Citizenship: Citizenship is described as “the state of being vested with the rights, privileges, and duties of a citizen.” Also, as described in Wikipedia, Citizenship “is membership in a political community and carries with it rights to political participation; a person having such membership is a citizen.”

Citizenship can refer to different levels of government, where one can be regarded of a citizen of a town, village or state. However, now days, when we speak of citizenship, we are mostly referring to one’s country or national state. Even though ones nationality can be different from ones citizenship.

In this site we are focused on citizenship in the United States. US Citizenship is achieved mostly through birth in the Unite States. However, one can gain the benefits of U.S. citizenship without being born in the US through the naturalization process, which is discussed more in the naturalization section.

Under the 14^th Amendment of the US Constitution, all personjs born in the United States are citizens. This has been extended to include the US Territories of the Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. 
 

There are general exceptions to the Fourteenth Amendment, like Foreign Nationals on Blue Lists. As well as children born outside to citizen parents and in some cases children born from outside the US from non citizen mother.

For more information on citizenship and how to attain citizenship in the U.S., please contact one of our immigration attorneys.  Also learn more about our online citizenship and naturalization services.