Veterans in an uproar over Trump policy yanking citizenship from children born to soldiers overseas

military children

Veterans and currently serving military personnel are outraged after the Trump administration announced a new policy declaring that children born to troops overseas are no longer considered automatic American citizens.

United States military bases overseas are considered sovereign American soil, therefore, if a child is born to a soldier on that base, they are American citizens. Period.

Had this new rule been in affect when the late-Senator John McCain was born in the Panama Canal, he would not have been considered an American citizen by birth.

The same can be said for thousands of children born over the decades to parents serving abroad, including my own brother, born in Germany in 1988 just years before the Berlin Wall fell.

My mother gave birth to him on an American military base. My father, who later would go on to serve during the Gulf War, helped deliver him as he served as an Army nurse at the hospital.

But again, Trump wants to take those rights and privileges away from our troops and their children.

On Wednesday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced the policy change.

“The policy change explains that we will not consider children who live abroad with their parents to be residing in the United States even if their parents are U.S. government employees or U.S. service members stationed outside of the United States, and as a result, these children will no longer be considered to have acquired citizenship automatically,” USCIS spokesperson Meredith Parker told Task & Purpose.

The policy goes into effect on October 29th and has already received backlash from retired and active military.

In addition, US Army veteran and VoteVets Director of Government Relations Will Goodman condemned the move in a statement.

“While this new policy alert raises more questions than answers, it makes one thing abundantly clear – the children of Americans who risk their lives in uniform are not automatically citizens of the United States. That is an abominable and anti-patriotic position for the Trump Administration to take.

Tonight, there’s someone likely on patrol in a war zone, or at an embassy, who is scared to death that their child is no longer a citizen, just because they were born overseas. There are military families sitting at the kitchen table, trying to figure out how this might affect their child’s benefits. The stress and strain that this is causing military families is a cruelty that one would never expect from a Commander in Chief.

We would say Donald Trump should be ashamed of this, but it is clear that he has no shame, at all.”

If President Donald Trump truly respected the troops, he wouldn’t be making this policy change. Because this will only hurt military families.

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