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You want to defend citizenship? Don't persecute or isolate those without papers. Just live like a citizen. That'd be a first-class way to be American.

Foreigners may be admitted to citizenship by naturalization, either collectively or individually. Collective naturalization may occur when a foreign territory and its inhabitants are transferred to the United States.

I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.

Becoming a resident of a state may confer the right to get a driver's license, but it does not and should not confer citizenship.

It's been federal law for over two centuries that the child of an American born abroad is a citizen - a natural born citizen.

No group of our citizens can be denied the right to participate in the opportunities of first-class citizenship.

Naturalization is the process by which a citizen, or subject of a foreign nation or kingdom, is made a citizen of the United States. It is evident that the Constitutional Convention thought that it was important that this process should be placed under the exclusive control of the Federal Government and not of the States.

You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don't consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.

Millions of us, myself included, go back generations in this country, with ancestors who put in the painstaking work to become citizens. So we don't like the notion that anyone might get a free pass to American citizenship.

If the undocumented have to work hard to attain citizenship, those of us who already are citizens should have to work hard to sustain it. We should all have to serve more, vote more, build more, and do more for our country.