It seems a given that if you’re born in the US you are a United States citizen, but this has not always been the case. For years, Britain did not accept US naturalization and determined the British citizenship was forever. As such they tried to conscript “their citizens”, though they considered themselves Americans, to the British army. Americans viewed expatriation as important for the ingress of British subjects, which was to be protected. Having created their own country and believing in their right to do so, Americans also believed that individual consent to citizenship was paramount. The British could not just claim a person forever without their consent. This debate in part lead to the war of 1812.
Over time, the debate over the right to expatriation became the debate over the right of people to come to America, Immigration. Some were worried that America was too lightly populated, and so we could not afford for citizens to expatriate, but this made mass immigration valuable. The First Expatriation Act of 1868 declared, “the right of expatriation to be a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and welcomed the mass migration of Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians. Passed one day before the 14th Amendment was ratified, it paired the birth right of citizenship with the right of Europeans to extricate themselves from their natural citizenships. Throughout the 1870, numerous other countries also passed expatriation laws, allowing for more migration.1
Over the next forty years, America’s population grew giving way to discussions about who should be allowed to be an American. In 1875 Congress passed the Page Act, essentially forbidding Chinese women from entering the country under the guise of immoral labor. The hope was that Chinese men who could not marry would leave, once we were done exploiting their labor. When this did not work, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, outlawing immigration of any Chinese person.
Since the 1868 Expatriation Act did not outline how a citizen might forfeit their citizenship, the 59th congress rectified this with the Expatriation Act of 1907. In seven sections, the law stated that a US Citizen was “deemed to have expatriated himself when he has been naturalized in any foreign state in conformity with its laws, or when he has taken an oath of allegiance to any foreign state.” Further, if a naturalized US Citizen moved home for two or more years or to any other country for five or more years they relinquished their US citizenship. The male pronoun was intentionally specific to men, to separate their rights from women as outlined in the next section: “Any American woman who marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband” regardless of where they lived. She was only given her citizenship back if her marriage was terminated or her husband was allowed naturalization.
(Until 1947, a woman filing for divorce had to prove abuse or some other heinous violation to a judge. Because divorce was feared to be the end of civilization rarely did infidelity, drunkenness, or financial ruin qualify. And in the cases of successful divorce, often the women lost their property, even that inherited from her family. Though this may not have been relevant, since she lost her citizenship, in theory she would have to get divorced in his country—which was not legal in many countries including Italy and Portugal until the 1970s or 80s.)
The 1907 law led to the denigration of many women. Rich women who married titled foreigners were mocked and condemned in newspapers. And foreign women who married American men were invidiously compared to “real American women” who’d lost their citizenships through effectively the same choice—marrying a man from a country different from theirs.
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