Tell your representative in Congress to Co-Sponsor and Support the ECCA!

Currently, thousands of people born abroad never received United States citizenship from their U.S. citizen fathers because of a racially discriminatory law enacted in 1940 known as the Guyer Rule. The Guyer Rule prevented children born outside of marriage from deriving citizenship from their fathers, which disproportionately prevented Black immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens.

Though the U.S. Congress passed the Child Citizenship Act (CCA) in 2000, allowing foreign-born children to automatically derive citizenship from either of their custodial parents who have U.S. citizenship, regardless of marital status, it did not apply retroactively to those who had already turned 18 years of age by February 27, 2001 when the CCA took effect.

The Equal Citizenship for Children Act (ECCA) would change this. It would secure the rightful citizenship of thousands vulnerable to detention and deportation, despite immigrating to the U.S. as children and having a U.S.-citizen parent.

The ECCA would rectify an unjust omission and eliminate barriers by:

• Granting citizenship to eligible individuals who turned 18 before February 27, 2001.

• Ensuring that non-marital children may acquire citizenship through their custodial U.S.-citizen parent.

• Clarifying that children conceived through assisted reproductive technologies (ART), such as IVF, can obtain U.S. citizenship through either parent, as long as there is a legal parent-child relationship.

Send a letter to your rep by signing onto this Action TODAY!