Constitutional Infirmity
Conceived in an era when the right of individuals to change their citizenship was not universally recognized, the Bancroft treaties represented an important step forward in securing recognition by foreign governments of the right of their nationals to become American citizens. But American constitutional law eventually made the treaties obsolete.
In Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964), the Supreme Court invalidated a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) that would strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship after three years' continuous residence in their country of origin; and in Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), the Supreme Court, reviewing part of the Nationality Act of 1940, held that Congress has no power to strip anyone of their citizenship, whether it is acquired by birth or by naturalization. These decisions strongly suggested that any future case of involuntary loss of citizenship under one of the Bancroft treaties probably would not survive a Supreme Court challenge.
Read more about this topic: Bancroft Treaties
Famous quotes containing the word infirmity:
“People do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like our silkworms, and is suffocated in it: a mouse in a pitch barrel.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)