This is an interesting case. Virginia doctor, Siavash Sobhani, who was born in US loses his CITIZENSHIP after applying for new passport because his dad was Iranian diplomat and he wasn't entitled to claim it A 61-year-old Virginia doctor who was born in the US has been stripped of his citizenship - all because of his late father's status as an Iranian diplomat at the time of his birth. Siavash Sobhani became stateless when he tried to renew his passport in June this year - with officials telling him that he never should have been granted American citizenship in 1960, according to the Washington Post. The State Department informed him that babies born in the US to parents with diplomatic immunity - which his father enjoyed as an Iranian Embassy employee at the time - shouldn't automatically acquire citizenship. Typically, all babies born in the US are given citizenship. I assume he will get some sort of residence back eventually.
To be fair, he was raised speaking Farsi (the language of his parents from Iran). The article does say he spent of a portion of his childhood with his parents in the country of Turkey. I'd be curious exactly how long. In my opinion, someone born in the U.S. who has been allowed to live all their life (or nearly all their life) in the U.S. should be recognized as a citizen. It looks like the U.S. government bureaucracy made a mistake, due to the unique situation, that allowed him to stay in the country for so long. But that mistake was long and ongoing, and in my opinion it's too late to correct the mistake now. I'd be curious about the status of his parents and where they lived. That should be a big factor, in my opinion. The article does not give the full information. Were his parents still legally in the U.S. when he went to university and then medical school? What about the legal situation with his brother, who like him was also born in the U.S.? Usually children born to diplomats do not automatically get citizenship, because diplomats are allowed in under special rules of agreement and it is assumed the parents can just take their child back with them to their country.
Apparently we don't have a good way of tracking who's a child of diplomats and who isn't. The article also mentions Hoda Muthana. another child of a diplomat who thought she was a US citizen, and even got a passport, until she tried to come back to the US after joining ISIS. She should have already been sent back to Yemen or wherever she originally was from
Speak of the devil... here's a good backgrounder from CIS about the lack of safeguards allowing the children of diplomats to become American citizens. Birthright Citizenship for Children of Foreign Diplomats?
