The Northern Virginia doctor knows at least that much about his situation. He knows he is no longer considered a citizen of the United States — the place where he was born, went to school and has practiced medicine for more than 30 years — and that he also belongs to no other place.

A letter from a State Department official informed him that he should not have been granted citizenship at the time of his birth because his father was a diplomat with the Embassy of Iran. The letter directed Sobhani to a website where he could apply for lawful permanent residence.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    127·
    11 months ago

    How do you grant someone citizenship by mistake? And how can you justify taking it away after over 30 years? This is some real bullshit.

    • Zak@lemmy.world
      84·
      11 months ago

      The 14th amendment says:

      All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…

      Sobhani’s father had diplomatic immunity when Sobhani was born, meaning that he and his family were not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,so Sobhani did not become a citizen by being born there. Unfortunately, there’s no equivalent of adverse possession for citizenship, so he must be naturalized to be a citizen. There probably should be, but these cases are rare.

      • PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        241·
        11 months ago

        Now that makes me wonder if taking the human out of the process made this happen. The passport process has been going online, I wonder if humans overrode the decision before because it was the right thing to do.

        • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
          12·
          11 months ago

          More like nobody noticed because they weren’t required to investigate his citizenship each time he applied. Some other process made that happen.

      • qantravon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        122·
        11 months ago

        Not that rare, this is a very similar situation to what the DREAM Act was trying to resolve. As of last year, there were more than 500,000 people who qualified.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
          31·
          11 months ago

          Was she American, though?

          Don’t get me wrong. I think this whole thing is fucked up. But I’m curious

          • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
            31·
            11 months ago

            If an illegal immigrant has a kid on us soil they are a us citizen. I don’t get why someone on US soil legally having a kid in the US should be different.

            • El Barto@lemmy.world
              1·
              11 months ago

              I think it has to do with how the laws are written or interpreted. Say, U.S. law doesn’t say anything specifically about birthright citizenship related to undocumented immigrants (nothing like “you illegal? Yo kids illegal, yo”), so those babies are otherwise technically American. Whereas the law probably says (I haven’t checked) “you a diplomat? Yo kids ain’t 'merican.”)

        • idiomaddict@feddit.de
          1·
          11 months ago

          I’m actually very curious about this. Say someone’s a diplomat, but marries a citizen of the country they work as a diplomat in. Does their spouse now receive diplomatic immunity in their own country?

      • MxM111@kbin.social
        214·
        11 months ago

        So technically he was voting in US elections while not being US citizen, likely multiple times, so, technically he should go to jail. But it would be insane if it happens, and it is insane what they doing to him now.

        • qantravon@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          11 months ago

          No, he was a US citizen at the time. They’ve revoked his citizenship now because they said it shouldn’t have been granted, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t ever a citizen. It means he was before, but is not now.

          • Silverseren@kbin.social
            61·
            11 months ago

            I wonder how that works for his social security number and all of his social security and general retirement funds he’s been paying into.

    • PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      15·
      11 months ago

      The article said there were some passport issues going on in the system. The “government” is a group of people doing their jobs, there are always going to be shitty people and shitty decisions. There might be something we don’t know about, but my guess is a shitty person made a shitty decision.