He's Not Your Real Dad: In United States v. Flores-Villar, the Ninth Circuit Erroneously Denied Equal Protection That Would Enable a Father to Transmit United States Citizenship to His Foreign-Born Child
![handle is hein.journals/creigh45 and id is 593 raw text is: HE'S NOT YOUR REAL DAD: IN UNITED
STATES V. FLORES-VILLAR, THE NINTH
CIRCUIT ERRONEOUSLY DENIED EQUAL
PROTECTION THAT WOULD ENABLE A FATHER
TO TRANSMIT UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP TO
HIS FOREIGN-BORN CHILD
I. INTRODUCTION
The Nationality Act of 19401 (the 1940 Act) was a joint attempt
by Congress and the Franklin Roosevelt Administration to revise and
compile the citizenship statutes of the United States into a unified,
comprehensive code of law.2 In addition to the scattered nature of
U.S. nationality statutes prior to its enactment, one of the contribut-
ing factors to the development of the 1940 Act was the lack of statu-
tory provisions concerning the nationality of inhabitants of U.S.
outlying possessions.3 Furthermore, the large number of foreign na-
tionals giving birth on U.S. soil and then taking those children back to
their home countries, as well as similar cases of American nationals
who gave birth abroad, increased the likelihood of dual-nationality
children.4 Finally, citizenship status was not always clear for those
born in unincorporated territories or for those born abroad to Ameri-
can nationals, neither of whose citizenship was governed by the Four-
teenth Amendment.5 The 1940 Act, most prominently section 201(g),
proposed a variety of solutions to these problems.6
Section 201(g) provided that a child born abroad to mixed-citizen-
ship parents became a citizen at birth if, inter alia, the citizen parent
resided in the United States for ten years prior to the child's birth, at
1. Pub. L. No. 76-853, 54 Stat. 1137.
2. See STAFF OF H. COMM. ON IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION, 76TH CONG., NA-
TIONALITY LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES: MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES, LETTER OF SUBMITTAL, at v (1939) [hereinafter PROPOSED CODE] (attributing
composition of the draft Code to a committee of representatives of the Departments of
State, Justice, and Labor, so designated by President Roosevelt's executive order).
3. See id. (explaining rationales behind the development of the draft Nationality
Act of 1940).
4. See id. (explaining the phenomenon of dual-nationality children, or those hav-
ing citizenship both in the United States and in some other country).
5. See id. (noting that the Fourteenth Amendment governed the citizenship of
persons born in the United States and its incorporated territories). The Fourteenth
Amendment provides U.S. citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. U.S. CONST. amend. XIV.
6. See id. at vi (listing section 201(g) first among the most important changes
proposed).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/creigh45&div=24&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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