A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of CitizenshipUniversity of California Press, 1998 M01 1 - 294 pages In 1907, the United States Congress passed a statute declaring that American women must assume the nationalities of their husbands, and thereby began to summarily denationalize the thousands of American women who had already married foreign nationals. In A Nationality of Her Own, Candice Bredbenner follows the dramatic variations in women's nationality rights, citizenship law, and immigration policy in the United States and examines the impact of "derivative citizenship" and its relationship to the woman's suffrage movement during the late Progressive and interwar years. Bredbenner restores the issue of consensual citizenship for women to its original prominence in the interwar reform record of American female activists, and reveals the extensive impact and the severity of the federal laws that divested American women who wed foreigners of their status as citizens conscripted the allegiance of immigrant wives whose husbands were American men, and denied naturalization to any woman whose spouse was not an American citizen. Incredibly, as Bredbenner shows, the United States government did not relinquish this discretion over women's citizenship until 1934. |
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2d sess abroad admission Alice Paul Alva Belmont Ameri American citizen American citizenship American women Cable Act Committee on Immigration Cong Congress convention country's debate declared derivative citizenship Doris Stevens equal nationality rights equal rights amendment Expatriation Act federal government female Feminism feminists foreign Hague House Committee husband immigrant women Immigration and Naturalization independent citizenship ineligible Inter-American Commission International Law League of Nations legislation letter Mackenzie marital expatriation marital naturalization marriage Married Women National Woman's Party nationality laws nationality-rights native-born natu NLWV noncitizen nonquota nonresident NWP's NWPP political quota Radcliffe College ralization reform repatriation Report Rept resident Schlesinger Library Secretary of Labor Shelley Stat status Stevens suffragists tion tional U.S. citizenship U.S. Department U.S. Supreme Court United visas vote wife wives WJCC Woman Citizen woman suffrage woman's rights women married women's nationality rights women's organizations York zenship