The federal government is under pressure to investigate cases of illegal citizenship grants to foreign diplomats’ children.
Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, reported by the Daily Caller, expressing concern over the granting of citizenship to the children of foreign diplomats.
“Neither the Constitution nor federal statutory law grants foreign diplomats’ children birthright citizenship,” he wrote. “Yet public reporting indicates that potentially thousands of foreign diplomats’ children have been given citizenship documentation. Foreign diplomats’ children illegally procuring citizenship degrades the meaning of American citizenship, undermines our sovereignty, and threatens our national security.”
“I therefore urge both of your agencies to take immediate action to investigate the extent of illegal grants of citizenship documentation to foreign diplomats’ children, implement policies and procedures to prevent it from occurring in the future, identify the individuals who have illegally procured citizenship documentation in this manner, and revoke those individuals’ illegally procured citizenship documentation,” Schmitt explained, detailing that prior administrations have complicated the State Department’s policies on the matter and drawing attention to concern that governmental documents “lack adequate information and safeguards to identify children of foreign diplomats before those documents are issued.”
The Biden administration did not update the Blue List, otherwise known as the Diplomatic List, and White List, creating more difficulty when attempting to identify the child of diplomats.
“Allowing diplomats’ children to claim birthright citizenship violates the Constitution, statutory law, decades of judicial and administrative practice, degrades the value and integrity of American citizenship, presents serious national security risks, and undermines our nation’s sovereignty,” the letter added. “American citizenship is the sacred bond between the sovereign ‘We the People’ and our government. We cannot allow it to be cheapened into a mere bureaucratic status to be usurped by diplomats and foreign functionaries who owe their allegiance to other countries.”
Schmitt concluded his letter but requesting that the two agencies investigate the extent of illegal grants off citizenship and design policies intended to prevent the practice from continuing.
In June, the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, although lawmakers have since sought to introduce legislation to combat the issue.
