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How long can it take to become a US citizen?

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-long-can-it-take-to-become-a-us-citizen/
27•speckx•1h ago

Comments

josefritzishere•1h ago
Immigration to the US takes so long, a large percentage of the applicants die of natural causes while waiting. It's Kafkaesque. https://www.cato.org/blog/16-million-family-sponsored-immigr... https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/400000-ind...
bill_joy_fanboy•1h ago
Citizenship in the United States is not a right.
add-sub-mul-div•1h ago
But if you welcome immigrants so as not to run out of labor or stagnate culturally, rather than simply dislike immigrants, you'd want to improve the bureaucracy.
slater•1h ago
Not if your reelection campaign is reliant on the votes of racists
bill_joy_fanboy•1h ago
No one said anything about race. We could be talking about White immigrants from Europe. You are making this about race.
the_gastropod•1h ago
https://www.theglobalstatistics.com/ice-detention-statistics...

According to the stats on this page, there’s literally not a single white immigrant from Europe who has been detained.

duped•53m ago
There is at least one: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/documents-shed-light-ba...

But the point still stands, they're out here rounding up people who don't look white enough.

rootusrootus•40m ago
> We could be talking about White immigrants from Europe

Or ... white immigrants from South Africa?

Yeah, it is about race.

CrulesAll•1h ago
If your argument has nothing more than squealing rAsCiStS and fAsCiStS, then you don't have an argument.
slater•1h ago
> nothing more than squealing rAsCiStS and fAsCiStS

Luckily, that's not my argument.

CrulesAll•1h ago
"so as not to run out of labor" Beloved by the extreme right economically and now Trump. Low ball the labor market. Destroy the middle class and especially the working class. But at least CEOs will get their performance bonuses, and shareholders will see shares rise due to lower costs.
bill_joy_fanboy•1h ago
What exactly does "stagnate culturally" mean?

As far as I can tell, America has rapidly become a cultural cesspit, and yet immigration has never been higher.

Not sure I follow...

estebank•1h ago
To anyone who happens to be born on its soil, it actually is. And leaving people on bureaucratic limbo for decades is abusive.
bill_joy_fanboy•1h ago
> To anyone who happens to be born on its soil, it actually is.

This is actually debatable. The wording of the constitution indicates that this is only true if your parents were citizens. Like many other directives in the constitution, this has been simply ignored by legislators.

ivraatiems•1h ago
Effectively no legal scholars or judges of merit support that belief: https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/09/how-birthright-citizenshi...
bill_joy_fanboy•56m ago
No True Scotsman fallacy at work. Nice!
ivraatiems•55m ago
I'm sure you know better than them due to your many years serving on courts of note.
fl7305•22m ago
> Effectively no legal scholars or judges of merit support that belief

And how did the "legal scholars or judges of merit" interpret the 2nd amendment in 1800?

The same way as today?

The constitution seems to have become a lot more flexible today than people should be comfortable with.

only-one1701•1h ago
Fantastic point, I assume you’re equally annoyed about how the right to bear arms has been removed from the contextual requirement that the armed be part of a well organized militia?
bill_joy_fanboy•1h ago
We're talking about immigration. Stay on topic. :)
KK7NIL•1h ago
That is a total lie, the 14th amendment is absolutely clear and it was passed after the Civil War with the explicit point of granting citizenship to black slaves who, you'll notice, did not have citizen parents:

> Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

bill_joy_fanboy•57m ago
> "subject to the jurisdiction thereof"

This language directly excludes illegal aliens.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•56m ago
> jurisdiction

> illegal aliens

Huh? How can they be illegal?

toast0•44m ago
Even if you're here without permission, you can be tried in our courts, and are subject to our jurisdiction. I'm willing to be swayed, but it has to be compelling. Diplomatic immunity or maybe recognized tribal member on recognized reservation when they were being disenfranchised are the only times I'm aware of where people are physically within the States and DC and not subject to the jurrisdiction thereof. Perhaps if a child is born in an internation vessel at port, or in a duty free shop or a customs free trade zone. Territories and such get squishy, it's usually not clearly stated when the term United States is meant to include those portions of the country that are not a State; but the 14th ammendment is understood not to apply to territories. Citizenship at birth is granted in some territories (at least Puerto Rico) by federal legislation.

That said, upthread you claimed:

> this is only true if your parents were citizens

And now you claim something about illegal aliens. There's a whole range of circumstances, some of which would have been uncontemplatable at the time of the 14th ammendment. If you are born in the US. You claim citizenship only if parentS are citizens. But if only one parent is a citizen, or both parents are permanent residents, or the parents are authorized visitors. For the historically impossible situation, what if the child is carried by a surrogate with authorized presence and the parents are non-citizens not present at birth ... that child is a US citizen by birth, and not included in your statement above.

KK7NIL•44m ago
You know very well it basically only applies to diplomats, but you good faith debate was never your plan here.
corranh•37m ago
From the same site as the article:

Does a baby born in the US get citizenship?

Yes, under current law, almost every baby born in the United States or its territories automatically becomes a US citizen at birth, regardless of the parents’ immigration status, except for certain children of foreign diplomats or enemy forces in hostile occupation.

jcranmer•30m ago
If illegal aliens are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," it's not possible to arrest them for a crime--that's what the phrase means.

The language excludes diplomats, foreign soldiers on US soil while they're fighting a war with the US, and (given the context of when the amendment was passed) Native Americans who hadn't yet been told that they were subjects of the US.

CrulesAll•1h ago
@ivraatiems is effectively using a no True Scotsman argument.
ivraatiems•1h ago
You can just reply to me directly, you know :)

"No True Scotsman" is not accurate here. This would actually be an appeal to authority.

But the fact that it is one doesn't mean it has no merit. My implication is that the person I am responding to is ignorant of the state of the law, not that they must be wrong because others say they are.

Someone1234•1h ago
> The wording of the constitution indicates that this is only true if your parents were citizens.

The Constitution doesn't define it at all, first off. The Fourteenth Amendment does. All the original Constitution says is that a "natural-born Citizen" is a requirement for President; and that per Article I, Section 8 congress has the power to define the mechanics of citizenship.

The Fourteenth by contrast says plain text:

> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

So your claim is incorrect.

kelseyfrog•57m ago
Am I to understand that your claim is, "amendments aren't part of the constitution"?
Someone1234•16m ago
Amendments are amendments to the Constitution. They have the force of law.

The person I was responding to was discussing the "wording of the constitution" so the location of the wording absolutely matters. In this case the "wording of the [original] constitution" is ambiguous, but the wording of the 14th is clear. Thus my reply.

toast0•1h ago
Well, the constitution didn't make any statements about who was a citizen, just the 14th ammendment has this:

> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

Of course, being part of the Constitution, few of the terms are defined. But, as I read it, if you're born here outside of diplomatic immunity, you're a citizen. And I'd need a well referenced argument to understand why 'subject to the jurisdiction therof' means something other than how I interpret it.

etchalon•1h ago
It's not debatable. Though it is being debated by people who want that to be the case because racism.
duped•1h ago
It was debated in 1898 and this argument lost.
bill_joy_fanboy•52m ago
And I'm reviving it.
sashank_1509•42m ago
Something has been ignored by legislators for over a hundred years and just now you have discovered it’s true meaning which happens to perfectly align with your policy preferences.

Please, just be honest and say you want to enact a policy and use the US Supreme Court to do it, rather than gaslighting us into believing that words don’t mean what they do.

sometimes_all•1h ago
Hasn't the president signed an executive order that says birthright citizenship is not for children of non-citizens? I see that it's being challenged in court, but the order is currently valid, right?
Spoom•1h ago
Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.

14th Amendment:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

There are rumblings about "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" somehow excluding folks based on their immigration status, but frankly, the meaning is clear, and jurisprudence recognizes this. The jurisdiction carveout is for international diplomats, i.e. people who are literally not subject to US law. Immigrants, even illegal immigrants, are subject to US law. Stating otherwise would have vast repercussions.

rootusrootus•58m ago
> Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.

And I would hope this is a fairly universally held position, not so partisan. Today one side might cheer an executive order overriding the 14th amendment, but how will they feel if the next administration decides to pull the same stunt with the 2nd?

We don't want to go there. There are already some states experimenting with doing end-runs around the Constitution with their own civil laws, and for similar reasons I would expect rational people to want that effort to fail.

fl7305•24m ago
>> Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.

> I would hope this is a fairly universally held position, not so partisan.

I agree. I think the constitution limits both the executive and the legislative branches.

> how will they feel if the next administration decides to pull the same stunt with the 2nd?

The 2nd amendment has already been overridden by federal laws without a constutional amendment.

The 2nd used to mean that the states has a right to let their citizens arm themselves privately with military weapons. The federal government was forbidden by the 2nd to interfere with this.

I'm from Europe and fine with the very restrictive licensing we have here.

But it looks very shortsighted to wildly re-interpret the constitution far outside of the original meaning, instead of passing new amendments.

sometimes_all•44m ago
Thanks for the detailed answer, I think that'll be a relief for many. However, would you say this still is a volatile situation for people who are facing this issue? Are the rulings _final_ on this? Or is there chance of people getting stuck in limbo?
Spoom•22m ago
> Thanks for the detailed answer, I think that'll be a relief for many. However, would you say this still is a volatile situation for people who are facing this issue? Are the rulings _final_ on this? Or is there chance of people getting stuck in limbo?

No, rulings are not final. SCOTUS could and very well may disagree with more than a hundred years of jurisprudence and overrule e.g. US v. Wong Kim Ark[1], enabling much easier denaturalization by the federal government. Here's an example article from a right-wing think tank about why they believe SCOTUS should overrule Ark[2].

1. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/169us649

2. https://americanmind.org/features/the-case-against-birthrigh...

etchalon•1h ago
It is not valid.
rootusrootus•1h ago
No, it is held up in court. The SCOTUS tried to make it valid by ruling against universal injunctions, but within days the challenges were refiled as class actions.
dontwannahearit•35m ago
And it can also be a burden. If you are born on US soil to non-US nationals and therefore become an accidental American you are subject to US tax laws on worldwide income.

In the UK at least banks will not sell you financial products with tax implications (pensions, tax exempt savings schemas (ISA's to the locals)) because of the US reporting requirements.

And getting your citizenship revoked requires lawyering so its a PITA.

I know some Americans will find it hard to believe but there are people who want out of this system and feel trapped in it.

triceratops•1h ago
Freedom of speech is though. You're allowed to complain about the process as much as you want.
stronglikedan•1h ago
And yet we still have the most people trying to get in, and we also let the most people in annually, so we must be doing something better than everyone else. Of course, everything can always be improved.
daft_pink•1h ago
There is no doubt that the country caps and quotas for immigrants from countries with large populations like India, Mexico, Philippenes and China are a huge problem.

I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long.

The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on.

bill_joy_fanboy•1h ago
Citizenship in this country is not a right. Why is it important that we allow more people in from these other nations? Why is that a good thing?
piperswe•1h ago
What did you do to earn your citizenship?
etchalon•1h ago
Why not? Why is a bad thing?
nis0s•52m ago
It’s not a bad thing per se, but democratic action can produce cultural shift to something that was previously considered outside of the scope of your country’s way of life. What matters is what you want to achieve as a country, a society, a community and so on. This is something groups of people have to decide for themselves, and the worst form of disagreement is violence.

I am of the view that more than 10 countries in the world should be built on enlightenment ideals, have a rule of law, have systems and processes for providing a good quality of life, and have centers of education and productivity.

I don’t think it’s reasonable that we should shift billions of people to live in a handful of nations via immigration. If that’s the overall plan, then nations where those people are immigrating from should just become vassal states.

j4coh•59m ago
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
bill_joy_fanboy•48m ago
This is just a tired old emotional argument. It won't phase anyone who sees the results of modern immigration practices.
slater•48m ago
We get it, you don't like immigrants.
j4coh•25m ago
It’s not an argument, it’s a value.
Arubis•56m ago
Pragmatically: if you want to enforce the legality of a state-affirmed migration path, it has to be viable. Without a militarized border (which is impractical based on nation size and undesirable for fiscal and moral reasons) and a militarized interior (do you _like_ what ICE is becoming?), the best mitigation for illegal immigration is viable legal immigration.

Fiscally: immigrants have above-average entrepreneurial tendencies. It doesn't take a lot of enterprise creations and resulting tax payment and job creation to offset a _lot_ of social service consumption. Inbound migration also is what keeps the US from having a net-shrinking population, which until we can get away from late-stage capitalism is a death knell for the economy.

Morally and ethically: this is a nation of immigrants. If you claim to be a native, do you speak Navajo? Ute?

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

bill_joy_fanboy•36m ago
So your argument is... a poem?

I'm convinced. I change my mind! I take back everything I said before!

Arubis•30m ago
It's not a poem that _I_ wrote. That would be silly. You don't have to share _my_ feelings.

It's inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty and is taught in civics classes as a representation of American values. The idea is that, when you live in a society, you build upon a set of shared values and stories so that you can have something in common with your neighbor and something bigger than yourself to strive for.

All that said, there's a reason that comes last on my list of reasons. If you and I agree on the shared story, the other stuff doesn't matter so much. If we don't, having pragmatic and fiscal reasons to get on the same page lets us at least stay rational in our discourse.

raincom•30m ago
It is not a right, for sure. However, there are historical reasons why they are county wide quotas. Before the 1965 INA (Hart-Celler Act, which JFK wanted), they had a national-origins quota system: each country's quota was based on the existing immigrant population of that national origin already in the United States, using data from the 1890 census. Because the U.S. population in 1890 was overwhelmingly from Northern and Western Europe (especially Protestants), this formula strongly favored those groups. Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was heavily restricted because most of them are Catholics. Once Catholics got political power, thanks to JFK, this is reformed in favor of what we see country based caps.

The national-origins formula was explicitly designed to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the U.S.--in other words, preserve what policymakers at the time considered the “traditional” American demographic makeup.

packetlost•1h ago
Fully, fully disagree. The process should be better, but caps are not one of the problems that needs significant rework.
rootusrootus•47m ago
I suspect that the amount of background legwork for each application is fairly limited. It should be possible to triage the vast majority of applications in a matter of days at most, at least the denials. It's wild that it takes years to do this.

I assume it's intentional. And/or profitable.

packetlost•43m ago
You've clearly never seen someone go for citizenship. It's a relatively involved process that involves multiple interviews, character reference letters, lots of paperwork, etc.

Getting a greencard (or equivalent) is an entirely different thing and is even _more_ broken.

rootusrootus•25m ago
I've known several people who've done it. I wasn't trying to argue that there isn't a lot of manual labor going on. But I'm doubting how much of that labor extends beyond interfacing with the applicant.

Are they interviewing references outside the country? Doing deep background checks that are not basically instant electronically? That's what I'm talking about. The denial process can probably be made extremely fast, and then the tedious interview part can be focused only on the ones we are planning to accept otherwise.

spprashant•58m ago
I think they could at least offer some sort of reprieve for people waiting in line. Their status is tied to employer whims. If someone has lived in the country for 5 years and in line for citizenship perhaps give them some protection in case their employment gets taken away. Some grace period, perhaps access to healthcare.
ivraatiems•1h ago
"Just do it the right way."

"Coming here illegally is a crime so everyone who does it is a criminal."

The legal moralism people apply to immigration is absurd, especially in the United States. We have purposefully made it impossible to do the right thing, so we can rejoice in punishing those who do it "wrong". It's shameful, in my opinion.

nxor•51m ago
It should be telling that a great portion of these people are young men, and young men from certain regions view women, minorities, and ideas like honesty and fairness much differently. Europe is facing this right now. What are you suggesting? All of India moves to the US? Are you even aware they'd do that if they could? That is _not_ practical.
spprashant•1h ago
The US is doing something right if so many people are ready to wait in limbo for decades of the one life they get on this planet.

For people on employment visas - they are one economic downturn away from everything being undone. They ll get 60/90 days to leave the life and relationships they have spent years building.

nxor•59m ago
All true but isn't our quality of life built on mines in Africa (car batteries and phone batteries) and sweatshops in China and co (much of our clothes)? To what degree does that reinforce that other countries have lower quality of life? Then again, this isn't specific to just the US.
testing22321•54m ago
Billions of people around the world live in poverty without running water or power, let alone economic opportunities.

Saying the US is doing something right because people want to immigrate there is setting the bar very low.

Those billions would happily go to any Developed country, and per capita, the US doesn’t have particularly high immigration (Australia is the highest)

glimshe•9m ago
As someone who was in this limbo and eventually became a citizen... It's better than the other options. In particular, I could take my dollar savings back to my home country and I'd still be much ahead of my friends who never tried to come to the US.
scarecrowbob•7m ago
Well, in it's favor the US is one place where the CIA probably won't overthrow the government (the 1963 coup notwithstanding).
O_H_E•46m ago
Speaking of the US, how are TN visas nowadays? Are companies allergic to their paperwork like other visas that are harder to get?
josefritzishere•7m ago
Because this thread is a little spicy, I just want to remind folks that their comments are potentially "discoverable" in a legal situation. So if you comment something disparaging about minorities or immigrants it may haunt you later. Let’s keep it civil.

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