How can a US Citizen lose citizenship? I recall reading that it is very difficult to lose U.S. citizenship. For example, that you can pledge alliance to another country and still remain a U.S. citizen. Is this true? If this is the case, what are the circumstances in which a US Citizen can lose citizenship?
A list of potentially expatriating acts may be found at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/Advice-about-Possible-Loss-of-US-Nationality-Dual-Nationality.html As the page explains, one will lose one's citizenship when performing one of these acts with the intention of losing one's US citizenship. In most cases, the presumption is that such intention does not exist. One obvious exception is an explicit renunciation of citizenship before a consular officer. The others are accepting a &quot;policy-level position&quot; in a foreign government, serving in a foreign military engaged in hostilities with the US, and committing treason.
Does this person have witnesses to his existence? Particularly before the age of five? Under 8 U.S. Code § 1401, native-born citizens include a person of unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to his attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in the United States; If he appears out of nowhere, he is likely to be suspect of illegal immigration. Age may be a factor there, too.
[C]an this decision really be used as legal precedent for birthright citizenship for tourists and illegal immigrants? Yes. If the case did not depend on the fact that they were lawfully resident in the US, then it would apply to those who are not lawfully present in the US. For the case to apply to some people but not others, there must be a distinguishing difference that is relevant to the analysis of the case. The question then is whether lawful residence is a distinguishing difference here, and it seems that no court has ruled on the question. Referring to current events, it would be possible for the executive branch to assert that the 14th amendment does not grant citizenship to one born in the US of parents who were not lawfully present. This would end up in court. For example, such a person could sue to compel the government to issue a passport, or, if the government sought to deport such a person, the person could assert US citizenship in deportation proceedings. At that point, the court would have to rule on the question, whereupon it would almost certainly rule that the 14th amendment does grant such citizenship. See, for example, Plyler v. Doe, in which the court ruled that illegal immigrants in a state are within its jurisdiction for the purpose of the equal protection clause. It would be odd indeed for the court to rule that the same word means something different in the previous sentence. Furthermore, in a footnote, the court writes [W]e have had occasion to examine the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that &quot;[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. . . .&quot; ... [N]o plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment &quot;jurisdiction&quot; can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful. You ask: [H]ow is it that foreign diplomats' children born in United States do not have birthright to US citizenship because they are not &quot;subject to the jurisdiction thereof&quot; and children of tourists and illegal immigrants do have the birthright to US citizenship? Consider what happens when an illegal immigrant commits a crime in the territory of a US state: the person is subject to trial and punishment in the state's criminal justice system. A foreign diplomat who commits a crime, on the other hand, or indeed the child or other family member of a foreign diplomat, is immune from prosecution. That is what distinguishes diplomats from illegal aliens such that the first sentence of the 14th amendment applies to the latter, but not the former.
The State Department is mischaracterizing the law, which requires only that the US citizen &quot;bear&quot; a valid US passport, not that the US citizen &quot;use&quot; the passport. This law, 8 USC 1185(b), used to have a fairly stiff penalty, and it used to apply only in time of war. When the wartime element was removed in 1978, so was the penalty. It now reads Except as otherwise provided by the President and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may authorize and prescribe, it shall be unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid United States passport. If a US citizen attempts to leave the US without a valid US passport, there is a very small chance that the departure could be prevented by a CBP officer, but in the normal course of affairs the traveler would not even encounter a CBP officer, so the possibility is very remote indeed. There is nothing, however, that prevents a US citizen who also holds a passport issued by another country from using the other passport while also carrying a valid US passport. See also What is the penalty for US citizens entering/leaving the US on a foreign passport? at Travel and Can someone be penalized for an &quot;unlawful&quot; act if no penalty is specified? on this site.
At time of answering, the question is: What's the most crucial issue when deciding Senator Cruz's citizenship? The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, Section 1, states: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States[.] Cruz did not go through a naturalization process. He was also not born within the territorial limits of the US. If either of those facts were different, those would be the crucial issue. Since they are not, we then look to the Naturalization Act of 1790, passed by the first Congress, which states that children born to citizen parents outside the United States are also citizens, specifically: The children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens[.] (emphasis added) According to the Wikipedia article and/or sources it cites, this is the only legislation to use the phrase "natural born citizens" and it seems clear this is intended to refer to Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution which states a requirement: No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States. (emphasis added) The 1790 Act was repealed and replaced in 1795, but the new law also contained the language (lacking "natural born"): The children of citizens of the United States, born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States[.] The specific laws have been further changed, as the naturalization process has, reintroducing ambiguity about the "natural born" requirement, but birthright citizenship from parents is not in question and the "natural born" aspect is not in this question. So, to answer the question directly, the most crucial issue is: Were Cruz's parents citizens when Cruz was born? Cruz's Wikipedia page says his father was not naturalized until later, but his mother was born in Wilmington, DE, which is in the United States, and so unless she renounced her citizenship she would have been a US citizen at the time of Cruz's birth. This means there's a crucial issue: Did Cruz's mother renounce her US citizenship before Cruz was born? "Kaithar" commented on this answer with speculation that she voted in a Canadian election at a time (1947-1977) when Canada didn't recognize dual citizenship in that it required its own citizens to give that up if they acquired foreign citizenship; "user102008" refutes that. However, if we don't want to end this issue-identifying answer at that question, let's assume the answer is "no" and that Cruz's mother was a US citizen when Cruz was born. Then we have to see if birthright citizenship from parents extends to Cruz. For this, we can look to Public Law 414 (66 Stat. 236), passed June 27, 1952, especially section 301(a)(7): The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: [&hellip;] A person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years: Provided, That any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States by such citizen parent may be included in computing the physical presence requirements of this paragraph. Side note: Section (4) (modern (d)) would matter if Cruz's father were considered a noncitizen national of the US, slightly relaxing the requirements so that the mother only had to spend only one continuous year in the US prior to the birth. The armed forces exemption was broadened Nov. 6, 1966 to cover the parent (or their parent's) nonmilitary employment by the US government or certain international organizations. If that's relevant, this answer can be edited to expand on this point. Section 309 of that law addresses children born out of wedlock, and says that section 301(a)(7) (quoted above) applies directly as if the parents were married, "if the paternity of such child is established while such child is under the age of twenty-one years by legitimation." To the best of my knowledge, section 301(a)(7) applies to Cruz. If I were wrong on that, we'd look to Section 309(c): A person born, after December 23, 1952, outside the United States and out of wedlock shall be held to have acquired at birth the nationality status of his mother, if the mother had the nationality of the United States at the time of such person’s birth, and if the mother had previously been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year. The equivalent of the first quote today is in 8 U.S. Code § 1401(g) if parents are married at the time of a child's birth, replacing "ten years, at least five" with "five years, at least two" (Nov. 14, 1986; see Section 12 in this law). The quote from 309(c) is now 8 U.S. Code § 1409(c). So then the crucial question is: Did Cruz's mother spent the requisite period of time in the US before Cruz was born? Apparently she did, regardless of marital status, and if that's true it means Ted Cruz is a US citizen and has been since at least birth*. Again, the "natural born" aspect is omitted from this now-answered question. The answer to the question you meant to ask (perhaps "What's the most crucial issue when deciding if Senator Cruz's citizenship makes him eligible for the Presidency?") is "What does the phrase 'natural born citizen' mean in context of Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution?" (*) Which may mean that he hasn't been a citizen his whole life, using a Cruz definition for when life begins. That's a separate discussion, though, and not very relevant to this one.
There are two models for citizenship, by location of birth and by the nationality of the parent. The US chiefly follows the first model, which is why only your grandma's father is American, and your grandma is not. By the same logic, you are not. Countries like Spain are far more lenient, and do allow you to request Spanish citizenship if you can show any of your direct ancestors are Spanish. That's possible because each country can make its own laws within reason. The international norm is that everybody should get at least a citizenship at birth; statelessness should not happen.
I know of no specific provision of the Constitution that would forbid it. I know of no court case in which it has been found unconstitutional. There's no "irony" clause in the Constitution. Taxation without representation may have been a grievance, but there's no inherent reason why the framers would have had to forbid it. US citizens do still have the "freedom to expatriate" (and avoid taxation) if they renounce their citizenship. There are already other examples of "taxation without representation" in US law (e.g. District of Columbia), which also have not been found unconstitutional in court, as far as I know. In many cases, expatriates can still vote for federal offices, including Congress (e.g. in a state where they used to live, or where a parent used to live). See https://www.fvap.gov/citizen-voter/registration-ballots. The Sixteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to "lay and collect taxes" with few limitations. There is certainly no explicit exception for expatriates. As far as I can tell, it would be constitutional if Congress were to impose an income tax on everybody in the world, regardless of residency or citizenship; it would just be hard to enforce.
There are certain requirements of Statehood according to the Montevideo Convention on Statehood of 1933, which is just a codification of international customary law: a permanent population; a defined territory; government; and capacity to enter into relations with the other states. Is it "legal" to buy a piece of land and claim it to be another country than before(either inventing a new one or migrating it to an already existing one)? According to international law, it is. Sure. But just because you say something is the case, doesn't mean it is. Always. Sometimes it is. But for present purposes, let's say that if you found an uninhabited island and said that you were a country, that wouldn't be the case - nor if you bought it from a man living on it. If you found some land that belonged to another country and decided to claim it as that of an existing country, then it would depend on the specific circumstances. That's exactly what happened to the Krim island in the Ukraine(now Russia maybe?), right? I don't think so. As far as I know, the annexation of territory isn't considered sale. In any case, the ownership of this land is still under dispute. So, if it's possible without the influence of these international institutions, trying this in an area with their influence would be easier, right? If trying this means declaring some land you have purchased to be a new sovereign state Nope. You probably still don't meet the requirements for statehood. If trying this means the acquisition of some land by an existing sovereign state Maybe. Probably not. The Montevideo Convention requires that statehood not be gained through force; while member states' interests may be greater where they are more invested, the requirements for acquisition of territory are the same no matter where you are. What would prevent me from creating my own nation? Money, defensibility, recognition, the fact that you probably don't own any land that you "buy" (depending on the jurisdiction and real estate system), the fact that you generally can't unilaterally declare yourself a sovereign state.