About CitizenApproved
CitizenApproved is a free educational project for understanding U.S. citizenship and naturalization law. It is designed to make primary sources easier to find, legal categories easier to distinguish, and changing policy easier to track.
The mission
A person should be able to learn what rule applies today, where that rule comes from, what facts matter, what has changed, and what remains uncertain without first having to decode hundreds of pages of statutes, regulations, forms and policy guidance.
That does not mean reducing citizenship law to a simplistic eligibility score. Where the law depends on dates, historical statutes, custody, criminal history, travel, immigration status or other individualized facts, CitizenApproved explains the issue and points to the controlling sources rather than pretending to adjudicate the case.
Authority before rhetoric
Current constitutional, statutory, regulatory and binding judicial authority is identified before proposals, advocacy or political argument.
Primary-source verification
Volatile facts such as fees, filing rules, testing requirements and agency practices carry verification dates and links to the government or court source.
Translation-friendly writing
Pages favor plain, literal English and defined legal terms so browser and assistive translation tools have a cleaner source text. We do not claim that an automated translation is legally authoritative.
Education, not advocacy
The goal is to explain what a policy does, why proponents support it, what credible criticisms exist, and which authority currently governs—not to recruit the reader to a political position.
What this project is
- An educational guide to major U.S. citizenship and naturalization frameworks.
- A current-policy ledger for rules and practices that change.
- A bridge to statutes, regulations, court decisions and official government materials.
- A public resource intended to be understandable without specialist training.
What this project is not
- A law firm or government agency.
- Legal advice or representation.
- A guarantee that any person is eligible for a benefit or already a citizen.
- A substitute for the current USCIS form instructions or a court order in an individual case.
When individualized legal help matters
Criminal history, immigration violations, long absences, old acquisition or derivative-citizenship rules, disputed parentage, adoption and custody, prior removal proceedings, possible false claims to citizenship, denaturalization questions and other high-stakes facts can require individualized legal analysis.