On August 5, 2021, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released an updated policy guidance for determining whether children born through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) are considered to have been born “in wedlock.”
The updated policy permits a non-genetic, non-gestational legal parent of a child to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child if the parent is married to the child’s genetic or gestational parent at the time of the child’s birth, and the relevant jurisdiction recognizes both parents as the child’s legal parents. This guidance will also be applied to the family-based petitions for determining whether a child is born in wedlock.
Earlier, USCIS required that the child’s genetic parents (or the legal gestational parent and one of the genetic parents) be married to one another for a child to be considered born in wedlock. In 2014, USCIS had updated its policy to allow a parent who is the gestational and legal parent of a child under the law of the relevant jurisdiction at the time of the child’s birth to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child if all other citizenship requirements are met.
*Tanvi Singh, Editorial Assistant has reported this brief.