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In United States law, an organic act is an act of the United States Congress that establishes a territory of the United States and specifies how it is to be governed, or an agency to manage certain federal lands. In the absence of an organic law a territory is classified as unorganized.
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Guam is an island in the Marianas archipelago of the Northern Pacific located between Japan and New Guinea on a north–south axis and Hawaii and the Philippines on an east–west axis. Inhabitants were Spanish nationals from 1521 until the Spanish–American War of 1898, from which point they derived their nationality from United States law. Nationality is the legal means in which inhabitants acquire formal membership in a nation without regard to its governance type. In addition to being United States nationals, people born in Guam are both citizens of the United States and citizens of Guam. Citizenship is the relationship between the government and the governed, the rights and obligations that each owes the other, once one has become a member of a nation. Though the Constitution of the United States recognizes both national and state citizenship as a means of accessing rights, Guam's history as a territory has created both confusion over the status of its nationals and citizenship and controversy because of distinctions between jurisdictions of the United States.
References
- 1 2 Rogers, Robert F. (1995). Destiny's Landfall: A History of Guam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. p. 242.
- ↑ Dookhan, Isaac (1994). A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. Kingston: Canoe Press. p. 293.
- ↑ Fojas, Camilla (2014). Islands of Empire: Pop Culture and U.S. Power. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. p. 171.
- ↑ Leibowitz, Arnold H. (1989). Defining Status: A Comprehensive Analysis of United States Territorial Relations. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 272.
- ↑ O'Connor, John (June 30, 2020). "GovGuam-wide 2019 audit report delayed". The Guam Daily Post . Retrieved June 3, 2021.
