That Time American Women Lost Their Citizenship Because They Married Foreigners
Over the past 36+ months, I have watched the Trump Administration tighten restrictions against legal immigration over and over ago.
It’s gotten to the point that I now wonder, like the Limbo, how low can he go?
Actually, things could be worse.
For many immigrants and their supporters, that may be hard to believe.
After all, during the current administration’s tenure, an ugly pattern of increasingly hostile anti-immigration measures has emerged.
There is relative quiet on the immigration front for a few weeks.
It seems the anti-immigrant hysteria surrounding family immigration, lamblasted as chain migration, has reached the bottom of the barrel.
Then bam!
A new policy.
A new low.
The history of immigration in the United States, however, has many unflattering moments.
This Code Switch article, That Time American Women Lost Their Citizenship Because They Married Foreigners, discusses one not commonly known to most of the American public.
It raises an issue, which is not how most people today think about immigration in America today.
Well, at least, I hope not.
In March of 1907, Congress passed The Expatriation Act, which decreed, among other things, that U.S. women who married non-citizens were no longer Americans.
If their husband later became a naturalized citizen, they could go through the naturalization process to regain citizenship. These rules did not apply to American men when they chose a spouse.
However, given some of the recent proposals floated in Congress, I would not be surprised if there are some xenophobic immigration opponents who would support stripping not only females, but also males upon marrying a non-citizen lurking in the political shadows.
I shudder to think about it.
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