Honorary citizenship of the United States by proclamation. What rights and privileges honorary citizenship bestows, if any, is unclear. According to State Department documents, it does not grant eligibility for United States passports. Despite widespread belief that Lafayette received honorary citizenship of the United States before Churchill, he did not receive honorary citizenship until 2002. Lafayette did become a natural-born citizen during his lifetime. On 28 December 1784, the Maryland General Assembly passed a resolution stating that Lafayette and his male heirs "forever shall be...natural born Citizens" of the state. This made him a natural-born citizen of the United States under the Articles of Confederation and
Honorary citizenship of the United States as defined in Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution. Lafayette boasted in 1792 that he had become an American citizen before the French Revolution created the concept of French citizenship. In 1803, President Jefferson wrote him he would have offered to make him Governor of Louisiana, had he been "on the spot". In 1932, descendant René de Chambrun established his American citizenship based on the Maryland resolution, although he was probably ineligible as the inherited citizenship was likely only intended for direct descendants who were heir to Lafayette's estate and title. The Board of Immigration Appeals