The State Department is drafting guidance that would require parents to prove their own citizenship or immigration status before their US-born child can get a passport, the latest step in the Trump administration’s push to narrow birthright citizenship, even as a federal judge has already blocked the underlying order from taking effect.
What the draft guidance says
A draft guidance document reported by NBC News and Reuters lays out how the department could carry out President Trump’s August 6 Executive orderA directive from the President to federal agencies and officials about how to run the executive branch and carry out the law. Executive orders are numbered and published in the Federal Register, and they generally bind the executive branch.See it in the glossary targeting so-called birth tourism and narrowing who qualifies for citizenship at birth.
Under the current process, parents applying for a passport for a child born in the United States only need to prove their relationship to the child and show photo identification. The draft proposal would add a new requirement. Parents would have to submit proof of their own citizenship, such as a valid US passport or birth certificate, or evidence of lawful immigration status, such as a Form I-94The Arrival/Departure Record that U.S. Customs and Border Protection creates when a nonimmigrant is admitted. It shows the class of admission and an Admit Until date, and most are now electronic and available on the CBP I-94 website. USCIS can also issue one when it approves an extension of stay or a change of status.See it in the glossary or a green card.
Legal basis for the change
The State Department would use that documentation to determine whether the child qualifies for citizenship under the new order. The change grows out of Executive Order 14418, on the meaning of American citizenship, and Executive Order 14419, on birth tourism, both signed August 6 and published in the Federal Register on August 11, which gave federal agencies 30 days to align their regulations with the orders.
A State Department spokesman told Reuters the agency intends to make sure its passport adjudication process reflects the administration’s stricter reading of what citizenship requires. The department has not said when or whether the draft guidance will be finalized.
Related coverage and litigation
TR Immigration previously reported on Executive Order 14419 when it left implementation details to individual agencies. Since then, a federal judge in Maryland ruled against a related order narrowing birthright citizenship, and enforcement remains blocked while that case proceeds. That ruling does not by itself stop the State Department from finalizing separate passport guidance, but it means any new documentation requirement would take effect against a backdrop of ongoing litigation over the underlying citizenship policy.
What this means now
Parents applying for a child’s passport under the current rules are not yet affected. Nothing in the draft guidance has been finalized or published as an official rule.