The Kansas City Area NCMS Chapter recently pushed out an email to their members regarding clearance actions the US Army Reserves (USAR) will be taking in the coming days specifically related to cleared individuals who were born in a foreign country. While the actions being taken only have an impact on a very small percentage of cleared individuals for those who are impacted the ramifications will be significant and cause problems for them and your company.
The USAR is going through the process of verifying whether or not they have proof of citizenship on file for any and all cleared personnel. If the person does not have citizenship documentation on file the USAR is then going into JPAS and changing the clearance eligibility to show as “Eligibility Administratively Withdrawn.” That would mean the person would not be allowed access to classified information until the records could be updated to show that there is proper citizenship documentation on file.
The recommendation from Squadron Defense Group is to have any of your cleared personnel who are both serving in the USAR and were born in a foreign country to go to their Reserve Unit with acceptable proof of citizenship to ensure they are not negatively impacted. The Unit S-1 is the person they need to talk to and while the message received from NCMS points only to the person having a Naturalization Certificate there are more ways to proof citizenship for those born abroad and we have listed them below for your consideration:
– Consular Report of Birth Abroad
– FS-240
– US Passport
– Naturalization Certificate
– Citizenship Certificate
It should be noted that the message we received did not have any indication of when USAR will be taking this action or if they already have. As such it is recommended that anyone who could potentially be impacted by the actions being taken that they work to ensure their Reserve Unit has the proof of citizenship immediately.
The pertinent language from the message is listed below:
“The US Army Reserves is reviewing records for persons under their command to ensure they have the proper paperwork on hand for members who were not born in the United States. If a members US Army Reserve record doesn’t contain a Naturalization Certificate they are flagging the records and identifying the members as Non-US Citizens (even if they have a security clearance). These records are then being updated in JPAS as Non-US Citizens and clearance eligibility has been affected with “Eligibility Administratively Withdrawn” determinations.
If your employees are members of the US Army Reserves, please have them contact your Unit S-1 and ask them to confirm if they have a copy of your Naturalization Certificate on file. Please also ask them to confirm their record identifies them as a US Citizen (not what is listed in DEERS – this should be iPERMS or a similar system). If their Unit doesn’t have a copy of their Naturalization Certificate, please ask them to send it to them as soon as possible. Once the employee has sent this, please ask them to have their Unit confirm that their record has been updated.”
Should you have any questions about this or any other Facility or Personnel Clearance matters please reach out to your Squadron Defense Group POC for guidance.