Any green card holder or asylum applicant can tell you—getting into the U.S. isn’t easy. It requires a great deal of patience, knowledge, and preparation in order to get into the U.S. To attain citizenship, however, requires even greater measures of patience and preparation. While many people are just fine living their lives as permanent residents, the immigrants who become naturalized citizens have often only done so through incredible effort and long waiting periods.

Unless, of course, you are an infant.

Babies born under certain conditions can receive automatic citizenship regardless of their parents’ citizenship. Other babies can receive automatic citizenship regardless of where they are born. The legal terms for both of these conditions are jus solis and jus sanguinis.

Jus Solis: Birthright Citizenship

One way that a child can be born an American is by jus solis, which is Latin for “right of soil.” Under jus solis, an infant acquires citizenship by sole virtue of the place they were born. This is also known as “birthright citizenship.” For example, anyone who is born in a U.S. state or U.S. territory like Guam, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands will be regarded as a citizen.

Citizenship is provided without any conditions, and the citizenship of the parents cannot be used to justify denying citizenship to the child. The child will have the specific rights, duties, and privileges of any other citizen, including welfare benefits and protection under the Constitution.

Jus Sanguinis: Citizenship by Parentage

A person can also become an American citizen by jus sanguinis, or “right of blood.” A person who invokes jus sanguinis in order to claim U.S. citizenship is someone who was born on foreign soil to at least one parent with U.S. citizenship. For instance, if your parents were U.S. citizens living in France when you were born, you would be considered a U.S. citizen, with all the rights and privileges that it implies (even if French law also recognized your right to declare yourself a citizen of France). The idea is that, by having American parentage, you would have the right to claim your citizenship by virtue of descent, no matter where you were born.

Though jus sanguinis references “blood,” this same legal principle applies to adoption cases, where a child from a different country is lawfully adopted into a family of American citizens. Through adoption, that child becomes a legal U.S. citizen through jus sanguinis.

The Grandparent Rule of U.S. Citizenship

What if a child was born to American parents who died before the child was able to enter the States? Would the child’s citizenship be revoked? To answer this question, we’ll examine “the grandparent rule.”

If the parents of a child are dead and at least one grandparent is an American citizen, the child has the right to obtain citizenship through his or her grandparents. Normally, this involves an application process and an interview with the child's guardian. If your child was born to American parents in a foreign nation and you want your child to claim their right to naturalized citizenship, you would need to claim it before they turn 18. Should you be unable to do that, their grandparents would need to do so before they turn 18.

If you have any questions regarding the citizenship of your children, whether you are a foreign national who had a child in the U.S. or you’re a U.S. citizen who had a child on foreign soil, speak with an immigrant attorney as soon as possible.

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