The case of Flores-Villar v. United States examines what happens to a child who is born outside the U.S. to one parent who is a citizen while the other is not. Attorneys for Mexican-born Ruben Flores-Villar claimed that he was unfairly rejected for citizenship while trying to avoid deportation. The details of the case provide an interesting look at a seemingly odd caveat of U.S. immigration law:
The law, since amended, allowed fathers to transmit citizenship to their children only if the fathers had lived in the United States before the child was born for a total of 10 years, five of them after age 14. Mothers were required to have lived in the United States for a year before their child was born. (The amended law kept the general system but shortened the residency requirement for fathers.)Thus far lower federal courts have rejected Flores-Villar’s arguments while a 2001 high court ruling upheld “different requirements for a child's acquisition of citizenship depending upon whether the citizen parent is the mother or the father.”
Mr. Flores-Villar’s father was 16 when his son was born, making it impossible for him to fulfill the part of the law requiring five years of residency after age 14.
Mr. Flores-Villar argued that the differing treatments violated equal protection principles. The Supreme Court has said that sex-based classifications are permissible only if they serve important governmental goals and are substantially related to achieving those goals.
Image- BBC News
Online Sources- Oyez, Los Angeles Times, New York Times
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