Cite as: 523 U. S. 420 (1998)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Insofar as the argument rests on the fact that the male citizen parent will "forever forfeit the right to transmit citizenship" if he does not come forward while the child is a minor, whereas there is no limit on the time within which the citizen mother may prove her blood relationship, the argument overlooks the difference between a substantive condition and a procedural limitation. The substantive conduct of the unmarried citizen mother that qualifies her child for citizenship is completed at the moment of birth; the relevant conduct of the unmarried citizen father or his child may occur at any time within 18 years thereafter. There is, however, no procedural hurdle that limits the time or the method by which either parent (or the child) may provide the State Department with evidence that the necessary steps were taken to transmit citizenship to the child.
The substantive requirement embodied in § 1409(a)(4) serves, at least in part, to ensure that a person born out of wedlock who claims citizenship by birth actually shares a blood relationship with an American citizen. As originally enacted in 1952, § 1409(a) required simply that "the paternity of such child [born out of wedlock] is established while such child is under the age of twenty-one years by legitimation." 66 Stat. 238. The section offered no other means of proving a biological relationship. In 1986, at the same time that it modified the INA provisions at issue in Fiallo in favor of unmarried fathers and their out-of-wedlock children, see n. 4, supra, Congress expanded § 1409(a) to allow the two other alternatives now found in subsections (4)(B) and (4)(C).
political branches dictates "a narrow standard of review of decisions made by the Congress or the President in the area of immigration and naturalization." Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U. S. 67, 82 (1976). Even if, as petitioner and her amici argue, the heightened scrutiny that normally governs gender discrimination claims applied in this context, see United States v. Virginia, 518 U. S. 515, 532-534 (1996), we are persuaded that the requirement imposed by § 1409(a)(4) on children of unmarried male, but not female, citizens is substantially related to important governmental objectives.
435
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