A generation or more ago, when my fellow American immigrant friends and I were replenishing the earth with babies we very quickly and conscientiously registered them as United States Citizens. That way, if our parents in the "old country" sent tickets to visit there would be no visa problems.
Their citizenship was/is fine for visits to meet the clan and get to know our old haunts, but it's a "second class citizenship," not giving them all the rights we have. One of those rights is citizenship for the next generation.
Ex-patriot Americans are all over the world, and I don't know who lobbied nor from where, but the law was "tweaked." Now it's possible for us, the grandparents and "first class citizens" to get "second class" citizenship for the grandchildren.
It has become very popular for our married children to travel with their kids to the states after filling out and filing tons of forms and getting an official appointment in a special office. My daughter and son-in-law (who needed to get a special visa for himself) were lucky to get the appointment for the same month when there was a family wedding in New York.
In a few months we'll be celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary and after that forty years since our aliyah to Israel. When we got on the boat (yes, we did come by boat) we thought that we were cutting ties with America, but ironically, since our grandchildren have U.S. citizenship, they won't be restricted by the nightmare of visa application/approval. They'll be able to travel all over on their American passports. Yes, the world is getting smaller all the time.
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