United States citizenship can be acquired in one of four ways: If you are born in the USA, if your parents are US citizens, if you have been naturalized, or if your parents have been naturalized.

To be a US citizen you have to renounce citizenship of all other countries, although your country may not accept the renunciation, and may enable you to keep dual citizenship. US immigration laws are complicated, and there are many ways in which people qualify for citizenship without realizing it. The rules governing whether or not a child born out of the country is a citizen or not have changed several times over the last 50 years. The basic law is that in order to qualify one or both of your parents must be US citizens, and have to have spent a certain amount of time in the USA. If you think that you may qualify as a US citizen, contact the consulate for details of the law as it stood when you were born.

If you were born between 1952 and 1986, and only one parent was a US citizen, he or she would have had to have spent at least ten years (at least 5 of them after the age of 14) in the USA.

From November 15 1986 to the present the ten-year residence rule changed to five years, with two years of compulsory residence after the age of 14.

When parents become naturalized US citizens, their children automatically have the same right, provided that they hold green cards and are under the age of 18 at the time of their parents' naturalization.

Proof of US citizenship can be provided with a birth certificate from a state government, a US passport, certificates of citizenship or certificates of consular registration of birth.

A child born on US soil is automatically a citizen of the USA no matter what the laws of the parents' country. Children born in the USA to foreign diplomats are an exception to this rule: they are deemed to have been born on foreign soil.

Naturalization

To become a naturalized citizen of the US you must be at least 18, and you must have held a green card for at least five years. You should also be a person of good moral character ('bad' moral character can cover anything from committing a crime to non-payment of taxes), have knowledge of the English language, and be familiar with American government and history.

At least half of the five-year waiting limit must have been spent in the USA. If you leave the country for a year or more this wipes out any time added up to the five years, and you must start the waiting period again.

If you are married to a US citizen the waiting period is reduced to three years; if your spouse works for the US government abroad there is no waiting period.

The process for naturalization is surprisingly simple. The application is made with the INS on form N-400. After this has been processed (which may take anything from a few months to over a year) you will be called to an interview in which you will have demonstrate the required knowledge of history and government, and spoken English. You may be asked the date of US independence, the meaning of the stars and stripes, what happens if both the president and the vice president die in office, who is the governor of your state, or what is the name of the national anthem and who wrote it? These questions are designed to imbue in anyone who wants to become a citizen a sense of the importance of what they are doing. It is not an exercise in nationalism, more a matter of taking your new country seriously by taking the trouble to know something about it.

The final part of the process is the swearing-in ceremony, when you will swear allegiance to the United States, and renounce citizenship of all other countries.