eligible for US citizenship the same as being a US citizen?

Nope. My wife is eligible to become a US citizen but is not one.

If your child has a birthright to US citizenship (born on US soil, or has a parent who passed it on) he is a citizen whether you want it or not. But you can choose to not to declare the birth and certainly get away with it in many circumstances.

There is little doubt that assuming the American parent has lived for five years in the USA (or as a dependent of a USG employee assigned abroad) of which two are after 14th birthday, the child is in fact a U.S. citizen.

BUT -- there is a rebuttable presumption of alienage when birth is abroad. It is not the job of a border guard to know nationality law, which changed (by judgment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg) most recently on 12 June 2017 (Morales-Santana case discussed here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/u...g-gorsuch.html )

Nobody but the parent and child has standing to raise the issue unless the facts are uncontested. In real life, many such children are never registered with a U.S. consul and live their lives as aliens. Anytime in life they are free to assert U.S. nationality if they can prove the necessary facts. That could, but doesn't to my knowledge, create a retroactive liability to U.S. income tax.

Indeed, the grandson who lives with me is probably not a US citizen because his birth predates 1917 and his mother never lived in the USA except briefly 1971-1972. The question is whether she traveled to Canada so as never to have spent 365 uninterrupted days in the USA. She lived abroad with me from 1973 until 1993 as dependent of a US Government official, and subsequently in the UK where she was born (she has British and Swiss citizenship and renounced her US citizenship).

Who has standing to prove such cases? Here's an article by a US Vice Consul in Tijuana (preceding the 2017 case) on this: https://afsa.org/citizenship-and-unw...tune-geography

If confronted by an officious border guard, the best thing is to whisper "IVF" and refuse to discuss it further. Surrogacy cases especially create nationality problems.

My daughter never had issues even when she traveled with her son to the USA using her US passport and his UK passport. If you don't volunteer any information (as to which remember this: more people have been hanged for volunteering information than anything else -- think of the film "Let Him Have It") you should have no issues. Don't be browbeaten by a border guard who has only a partial understanding of nationality law.

In law that is impossible. She may be eligible to claim facts that are in doubt, but the only case where one is "eligible to become a US citizen but is not [yet] one" is where there is a question of paternity. Paternity must be resolved by age 18.

There are also cases of Tohono O'odonham Indians and ethnic Mexicans whose place of birth is in question. But in that case it's not "eligibility" but proof of facts.

As I wrote in my main posting, birth abroad yields a rebuttable presumption of alienage. Innumerable persons like your wife live their lives without ever being acknowledged as U.S. citizens even though they (often) are, from birth.

There is no legal obligation to register a birth with a U.S. consul. After age 5, the manner of proving citizenship is to apply for a passport and the question, with any proofs attached, will be forwarded to American Citizens Services in the State Department for resolution and not by the consul alone. If one doesn't agree with the State Department answer one can sue in the courts. Thus: Morales-Santana (he lost).