citizenship hypothetical birth-certificate
My daughter was born on the Palmyra Atoll. How do I obtain US citizenship for her?
<p><em>Note: the story below is fictional, but the legal question posed is a serious hypothetical.</em></p>
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<p>While attempting to sail across the Pacific I discovered I was pregnant. Eventually I ran aground on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyra_Atoll" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Palmyra Atoll</a> and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Obviously I have a lot to worry about, being stranded on a tiny uninhabited island with a newborn and all (yes I have Internet access don't think about it), but what really matters to me right now is that my daughter will be a U.S. citizen.</p>
<p>After all, I happen to know that the Atoll is the only incorporated, unorganized territory of the United States, and &quot;incorporated&quot; means that the Constitution applies in its entirety, so by the 14th amendment she should be granted citizenship by birth. I am not a U.S. citizen, so she cannot derive citizenship from me.</p>
<p>Now, how should I go about getting her stateside and proving to the U.S. authorities that she is entitled to citizenship? Should I sail to Kiribati and register her birth certificate with the authorities there, or make the longer trip to Hawaii and ruin my chances of ever crossing the Pacific?</p>
<p>You may assume that I have all the evidence necessary that she was born on the Palmyra Atoll. Before she was born, I had enough time to set up a camera and film myself measuring my latitude and longitude and then giving birth</p>

<h2>Legally your daughter is a US citizen</h2>
<p>How you go about demonstrating that is not a legal question, it’s a question about bureaucratic processes and off-limits for this site.</p>

<p>I don't know which federal government agency should be the first one to approach for a birth certificate or other evidence of citizenship. But any agency that agrees to entertain the request will want evidence. And if no executive branch agency is willing to entertain the request, one would have to sue in a federal court, asking than an agency be compelled to issue proof of citizenship. That court will apply the federal rules of evidence.</p>
<p>There are digital methods that operate without access to the internet that can produce fairly convincing evidence that a person signed a document. But, without the internet, these methods do not provide convincing evidence about when or where the document was signed.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I am not aware of any automated method to provide reliable evidence of where a video was filmed.</p>
<p>So it will come down to the word of the people who were present at the birth, plus some weaker evidence such as departure records and witnesses to the eventual rescue. Lets hope the mother is accompanied by some highly credible person.</p>
