

Ellie Lavi plays with her daughters Maya, left, and Shira at their home in Tel Aviv on March 14, 2012. / Tomer Appelbaum for USA TODAY

JERUSALEM - The "reinterpretation" of a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) makes it easier for a small group of American mothers to transmit their citizenship to their foreign-born children.

A State Department official told USA TODAY that the change - "a new interpretation, not an amendment" - means that the government can no longer deny U.S. citizenship based on proof of a "biological link" to the child of an American woman who conceives with a donor egg, and who gives birth abroad with the intention of keeping the baby (not a surrogate). The official spoke to USA TODAY on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.

Immigration experts and parents who were frustrated by the old provisions are hailing the retroactive policy shift, but insist the State Department needs to do even more to ensure that children born abroad to American parents via assisted reproductive technology (ART) enjoy the same rights and benefits as other children adopted by or born to U.S. citizens.

This new policy "only addresses a relatively small subset of ART cases," the official acknowledged. "It does not, for example, apply to cases in which a child is born to a surrogate and is not genetically or gestationally related to a U.S. citizen [who is the] intended parent."

The shift follows years of complaints from American women living abroad, who insisted that their fertility status and where they gave birth should have no bearing on their child's citizenship. Had they flown to the U.S. to give birth, they noted, their children would have received automatic citizenship, no questions asked.

Michele Coven Wolgel, an Israel-based immigration lawyer who has been advocating for the policy change, said the original regulations were designed to prevent immigration fraud. While citizenship rules are important, she said, they were never intended to prevent the children of bona fide American citizens from becoming citizens.

The fact that the INA has traditionally required proof of a biological connection to the child while failing to take into consideration the many advances in reproductive medicine, where donated sperm, eggs or both are often used for conception, has led to a lot of heartache, said Wolgel, who created the Registering Children of American Citizens Born Abroad Facebook page.

"The law has always required that the child be granted citizenship only if there was a biological relationship. Over the past 10 years, pregnancy via egg donation has become much more accessible, creating a problem for infertile women who needed to use a donor in order to have a child," Wolgel said.

No one is more delighted by the new interpretation than Ellie Lavi, a dual American-Israeli citizen who gave birth to twin girls in Tel Aviv in October 2009.

When, in December 2010, Lavi sought to transmit her citizenship at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, staff asked - over a loud speaker - whether she had used fertility treatments to conceive. When she said yes, she was told her daughters' citizenship was dependent on establishing a biological link.

Lavi, who had never publicly revealed how she conceived her daughters, decided to go public with her story. Her remarks in USA TODAY drew the State Department's attention to the problem.

She learned of the new interpretation from another American-Israeli who had encountered the same obstacles. When Lavi asked for confirmation from a former Tel Aviv embassy official via e-mail, the official thanked Lavi "for pushing the issue to the powers that be in D.C." Were it not for Lavi's actions, the official wrote, "the law would have been stuck behind the times for much longer."

When Lavi arrived at the embassy earlier this month to apply for her girls' citizenship, "the entire embassy staff began to applaud," she said. The passports arrived on Feb. 18.

"America is the greatest nation in the world," Lavi said, "and I feel lucky to have my American citizenship and background. I wanted the same for my children."

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Read the original story: Policy shift eases citizenship for foreign-born kids of American moms

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