United States Naturalization and Citizenship: Difference between revisions

Naturalization is a voluntary process through which foreign-born residents can become American citizens. By becoming naturalized citizens, immigrants are granted the same rights, privileges, and protections as natural born citizens. The naturalization process in the United States creates records about the immigrant seeking to become a citizen. These records including a declaration of intent, petitions, oaths, etc. can contain information about the immigrant but the content varies depending on the time and from court to court.

Immigrants to the United States have never been required to apply for citizenship. An immigrant could become a citizen any time after they arrived in the United States as long as they were residents in the United States for the required period of time. Of those who applied, some did not complete the requirements to become a citizen.

Individual States handled naturalizations until 1906 when the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization standardized immigration laws and procedures on the federal level. These later records are located in U.S. District or Circuit Courts. Naturalization to become a U.S. citizen is a two-part process: The Declaration of Intent to Naturalize, or First Papers, and the Naturalization Record (including the Naturalization Petition), or Final Papers. The general requirements for citizenship include residency in one U.S. state for one year and in the United States for five years The First Papers were normally filed five years before the Final Papers because of the five-year residency requirement to become a citizen. Naturalization papers are an important source of information about an immigrant's nation of origin, his foreign and “Americanized” names, residence, and date of arrival. Naturalization records were created to process naturalizations and keep track of immigrants in the United States. Naturalization records are generally reliable but may occasionally be subject to error or falsification. Be sure to search all possible spellings for the surname of the person for whom you are looking. Immigrants or their families often changed or “Americanized” the spelling and pronunciation of their names especially their surname, thus the surname may be spelled differently in records that were closer to your ancestor's immigration date. Also, because immigrants were allowed to naturalize in any court before1906 they often selected the most convenient court. The Year of Immigration and naturalization status has been reported in federal census records starting with the 1900 census.