The United States expanded the right to citizenship for those born abroad: who will be affected

The State Department will now grant US citizenship to children born abroad of same-sex and heterosexual American couples through in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and other assisted reproductive technologies, the agency said on May 18, notifying all US posts abroad and Congress of the historic change. ABC News.

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The new policy comes as the agency recently faced several lawsuits filed by same-sex couples seeking citizenship for their children — having lost two federal cases last year.

The Trump administration has fought these losses, including by appealing last August and defending a long-standing US policy that children born abroad to a surrogate mother are considered to be born out of wedlock, even if the couple is married.

Although the State Department dismissed appeals in two cases in October, the agency continued to pursue a policy of denial of citizenship, leading to new litigation.

But since Tuesday, May 18, all US diplomatic missions have been informed about granting citizenship to these children if the parents are legally married and the child has a genetic or gestational link to one of the parents, in addition to other existing requirements, such as a parent living in USA for a total of at least five years.

The policy change is also retroactive, allowing couples previously stripped of citizenship for their child to reapply and now transfer citizenship to their child.

It "will allow more couples using ART (assisted reproductive technology) to pass on citizenship to their children—and we're very excited about that," a State Department official said, calling it "a recognition of the realities of the modern family."

While high-profile cases in recent years have involved same-sex couples whose children have been denied citizenship by the Trump administration, the policy will apply to same-sex and heterosexual couples.

“No one can deny that LGBTQI people will benefit from this, but it is not limited to that in any way or form,” the State Department official said.

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However, lawyers and plaintiffs from last year's lawsuits hailed the news as "long overdue," according to Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior attorney at Lambda Legal, a legal non-profit organization that helped represent the two couples.

“This is a policy that was not only illegal, as the courts have found in multiple cases, but which actually caused harm and suffering to several families - stress and fear about the status of their children and their ability to remain in the United States, and their ability to fully enjoy the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship,” Gonzalez-Pagán said.

A State Department spokesman said the policy change was not accompanied by other changes and would not apply to unmarried couples, but the retroactive policy was rooted in 1952, when the Immigration and Citizenship Act (INA) was passed.

Critics denounced the previous policy as outdated, especially because it was based on a 1950s law developed years before the practice of in vitro fertilization and decades before same-sex marriage was legalized. The policy itself was first developed in the 1990s under the INA, but it has repeatedly failed in isolated cases initiated by heterosexual couples and, in recent years, by legally married same-sex couples.

It raised questions about why the Trump administration defended her so vigorously decades later in court, appealing last August to deny Kessem Kiviti's citizenship.

Kessem was born through surrogacy in Canada in February 2019 to Roy Kiviti and Adiel Kiviti from Chevy Chase, Maryland, a legally married gay couple where both spouses are US citizens.

Although the Kiwites have been married since 2013, the State Department took little account of their marriage and determined that Kessem was born out of wedlock and required a biological bond with a US citizen parent who had resided in the US for a total of at least five years in order to be able to be a US citizen.

Because Adiel Kiviti, her biological father, did not meet the criteria at the time of her birth, she did not automatically qualify for U.S. citizenship, the department said — a decision that a federal judge rejected last June.

Last August, another federal judge ruled in favor of Derek Mize and Jonathan Gregg, an Atlanta gay couple whose daughter Simone was born in 2018 to a surrogate mother in the United Kingdom. This meant that she was "born out of wedlock to a US citizen father," according to the Department of State, and did not receive citizenship, "regardless of whether the man was married."

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The two daughters' case was resolved last October, when the Department of State withdrew an appeal in Kiviti's case and decided not to appeal the Mize-Gregg case. But the Mize-Gregg family welcomed the policy change on May 18, telling ABC News that they "accepted that our struggles, as well as those of other families, played a role in bringing about this change."

“No family should have to endure the suffering, stress and humiliation that we have gone through. It was deeply traumatic that our own government refused to recognize our child as a US citizen because we were a gay couple,” the statement said.

The State Department declined to provide data on how many children or couples might be affected by the change, but Gonzalez-Pagan said the change would benefit “several families who are still struggling to recognize their children's citizenship” and “really speaks of our values ​​as a country ”.

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