The following excerpt is from an article posted in the January 30, 2015 edition of guampdn.com/:
A federal appeals court in the nation’s capital is scheduled to hear oral arguments Feb. 9 in a case related to the citizenship rights of residents of American Samoa.
Unlike the territory of Guam, those born in American Samoa are not considered U.S. citizens.
At issue is the fact residents of the territories do not have the same rights as residents in the rest of the United States. Congress over the decades has passed laws giving only specific rights to the individual territories, such as the Organic Act of Guam.
Former Guam resident Neil Weare, president of the “We the People Project,” in 2013 filed a lawsuit in the federal court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of American Samoans, arguing they’ve been denied their right to be U.S. citizens.
