A new lawsuit has been filed this week by American Samoans seeking to have a federal court declare that persons born in American Samoa should automatically be US citizens.
Photo: 123rf
The call by Utah based plantiffs is in accordance with the Citizenship Clause - the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.
As it stands, persons born in American Samoa are considered US Nationals, and it is the only US territory whose residents are not automatically considered US citizens.
Instead American Samoans need to apply for US citizenship and meet several stringent federal requirements, including living in the US for a certain period of time.
American Samoa officials have long argued that the US citizenship issue should be decided in American Samoa and not by a federal court on the US mainland.