ACA American Citizens Abroad

On 28 January 2008, President Bush signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (H.R. 4986 / Public Law 110-181). Section 674 of that law, in the section “Other Matters”, contains language modifying naturalization procedures for children of US military stationed abroad.

The modification is to Section 322(d) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), and it provides that children of US citizen members of the military who are accompanying their parent abroad on official orders can file for naturalization from overseas and can proceed with the entire process overseas without being required to travel to the United States.

The normal procedure for non-citizen children of Americans residing overseas to be naturalized requires entry to the US for the actual naturalization. This is still the requirement for children of American civilians residing abroad.

The relevant USCIS fact sheet specifies that Section 322(d) benefits are available only to biological and adopted children of U.S. citizen members of the U.S. armed forces; they are not available to step-children of the U.S. citizen parent. It can be found at: http://www.uscis.gov/