Citizenship Clause - Loss of Citizenship

Loss of Citizenship

The Fourteenth Amendment does not provide any procedure for revocation of United States citizenship. Under the Supreme Court precedent of Afroyim v. Rusk, loss of 14th-Amendment-based U.S. citizenship is possible only under the following circumstances:

• Fraud in the naturalization process. Technically this is not loss of citizenship, but rather a voiding of the purported naturalization and a declaration that the immigrant never was a U.S. citizen.
• Voluntary relinquishment of citizenship. This may be accomplished either through renunciation procedures specially established by the State Department or through other actions (e.g., treason) which demonstrate an intention to give up U.S. citizenship. Such an act of expatriation must be accompanied by an intent to terminate United States citizenship.

For jus sanguinis U.S. citizenship, i.e., citizenship for the children born abroad of U.S. citizen parents, which is established only by congressional statute and not the U.S. Constitution (including its amendments), these restrictions do not apply (e.g., cf. Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971)).