Recently, The US government made changes to how US citizenship will be accorded to children of US citizen parents. And this announcement created much confusion and furor. This rule does not affect most of every child born to a US Citizen abroad and will actually get US citizenship by birthright automatically. For the ones affected, parents will have to apply for a visa to the US and establish residency before applying for US citizenship.

Here is what the new citizenship rule for kids born to citizen parents mean and who it will actually affect –

• US Citizen parents who have never lived in the US
• Parents who became US citizens after the kids were born
• Kids adopted when US citizen parents were stationed abroad
• Naturalized citizens who cannot transfer citizenship to their kids until they have fulfilled US residency requirements

Because of the language used to make the announcements, there was widespread disappointment among US citizens living outside of the US, especially military families, US service members and federal employees like visa officers stationed abroad. The clarification stated that birthright citizenship was not affected at all and only impacted children born outside and were not US citizens.