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Long title | An Act to revise and codify the nationality laws of the United States into a comprehensive nationality code. |
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Enacted by | the 76th United States Congress |
Effective | October 14, 1940 |
Citations | |
Public law | Pub. L. Tooltip Public Law (United States) 76–853 |
Statutes at Large | 54 Stat. 1137, Chap. 876 |
Legislative history | |
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The Nationality Act of 1940 (H.R. 9980; Pub.L. 76-853; 54 Stat. 1137) revised numerous provisions of law relating to American citizenship and naturalization. It was enacted by the 76th Congress of the United States and signed into law on October 14, 1940, a year after World War II had begun in Europe, but before the U.S. entered the war.
The law revised "the existing nationality laws of the U.S. into a more complete nationality code"; it defined those persons who were "eligible for citizenship through birth or naturalization" and clarified "the status of individuals and their children born or residing in the continental U.S., its territories such as Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Philippines, Panama and the Canal Zone, or abroad." [1] The law furthermore defined who was not eligible for citizenship, and how citizenship could be lost or terminated. This legislation represents the first attempt ever made, since the founding of the United States, to codify and unify all of the U.S. laws relating to nationality and naturalization. [2]
This act was superseded by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and by later acts of Congress and executive orders.
The law is divided into several chapters, as follows:
The Act has five chapters to it, each having provisions to what the process was to gain citizenship and to not lose it.
Chapter one of the act outlines the definition of terms used in the Act.
Chapters two and three are the largest parts of the Act and they deal with identifying eligibility for citizenship and specific residency requirements for people born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent, or non-citizens born in the U.S. or its territories.
The third chapter of the act goes into detail about nationality through naturalization, giving a further clarification of requirements for non-citizens seeking naturalization. It goes into detail with specifications concerning race, ethnicity, and basic verbal English proficiency along with residency requirements outlined.
The fourth chapter is about loss of nationality. Exceptions to residency requirements and removal of citizenship are made for those away in the employment of and under orders from the U.S. government or for other specific reasons, and loss of nationality by actions of children under the age of eighteen is prevented except when such a person is convicted of treason or fighting against or trying to overthrow the United States. Apart from such exceptions in the fourth part of the act there are many possible ways to lose citizenship by those who had gained it, many of which refer to the idea of not showing consistency with being a citizen either by leaving the country for periods of time or by taking up government positions in foreign states. This chapter of the Act also dictates that its provisions shall not override any existing treaty or convention to which the United States was a party.
The fifth and final chapter of the document deals with the miscellaneous, including the procedure for determination and notification of loss of nationality and a list of previous Acts and parts thereof to be repealed and superseded. [3]
The 4th and 5th chapters were indirect tie-ins with the Alien Registration Act of 1940, also known as the Smith Act. The Smith Act, enacted June 29, 1940, set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government along with requiring all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government. The Nationality Act of 1940 would take it a step further and make it so that anyone suspected of advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government who had recently gained citizenship would lose that citizenship and face criminal penalties. [4]
The law amended some provisions of the Immigration Act of 1924. The Nationality Act of 1940 was repealed and superseded by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. [5] [6]
Section 401 (later Section 349(a)(8) of the 1952 law) provided that natural-born American citizens would lose their citizenship if convicted of military desertion during time of war. This was struck down by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Trop v. Dulles (1958) as being a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. In 1967, the Court held in Afroyim v. Rusk that a person cannot be deprived of citizenship without his or her consent; in particular, it ruled that a provision of the 1940 act for automatic loss of citizenship for voting in a foreign election was an unconstitutional violation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Section 402 of the act provided for loss of citizenship by naturalized citizens who lived abroad. By October 1946, about 400 naturalized citizens from Britain had lost U.S. citizenship under that provision, primarily because they had returned to the United Kingdom during World War II and chose to settle there, while another 200 moved back to the United States in order to avoid losing their U.S. citizenship under this provision. [7]
Naturalization is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the individual, or it may involve an application or a motion and approval by legal authorities. The rules of naturalization vary from country to country but typically include a promise to obey and uphold that country's laws and taking and subscribing to an oath of allegiance, and may specify other requirements such as a minimum legal residency and adequate knowledge of the national dominant language or culture. To counter multiple citizenship, some countries require that applicants for naturalization renounce any other citizenship that they currently hold, but whether this renunciation actually causes loss of original citizenship, as seen by the host country and by the original country, will depend on the laws of the countries involved.
The British Overseas Territories Act 2002 (c.8) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which superseded parts of the British Nationality Act 1981. It makes legal provision for the renaming of the British Dependent Territories as British Overseas Territories, and the renaming of associated citizenship.
Canadian nationality law details the conditions by which a person is a national of Canada. The primary law governing these regulations is the Citizenship Act, which came into force on February 15, 1977 and is applicable to all provinces and territories of Canada.
United States nationality law details the conditions in which a person holds United States nationality. In the United States, nationality is typically obtained through provisions in the U.S. Constitution, various laws, and international agreements. Citizenship is a right, not a privilege. While domestic documents often use citizenship and nationality interchangeably, nationality refers to the legal means in which a person obtains a national identity and formal membership in a nation and citizenship refers to the relationship held by nationals who are also citizens.
The Cable Act of 1922 was a United States federal law that partially reversed the Expatriation Act of 1907. (It is also known as the Married Women's Citizenship Act or the Women's Citizenship Act). In theory the law was designed to grant women their own national identity; however, in practice, as it still retained vestiges of coverture, tying a woman's legal identity to her husband's, it had to be amended multiple times before it granted women citizenship in their own right.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran–Walter Act, codified under Title 8 of the United States Code, governs immigration to and citizenship in the United States. It came into effect on June 27, 1952. Before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, various statutes governed immigration law but were not organized within one body of text. According to its own text, the Act is officially entitled as just the Immigration and Nationality Act, but it is frequently specified with 1952 at the end in order to differentiate it from the 1965 law.
Nationality law is the law of a sovereign state, and of each of its jurisdictions, that defines the legal manner in which a national identity is acquired and how it may be lost. In international law, the legal means to acquire nationality and formal membership in a nation are separated from the relationship between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Some nations domestically use the terms interchangeably, though by the 20th century, nationality had commonly come to mean the status of belonging to a particular nation with no regard to the type of governance which established a relationship between the nation and its people. In law, nationality describes the relationship of a national to the state under international law and citizenship describes the relationship of a citizen within the state under domestic statutes. Different regulatory agencies monitor legal compliance for nationality and citizenship. A person in a country of which he or she is not a national is generally regarded by that country as a foreigner or alien. A person who has no recognised nationality to any jurisdiction is regarded as stateless.
South Korean nationality law details the conditions in which an individual is a national of the Republic of Korea (ROK), commonly known as South Korea. Foreign nationals may naturalize after living in the country for at least five years and showing proficiency in the Korean language. All male citizens between the ages of 18 and 35 are required to perform at least 18 months of compulsory military service. North Korean citizens are also considered South Korean nationals, due to the ROK's continuing claims over areas controlled by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The Naturalization Act of 1790 was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free White person(s) ... of good character", thus excluding Native Americans, indentured servants, enslaved people, free black people, and later Asians, although free black people were allowed citizenship at the state level in many states. The courts also associated whiteness with Christianity and thus excluded Muslim immigrants from citizenship until the decision Ex Parte Mohriez recognized citizenship for a Saudi Muslim man in 1944.
Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that citizens of the United States may not be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily. The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of Beys Afroyim, a man born in Poland, because he had cast a vote in an Israeli election after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. The Supreme Court decided that Afroyim's right to retain his citizenship was guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In so doing, the Court struck down a federal law mandating loss of U.S. citizenship for voting in a foreign election—thereby overruling one of its own precedents, Perez v. Brownell (1958), in which it had upheld loss of citizenship under similar circumstances less than a decade earlier.
The history of Canadian nationality law dates back over three centuries, and has evolved considerably over that time.
United States citizenship can be acquired by birthright in two situations: by virtue of the person's birth within United States territory or because one or both of their parents is a US citizen. Birthright citizenship contrasts with citizenship acquired in other ways, for example by naturalization.
During the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, the United States had limited regulation of immigration and naturalization at a national level. Under a mostly prevailing "open border" policy, immigration was generally welcomed, although citizenship was limited to “white persons” as of 1790, and naturalization subject to five year residency requirement as of 1802. Passports and visas were not required for entry to America, rules and procedures for arriving immigrants were determined by local ports of entry or state laws, and processes for naturalization were determined by local county courts.
Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that an individual who received an automatic congressional grant of citizenship at birth, but who was born outside the United States, may lose his citizenship for failure to fulfill any reasonable residence requirements which the United States Congress may impose as a condition subsequent to that citizenship.
The Bhutanese Citizenship Act of 1958, officially the Nationality Law of Bhutan, 1958, is a decree by the Druk Gyalpo King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, recognizing the definition of a Bhutanese citizen. The Act was amended in 1977 and then superseded by the Citizenship Act of 1985.
Multiple/dual citizenship is a person's legal status in which the person is at the one time recognized by more than one country under its nationality and citizenship law as a national or citizen of that country. There is no international convention which determines the nationality or citizenship status of a person, which is consequently determined exclusively under national laws, that often conflict with each other, thus allowing for multiple citizenship situations to arise.
The Expatriation Act of 1907 was an act of the 59th United States Congress concerning retention and relinquishment of United States nationality by married women and Americans residing abroad. It effectively functioned as Congressional endorsement of the various ad hoc rulings on loss of United States nationality that had been made by the State Department since the enactment of the Expatriation Act of 1868. Some sections of it were repealed by other acts in the early 1920s; those sections which remained were codified at 8 U.S.C. §§ 6–17, but those too were repealed by the Nationality Act of 1940 when the question of dual citizenship arose.
Emirati nationality law governs citizenship eligibility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The law is primarily jus sanguinis. Foreigners may be naturalized and granted citizenship. Gulf Cooperation Council citizens are allowed to live in the UAE without restriction and have the right of freedom of movement.
Under United States federal law, a U.S. citizen or national may voluntarily and intentionally give up that status and become an alien with respect to the United States. Relinquishment is distinct from denaturalization, which in U.S. law refers solely to cancellation of illegally procured naturalization.
Honduran nationality law is regulated by the Constitution, the Migration and Aliens Act, the 2014 Law on Protection of Honduran Migrants and their Families and relevant treaties to which Honduras is a signatory. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a citizen of Honduras. The legal means to acquire nationality and formal membership in a nation differ from the relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Honduran nationality is typically obtained either on the principle of jus soli, i.e. by birth in Honduras; or under the rules of jus sanguinis, i.e. by birth abroad to a parent with Honduran nationality. It can also be granted to a permanent resident who has lived in the country for a given period of time through naturalization.