Naturalization in the context of "Pakistani nationality law"

Immigration has been a major source of population growth and cultural change in the United States throughout much of its history. As of January 2025, the United States has the largest immigrant population in the world in absolute terms, with 53.3 million foreign-born residents, representing 15.8% of the total U.S. population—both record highs. While the United States represented about 4% of the total global population in 2024, 17% of all international migrants resided in the United States. In March 2025, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated that approximately 18.6 million illegal immigrants resided in the United States. In 2024, immigrants and their U.S.-born children number more than 93 million people, or 28% of the total U.S. population.According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016. Of these, 48% were the immediate relatives of United States citizens, 20% were family-sponsored, 13% were refugees or asylum seekers, 12% were employment-based preferences, 4.2% were part of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, 1.4% were victims of a crime (U1) or their family members were (U2 to U5), and 1.0% who were granted the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) for Iraqis and Afghans employed by the United States Government. The remaining 0.4% included small numbers from several other categories, including 0.2% who were granted suspension of deportation as an immediate relative of a citizen (Z13); persons admitted under the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act; children born after the issuance of a parent's visa; and certain parolees from the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam who were denied refugee status.

Between 1921 and 1965 policies such as the National Origins Formula limited immigration and naturalization opportunities for people from areas outside Northwestern Europe. Exclusion laws enacted as early as the 1880s generally prohibited or severely restricted immigration from Asia, and quota laws enacted in the 1920s curtailed Southern and Eastern European immigration. The civil rights movement led to the replacement of these ethnic quotas with per-country limits for family-sponsored and employment-based preference visas. Between 1970 and 2007, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States quadrupled from 9.6 million to 38.1 million residents. Census estimates show 45.3 million foreign born residents in the United States as of March 2018 and 45.4 million in September 2021, the lowest three-year increase in decades.

Foreign-born (also non-native) people are those born outside of their country of residence. Foreign born are often non-citizens, but many are naturalized citizens of the country in which they live, and others are citizens by descent, typically through a parent.

The term foreign born encompasses both immigrants and expatriates but is not synonymous with either. Foreign born may, like immigrants, have committed to living in a country permanently or, like expatriates, live abroad for a significant period with the plan to return to their birth-country eventually.

Loyalty is a devotion to a country, philosophy, group, or person. Philosophers disagree on what can be an object of loyalty, as some argue that loyalty is strictly interpersonal and only another human being can be the object of loyalty. The definition of loyalty in law and political science is the fidelity of an individual to a nation, either one's nation of birth, or one's declared home nation by oath (naturalization).

Asian New Zealanders are New Zealanders of Asian ancestry (including naturalised New Zealanders who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants).At the 2023 census, 861,573 New Zealanders identified as being of Asian ethnicity, making up 17.3% of New Zealand's population.

The first Asians in New Zealand were Chinese workers who migrated to New Zealand to work in the gold mines in the 1860s. The modern period of Asian immigration began in the 1970s when New Zealand relaxed its restrictive policies to attract migrants from Asia.

The First Empire of Haiti, officially known as the Empire of Haiti (French: Empire d'Haïti; Haitian Creole: Anpi an Ayiti), was an elective monarchy in North America. Haiti was controlled by France before declaring independence on 1 January 1804. The Governor-General of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, created the empire on 22 September 1804. After being proclaimed emperor by the Generals of the Haitian Revolution Army, he held his coronation ceremony on 6 October and took the name Jacques I. The constitution of 20 May 1805 set out the way the empire was to be governed, with the country split into six military divisions. The general of each division corresponded directly with the emperor or the general in chief appointed by the emperor. The constitution also set out the succession to the throne, with the crown being elective and the reigning emperor having the power to appoint his successor. The constitution also banned white people, with the exception of naturalised Germans and Poles, from owning property inside the empire.

Jacques I was assassinated on 17 October 1806. Two members of his administration, Alexandre Pétion and Henri Christophe, then assumed power, which led to a split in the country – with Pétion leading the southern Republic of Haiti and Christophe leading the northern State of Haiti (later Kingdom of Haiti). Some 43 years later, on 26 August 1849, President Faustin Soulouque re-established an Empire in Haiti that lasted until 15 January 1859.

United States citizenship can be acquired by birthright in two situations: by virtue of the person's birth within United States territory while under the jurisdiction thereof (jus soli) or because at least one of their parents was a U.S. citizen at the time of the person's birth (jus sanguinis). Birthright citizenship contrasts with citizenship acquired in other ways, for example by naturalization.

Birthright citizenship is explicitly guaranteed to anyone born under the legal "jurisdiction" of the U.S. federal government by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (adopted July 9, 1868), which states:

Immigration law includes the national statutes, regulations, and legal precedents governing immigration into and deportation from a country. Strictly speaking, it is distinct from other matters such as naturalization and citizenship, although they are sometimes conflated. Countries frequently maintain laws that regulate both the rights of entry and exit as well as internal rights, such as the duration of stay, freedom of movement, and the right to participate in commerce or government.

The Croatian diaspora (Croatian: Hrvatsko iseljeništvo or Hrvatsko rasuće) consists of ethnic Croat people, their descendants, and Croatian citizens living outside of Croatia. An excess of four million people are part of the Croatian diaspora. The nationality laws of Croatia affords citizenship by birth, ancestry, and naturalization, growing the Croatian citizen population living abroad.

Estimates on its size are only approximate because of incomplete statistical records and naturalization, but upper-level estimates suggest that the Croatian diaspora numbers between a third and a half of the total number of Croats. Within neighboring Southeast Europe, the largest community are with the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the constituent nations of that country, amounting to about 545,000. Outside of these two regions, broader Europe is home to around one million Croatians, with 1.7 million living overseas. The largest diaspora community is in the United States at 1.2 million Croatian Americans, which significantly influence Croatia–United States relations. In Western Europe, the largest group is found in Germany with a reported 228,000 Croatian Germans as of 2006, with some estimates including naturalized citizens as high as 500,000. There are significant numbers of the diaspora in the Indo-Pacific, mainly in Australia (165,000) and New Zealand (up to 100,000).