Having clean records a must when you file INS N 400 form.

[nancymervin]

Acquiring the United States citizenship is through a naturalization process which ensures that the person entitled for it is right in all aspects. Apart from the minimum continuous residential requirement of five years, in case of spouse of a US citizen the period is 3 years, as a lawful permanent resident above the age of 18 years and passing the citizenship test and interview, there is need for the INS N 400 form applicant to have good moral character.

Children born to U.S. citizen outside US can apply for citizenship. So proof of their US citizenship or nationality can be got by applying for certificate of citizenship. The fact that application for US citizenship takes a lot of time to be processed and may be main reason to make it difficult to get certificate of citizenship. To make it easy it might be even better to first get the passport to prove citizenship. If a parent is naturalized it’s easy to apply for certificate of citizenship since it’s easy and obvious to prove applicant’s claim to citizenship.