Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — A federal court extending US citizenship to persons born in American Samoa is “not only incorrect as a matter of law, but impractical and anomalous in effect,” declared the American Samoa Government and Congresswoman Aumua Amata in their reply-brief filed May 26th at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The people of American Samoa do not want U.S. citizenship at this time,” they argued in a 37-page brief in response to the plaintiffs’ motion filed earlier last month in the citizenship case appealed to the Tenth Circuit from the federal court in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Utah court ruled last December that “Persons born in American Samoa are citizens of the United States by virtue of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

“They certainly do not want the federal courts to decide whether they should become citizens, with all the rights and obligations that entails,” they further argued.

“Rather, the people of American Samoa want most of all to decide for themselves, through well-established democratic processes that have never been challenged as unfair or inadequate, whether to maintain or change their status,” according to ASG and the Congresswoman who are in the citizenship case on appeals while the US State Department and its senior officials are defendants.

The Intervenors note that arguments presented by Plaintiffs — who are three American Samoans residing in Utah and their amici — or friends of the court — only underscore the political nature of this question.

For example, selected former officials representing other territories purport to explain what American Samoa’s relationship with the United States should be. Similarly, various law professors offer reasons to ignore the elected representatives of American Samoa in favor of their own academic theories.

This is precisely the “exercise of paternalism — if not overt cultural imperialism — offensive to the shared democratic traditions of the United States” that the Washington D.C. Circuit rejected five years ago, according to the intervenors referring to an identical citizenship case led by local resident Leneuoti Tuaua that was dismissed by the lower court and upheld by the D.C circuit court.

Intervenors also maintained its argument that judicial Imposition of birthright citizenship would violate American Samoa’s sovereignty and cultural traditions.

Plaintiffs had contended in their brief that Intervenors’ concern for fa’a Samoa is “without any warrant” and claim that Intervenors “have never explained the basis for them.”

“That is easy for Plaintiffs to say when it is not their risk to take,” the Intervenors said, adding that it had described at length multiple aspects of fa’a Samoa that are unique to American Samoa and that could be jeopardized by a decision imposing citizenship that it does not want.

And many aspects of fa’a Samoa are wholly unlike anything in either the other territories or the continental U.S.

“This unique cultural heritage permeates every level of Samoan society, from the individual, to the familial, to the institutional,” the Intervenors argued.

“Because of these unique traditional aspects alone, it would be impractical and anomalous”— and, indeed, deeply “un-American,” — for the Court to “impose U.S. citizenship upon American Samoa against its will,” the Intervenors said.

Such a judicial determination could threaten certain aspects of fa’a Samoa, including its basic social structures, its traditional practices for land alienation, and its religious customs — all of which are constitutionally protected principles of American Samoan society.

Intervenors also maintained its other argument that it’s the US Congress that always decided whether to extend U.S. citizenship to persons born in U.S. territories, and it has never done so over their objections.

“Yet Plaintiffs’ position would result in the unprecedented, unilateral, and forcible imposition of a compact of U.S. citizenship on all persons born in American Samoa, whether they want it or not,” ASG and the Congresswoman further argued.

Intervenors argued that they have consistently maintained that “imposition of citizenship by judicial fiat would fail to recognize American Samoa’s sovereignty and the importance of the fa’a Samoa,” and would “violate...fundamental principles of self-determination.”

Both the Intervenors and the defendants have long maintained that the Citizenship Clause does not apply to persons born in American Samoa, an unincorporated U.S. territory, and they are neither “born . . . in the United States” nor “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

The defendants in a May 26th reply-brief reiterated this same argument.

As the US Supreme Court has long recognized, Congress has the authority “to prescribe upon what terms the United States will receive [a territory’s] inhabitants, and what their status shall be,” according to the defendants.

And that power exists because American Samoa and territories like it are not are “in the United States” for purposes of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

According to the defendants, the US Congress has long exercised its authority to set the terms of citizenship in unincorporated territories, including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

All parties have requested the appeal’s court for oral arguments but no date is set yet.