Birthplace on the boundary of two jurisdictions

[bandit957]

What do people do when their birthplace is right on the boundary of two administrative jurisdictions such as cities, counties, states, or countries?

The hospital where I was born is right on the line between two cities: Newport and Fort Thomas. I'm not even sure which city was listed on my original birth certificate (which is now lost). Probably Fort Thomas, since everybody insisted on saying the hospital was in high-rent Fort Thomas rather than low-rent Newport. They say the hospital's mailing address and main access road were in Fort Thomas, therefore the whole building must have been in Fort Thomas. That's like saying all of Highland Heights is in Newport because that's what mailing addresses show. I think the hospital actually has parking lots in both Newport and Fort Thomas. I just assume I was born in Newport.

If a birthplace was right on a county line, what courthouse has the records? If it was on a state line, how do people answer the question on the census form of what state they were born in? (Does the census still ask that?)

People born in the U.S. have U.S. citizenship, but what if it's not clear what country a hospital or other birthplace is in? I have known people who lived in the U.S. near the Canadian border and their kids were born in Canada, but in those cases, the hospital was clearly in Canada. That's different from what I'm talking about here.

About 30 years ago, Graeter's opened a new ice cream shop near the hospital where I was born. This business was in Newport, but they advertised it as being in Fort Thomas. Newport officials were so angered by this that they placed a big "Welcome to Newport" sign on the road in front of it.

[Max Rockatansky]

What if someone literally gives birth straddling the actual border of the United States?  Would the resulting child be a citizen of both countries? 

[kalvado]

My bet is that hospital would go with the legal address which is on their license.
Is there any example of the hospital on a  state line?   Since they are licensed by the state, no split operations across state line would be OK I suspect. Moreso for the international border. 

[kalvado]

What if someone literally gives birth straddling the actual border of the United States?  Would they be a citizen of both countries?

As far as I remember, US grants citizenship to those born within the borders, as well as to those who's parents are US citizens regardless of the birthplace. Not sure what happens with multinational couples. If I remember correctly, there are some strings attached to the parents permanently living abroad provision.
And yes, child may be eligible to multiple citizenships.

[hbelkins]

I'm not sure about where you're born, but I noticed something Sunday regarding the location of a gas station where I filled up. i got gas at the Food City Gas n Go along US 460 in Tazewell County, Va. I would have told you that the location of the station was in Richlands. Adjacent to the station is the post office for Doran. But the receipt said Cedar Bluff.

[GaryV]

Every building is somehow defined to be in a unique place. Sometimes it's based on where the front door is. A neighbor of my wife's parents had a house that straddled the school district boundary. It was determined based on where the bedrooms were, under the theory that more time was spent in the bedroom than any other single room of the house.

[davewiecking]

Every building is somehow defined to be in a unique place. Sometimes it's based on where the front door is. A neighbor of my wife's parents had a house that straddled the school district boundary. It was determined based on where the bedrooms were, under the theory that more time was spent in the bedroom than any other single room of the house.

For residences where there could be split jurisdiction, the location of the Primary Bedroom generally controls. I'd hate to think different kids were sent to different schools just because their bedrooms are on opposite sides of a hallway. Commercial buildings go by the main front door, which would be their mailing address (regardless of where the mailroom might be located or where the USPS might physically drop off their mail).

[bandit957]

They actually have inspectors go to people's homes to see where the bedrooms are to make sure kids are enrolled in the "right" district?

[kphoger]

I know I've read of people in Europe moving the front door of their house in order to be a citizen of the correct country–because the national boundary ran through the middle of their house.

[CtrlAltDel]

I know I've read of people in Europe moving the front door of their house in order to be a citizen of the correct country–because the national boundary ran through the middle of their house.

I feel like this sort of thing is done out of expediency, and that if one of the two countries wanted to stop this sort of thing, it could readily do so.

My own view on the question of what happens when someone is born right on the border is that both countries could do whatever they wanted. It's not the most relevant case, admittedly, but the Supreme Court has ruled, in Heath v. Alabama, that two different states can prosecute someone for the whole of a crime if parts of it take place in their jurisdiction.

[Urban Prairie Schooner]

I'm not sure about where you're born, but I noticed something Sunday regarding the location of a gas station where I filled up. i got gas at the Food City Gas n Go along US 460 in Tazewell County, Va. I would have told you that the location of the station was in Richlands. Adjacent to the station is the post office for Doran. But the receipt said Cedar Bluff.

Postal city can sometimes differ from actual city or locale. Example: part of the city of Central, LA is in the Baker, LA ZIP code and therefore mailing addresses are considered to be in Baker, LA.  People get confused by that all the time.

[J N Winkler]

What do people do when their birthplace is right on the boundary of two administrative jurisdictions such as cities, counties, states, or countries?

Short answer:  they brace themselves for an enormous amount of bureaucratic hassle.

The hospital where I was born is right on the line between two cities: Newport and Fort Thomas. I'm not even sure which city was listed on my original birth certificate (which is now lost). Probably Fort Thomas, since everybody insisted on saying the hospital was in high-rent Fort Thomas rather than low-rent Newport. They say the hospital's mailing address and main access road were in Fort Thomas, therefore the whole building must have been in Fort Thomas. That's like saying all of Highland Heights is in Newport because that's what mailing addresses show. I think the hospital actually has parking lots in both Newport and Fort Thomas. I just assume I was born in Newport.

Have you considered requesting a copy of your birth certificate to see what it says?

AIUI, a birth certificate is a declaration by the parent(s), though with a degree of facilitation by the hospital if one is involved--they ensure a date and time of birth are available for recording and probably also play a role in ensuring other information (such as the address of the hospital) is pre-populated.  I suspect your birth certificate does say Fort Thomas, but if your parents had refused to sign one saying that, I doubt they would have been compelled to do so.

If a birthplace was right on a county line, what courthouse has the records?

Generally speaking, the event belongs to the county that recorded it.  But outside genealogical contexts, this is largely moot since most states began registering births and deaths at the state level early in the 20th century.  In Kansas, for example, births were recorded by the state beginning in 1915.

If it was on a state line, how do people answer the question on the census form of what state they were born in?

They pick a state.  It doesn't have to be on either side of the border involved--no Census has ever checked stated birthplace against actual birth records.

(Does the census still ask that?)

The Census no longer asks for state of birth, though it now asks for full DOB.

Sample questionnaire for 2020 Census

Place-of-birth information was often not accurate in past Censuses, anyway.  For example, my Scottish second great-grandmother, who was born in Lanarkshire in 1852, appears in one of the 1950 Census population schedules with Texas as her "birth state."

People born in the U.S. have U.S. citizenship, but what if it's not clear what country a hospital or other birthplace is in? I have known people who lived in the U.S. near the Canadian border and their kids were born in Canada, but in those cases, the hospital was clearly in Canada. That's different from what I'm talking about here.

With the exception of edge cases such as Olivenza, places where there is genuine ambiguity as to jurisdictional boundaries tend not to have mechanisms for registering births and deaths that are robust enough for the resulting documents to be accepted at face value.  The Western Sahara comes to mind.  (Since Spain administers Olivenza, any person born there presumptively receives Spanish citizenship.)

What if someone literally gives birth straddling the actual border of the United States?  Would the resulting child be a citizen of both countries?

I think it would depend on which country or countries, if any, registered the birth as occurring on its soil.  (CtrlAltDel raises an important point--each country sets its own nationality rules.)  Since the US and its neighbors have jus solis citizenship, the child would have at minimum citizenship from each recording country, and would likely be entitled to other nationalities according to his or her parents' respective citizenship(s) and immigration status.

If neither country records the birth and the child ends up stateless, then the 1961 convention on the reduction of statelessness could theoretically apply.  The US and Mexico are not among the contracting parties, though Canada is.  If the child were born on the Canadian border, Canadian citizenship would then be available to him or her for the specific purpose of relieving statelessness.

As far as I remember, US grants citizenship to those born within [its] borders . . .

This is correct (per the 14th Amendment), with one caveat:  "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."  This means that children of foreign diplomats do not receive US citizenship when they are born on US soil.

. . . as well as to those whose parents are US citizens regardless of the birthplace.

This is correct only if certain conditions are met.  A US citizen parent can pass on US citizenship to a child born abroad through jus sanguinis only if he or she has lived in the US a set number of years before age 14 and another set number of years after age 14.  Since she spent a large share of her childhood abroad, Barack Obama's mother did not meet the criteria that applied when he was born, though she would have met the current ones.  This left him with just jus solis citizenship, and gave rise to the birther conspiracy theory:  if he could have been "proven" to be born in Kenya or wherever, he would not be a US citizen at all, despite his mother being a US citizen.

I actually know a US citizen living abroad whose children are not Americans because she spent so much of her childhood outside the US.

Not sure what happens with multinational couples.

It depends on the nationality laws of the countries concerned.  The permutations are almost endless.  Moreover, nationality often factors into treaty arrangements.  For example, as a result of the Good Friday agreement, British people born in Northern Ireland are automatically citizens of the Irish Republic as well.

Countries vary according to the extent to which they allow indefinite expatriatism (generation after generation able to claim citizenship on the basis of descent alone, without some kind of physical connection to the country).  The US, UK, and Ireland do not, though I understand Italy and Luxembourg do.

[bandit957]

Have you considered requesting a copy of your birth certificate to see what it says?

I have a replacement birth certificate that I had to order. I just checked it, and it only has the county (no city).

[kphoger]

What if someone literally gives birth straddling the actual border of the United States?  Would the resulting child be a citizen of both countries?

I think it would depend on which country or countries, if any, registered the birth as occurring on its soil.  (CtrlAltDel raises an important point--each country sets its own nationality rules.)  Since the US and its neighbors have jus solis citizenship, the child would have at minimum citizenship from each recording country, and would likely be entitled to other nationalities according to his or her parents' respective citizenship(s) and immigration status.

If neither country records the birth and the child ends up stateless, then the 1961 convention on the reduction of statelessness could theoretically apply.  The US and Mexico are not among the contracting parties, though Canada is.  If the child were born on the Canadian border, Canadian citizenship would then be available to him or her for the specific purpose of relieving statelessness.

If a person literally gives birth straddling the actual border of the United States, then I'm struggling to imagine a scenario that's official enough that the parents couldn't simply choose whichever country they wanted.  I suppose if they live-streamed the birth, and the baby plopped out directly onto an actual boundary marker...?

[J N Winkler]

I have a replacement birth certificate that I had to order. I just checked it, and it only has the county (no city).

I had forgotten this is a thing that also happens.  My Scottish ancestor actually received two death certificates from the State of Texas in 1951, and on both her address is given simply as Justice Precinct 1 in Delta County, Texas--no city, street, or house number.  It took some detective work to find her in the 1950 Census, and one of the stops along the way was another death certificate, issued in respect of the husband of the woman who took care of her in her final days.  That did have a street address.

If a person literally gives birth straddling the actual border of the United States, then I'm struggling to imagine a scenario that's official enough that the parents couldn't simply choose whichever country they wanted.  I suppose if they live-streamed the birth, and the baby plopped out directly onto an actual boundary marker...?

In practice, I suspect it would indeed depend on the amount of publicity the incident received, since both countries would be chary of ratifying claims to jus solis citizenship that the parents had intentionally made dubious by contriving to have the birth occur right on the border.  (I struggle to think of how this could happen without an element of prior planning, other than, e.g., a US citizen couple driving to Canada when the woman is in the ninth month of pregnancy, and her then delivering the baby just as the car overlaps the border while they wait to clear Canadian customs.  Has this ever happened for real?)

Realistically, anyone who has a birth certificate that does not state hospital birth is now disadvantaged when applying for a passport, at least in the US.  There was a well-publicized incident several years ago when a woman, born at home in 1977 in northeastern Kansas with the birth subsequently registered by her father, had the State Department sit on her passport application until Senator Moran's office intervened.  (She had apparently been issued a passport previously but had to submit a second original application because she had waited too long after it expired to renew it.)  This was around the time obstetricians in south Texas were under the microscope for allegedly helping register births in the US that had occurred in Mexico.

[bandit957]

My replacement birth certificate doesn't list the hospital.

[kphoger]

I struggle to think of how this could happen without an element of prior planning, other than, e.g., a US citizen couple driving to Canada when the woman is in the ninth month of pregnancy, and her then delivering the baby just as the car overlaps the border while they wait to clear Canadian customs.

Of course.  But, even in your example, the birth of the bay would presumably have to (1) occur while the car is stopped in traffic immediately on the international boundary and (2) be witnessed by someone who could confirm that such was the case.  The first criterion might occur if the couple were trying to hurry up and drive from Canada into the USA while the mother was in active labor, in order to make it to a US hospital, but the delivery came to soon.  But the second criterion?  Who's to say it occurred on the boundary line?

Realistically, anyone who has a birth certificate that does not state hospital birth is now disadvantaged when applying for a passport, at least in the US.  There was a well-publicized incident several years ago when a woman, born at home in 1977 in northeastern Kansas with the birth subsequently registered by her father, had the State Department sit on her passport application until Senator Moran's office intervened.  (She had apparently been issued a passport previously but had to submit a second original application because she had waited too long after it expired to renew it.)  This was around the time obstetricians in south Texas were under the microscope for allegedly helping register births in the US that had occurred in Mexico.

Does this also include midwifery?  My best friends, who currently live in Mexico, have had midwife-assisted births for all three of their children, and they're soon to come back stateside for the birth of their fourth.  As far as I know (and I would know), they haven't had any trouble getting passports for their newly born children.

For what it's worth, my high school Spanish teacher gave birth to one of her daughters on an airplane.  She gave her daughter the middle name of Avión.

[J N Winkler]

My replacement birth certificate doesn't list the hospital.

I don't know to what extent the format of birth certificates has been systematized by the federal government.  (The CDC has guidelines for the information death certificates are to contain.)  In the mid-1970's, Kansas birth certificates had blanks for the following:

*  Born in hospital?  (Yes or No)

*  Name of hospital

*  Inside city limits?  (Yes or No)

*  Parents' address at time of birth (usually residence, not the hospital)