[JURIST] Several natives of the US territory American Samoa [official website] on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, DC, arguing that those born in American Samoa should be granted automatic US citizenship. The lawsuit challenges federal laws [Reuters report] that except American Samoa from the rule pertaining to all other US territories that US citizenship is bestowed as a birthright. American Samoa has a population of approximately 68,000 [CIA World Factbook profile]. Those born there are US nationals who must follow the same procedures for naturalization as permanent legal residents, or they can claim citizenship if at birth they had a parent who was a citizen. Otherwise they receive passports with an imprint noting their statuses as non-citizen US nationals. The lawsuit claims that this status violates the Fourteenth Amendment [text] guarantee that “All persons born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” [Cornell LII backgrounder]. However, many in American Samoa do not want automatic citizenship [AP report], as it would place all those born in the territory under the jurisdiction of the entire US Constitution, precluding certain communal land ownership rules unique to American Samoa, such as favoring those with Samoan blood. US
President Johnson signed Immigration and Nationality Act into law, ending country quotas
On October 3, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson, standing in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, signed into law the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The Act ordered the elimination of the national origins quota system established in 1882 in favor of a worldwide quota blind to national origin. Immigration was redistributed by pooling unused quotas and making them available on a first-come, first-served basis to oversubscribed nations. Learn more about the 1965 Act and its aftermath.
Germany reunified
On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic was absorbed by the Federal Republic of Germany, reunifying the country for the first time since the Second World War. Today, the event is marked annually by German Unity Day. Read the Unification Treaty, signed in Berlin on August 31, 1990.
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