A Naturalized Citizen Reflects on the Declaration

Summary

I became an American citizen through a process called "naturalization." The term appears in the Constitution, but it is much older. Derived from the Latin natio ("birth"), it was already in use by the fifteenth century to mean what it does today: to confer on a foreign-born person the same rights of citizenship as those of the native-born. In the United States, naturalized citizens enjoy the same legal status as native-born citizens except that they can't hold the office of President.