A divided Eleventh Circuit recently ruled against a Jamaican national’s claim to U.S. citizenship, holding that his mother’s naturalization before his 18th birthday did not confer derivative citizenship because his parents had remarried by the time of her naturalization.

Potential Derivative Citizenship Implications

This decision reinforces a strict interpretation of derivative citizenship under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), requiring that all statutory conditions, including legal separation, remain in effect at the time of naturalization. It also highlights ongoing judicial debates over statutory interpretation in immigration law, particularly regarding derivative citizenship claims.

Individuals facing similar circumstances should seek legal counsel to assess their eligibility for derivative citizenship and explore potential defenses against removal proceedings.

Sheldon Turner v. U.S. Attorney General Background

The Jamaican national entered the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 1990. He was born in Jamaica in 1981 to parents who were married at the time of his birth but divorced in 1987. Following the divorce, his mother married a U.S. citizen and later moved to the United States with her son. However, she divorced and subsequently remarried the Jamaican national’s father in 1994. In 1999, when the Jamaican national was 17, his mother became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

More than 15 years later, in an effort to avoid deportation for a criminal offense, the Jamaican national argued that he derived U.S. citizenship through his mother’s naturalization, citing an INA provision that grants automatic citizenship to a child born outside the United States to noncitizen parents when one parent naturalizes, and the parents have legally separated.

An immigration judge rejected the claim, concluding that because his parents had remarried before the applicant’s mother’s naturalization, he did not meet the statutory requirement of “legal separation.” The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) upheld this decision in March 2022, leading the applicant to appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. The court found that the relevant INA provision required a “continuing” legal separation at the time of naturalization. It interpreted the statute to mean that parental separation must still be in effect when the naturalization occurs, rather than simply having occurred at some point in the past. Since the applicant’s parents had remarried prior to his mother’s naturalization, he failed to meet the statutory requirement, and his appeal was denied. The court emphasized that naturalization is the “principal event” in determining derivative citizenship and that all statutory conditions—including legal separation—must be satisfied at the time of naturalization.