I renew the recommendation made in my message of December, 1870, that
Congress authorize the Postmaster-General to issue all commissions to
officials appointed through his Department.
I invite the earnest attention of Congress to the existing laws of the
United States respecting expatriation and the election of nationality
by individuals. Many citizens of the United States reside permanently
abroad with their families. Under the provisions of the act approved
February 10, 1855, the children of such persons are to be deemed and
taken to be citizens of the United States, but the rights of citizenship
are not to descend to persons whose fathers never resided in the United
States.
It thus happens that persons who have never resided within the United
States have been enabled to put forward a pretension to the protection
of the United States against the claim to military service of the
government under whose protection they were born and have been reared.
In some cases even naturalized citizens of the United States have
returned to the land of their birth, with intent to remain there, and
their children, the issue of a marriage contracted there after their
return, and who have never been in the United States, have laid claim to
our protection when the lapse of many years had imposed upon them the
duty of military service to the only government which had ever known
them personally.
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