Expatriation Act of 1868

The United States had, since its early days, implicitly denied the doctrine of perpetual allegiance through its naturalization laws. President Thomas Jefferson wrote to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin that "I hold the right of expatriation to be inherent in every man by the laws of nature … the individual may [exercise such right] by any effectual and unequivocal act or declaration". Other countries, however, did not recognise this position; indeed, the British Royal Navy's impressment of American sailors was one of the casus belli provoking the U.S. to join the War of 1812. Those countries' non-recognition of renunciation of their citizenship continued to cause problems for naturalized Americans during the course of the century. In the 1860s, France as well as various German and Scandinavian states attempted to conscript their natives who had become U.S. citizens when they went back to their homelands for short visits. France, Italy, and Switzerland however at least had procedures for abjuring one's original allegiance; Greece, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire did not have such procedures at all, and even sometimes punished their natives for acquiring U.S. citizenship. In response to this, President Andrew Johnson called on Congress in his Second Annual Message in December 1866 to assert "the principle so long maintained by the executive department that naturalization by one state fully exempts the native-born subject of any other state from the performance of military service under any foreign government". Johnson used this example to illustrate the urgency of the problem in his Third Annual Message in December 1867, stating that it "perplexes the public mind concerning the rights of naturalized citizens and impairs the national authority abroad". ==Debate and enactment==

In January 1868, the month after Johnson's Third Annual Message, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs issued a report on nationality issues; their report argued against the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, stating that countries which permitted emigration implicitly recognized the right to renounce one's citizenship as well. Nathaniel P. Banks, head of the committee, introduced the bill that would become the Expatriation Act on that same day. One of the bill's major proponents was Frederick E. Woodbridge of Vermont. The Expatriation Act came into law one day before the Fourteenth Amendment, which introduced the principle of birthright citizenship into the Constitution. Other migrant-sending countries also moved towards the principle of recognition of renunciation of citizenship as well, for example through the Bancroft Treaties. By the late nineteenth century, the doctrine of perpetual allegiance had died a "surprisingly speedy and unlamented death". ==Loss of United States citizenship under the Act==

Early policies The Expatriation Act of 1868 did not explicitly create any procedure by which a U.S. citizen might exercise his or her right to give up citizenship. Existing law — namely, the Enrollment Act of 1865 § 21 — provided only two grounds for loss of citizenship, those being draft evasion and desertion. The Bancroft Treaties also had provisions that naturalized U.S. citizens would be deemed to have renounced their U.S. citizenship and resumed their original citizenship if they returned to their native countries and remained there for a certain period of time. Finally, in 1873, Attorney-General George Henry Williams wrote that "the affirmation by Congress, that the right of expatriation is 'a natural and inherent right in all people' includes citizens of the United States as well as others, and the executive should give to it that comprehensive effect." However, William's statement was mostly used to justify the denaturalization of naturalized U.S. citizens. In general, a naturalized American who took up a position in the government or military of his native country was considered to have given up his U.S. citizenship and resumed his original one; however, naturalized Americans who did these same acts in other countries which were not their native countries were seen as having given up their right to U.S. protection, but not to U.S. citizenship itself. In particular, the State Department did not consider that mere establishment of non-U.S. domicile was sufficient grounds for revoking U.S. citizenship. There would be no legislation regarding grounds for loss of U.S. citizenship by native-born citizens until the Expatriation Act of 1907 (). Even foreign military service was not necessarily held to result in loss of U.S. citizenship; the precedent pointed out by Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary of State during the late 1880s, was that the U.S. did not consider the French who joined the American Revolution to have thus acquired U.S. citizenship. Similarly, voting in a foreign election was not held as definitive evidence of intent to give up citizenship, in the absence of an express acquisition of foreign citizenship and renunciation of the U.S. one. However, the Expatriation Act of 1907 and subsequent legislation would thenceforth broaden the number of actions which, if undertaken voluntarily, would be considered by the U.S. government to prove the intent to lose U.S. citizenship. Later case law In the 1950 case Savorgnan v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a woman who applied for Italian citizenship by virtue of her marriage to her husband had voluntarily given up her U.S. citizenship. Associate Justice Harold Hitz Burton wrote that: And, in his footnote: In the 1957 case Briehl v. Dulles, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit held that the Department of State could lawfully deny issuance of a United States passport to an applicant who refused to execute an affidavit regarding his political affiliations. However, in a dissenting opinion, Judge David L. Bazelon argued that "[s]ince expatriation is today impossible without leaving the country, the policy expressed by Congress in 1868 and never repealed precludes a reading of the passport and travel control statutes which would permit the Secretary of State to prevent citizens from leaving". Chief Judge Henry White Edgerton concurred with Bazelon's opinion. Congress's power to legislate for implicit expatriation of Americans was later heavily restricted by the 1967 case Afroyim v. Rusk, which concluded that natural-born Americans cannot be deprived of citizenship by any means except a voluntary renunciation in the presence of a consular official. Associate Justice Hugo Black's majority opinion extensively discussed the Expatriation Act of 1868, including the history of proposed amendments to it. ==See also==