Foreign-Born Members of Congress: Eligibility and 119th Congress

Foreign-born members of Congress have served in every session since 1789, because the Constitution lets naturalized citizens sit in either chamber once they meet a citizenship duration requirement — seven years for the House, nine for the Senate. In the current 119th Congress (2025–2027), 32 lawmakers were born outside the United States: 26 in the House and six in the Senate, or about 6% of the full body.¹ Their birthplaces span 17 countries across four continents.

Who Can Serve

The natural-born citizen requirement people sometimes assume applies to Congress does not. It applies only to the presidency, under Article II, Section 1, which is generally read to mean someone who held U.S. citizenship at birth without needing to naturalize.² A naturalized citizen can rise to Speaker of the House or Senate majority leader but cannot serve as president.

For the House, Article I, Section 2 sets three requirements: a representative must be at least 25 years old, must have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, and must live in the state they represent at the time of election.³ For the Senate, Article I, Section 3 raises the minimum age to 30 and lengthens the citizenship requirement to nine years.⁴

The Supreme Court has confirmed that these are the only qualifications. In Powell v. McCormack (1969) and U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), the Court held that neither Congress nor the states can add to them.³ A state cannot, for example, require a longer period of citizenship for its own delegation.

Who Serves in the 119th Congress

The Congressional Research Service counts 26 foreign-born representatives and six senators in the 119th Congress, and notes that some of them were born abroad to American parents working or serving overseas rather than as foreign nationals.¹

The House

The 26 foreign-born House members come from 17 countries. Mexico is the most common birthplace with four members: Salud Carbajal (D-CA), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL), and Raul Ruiz (D-CA). Three each were born in Germany (Becca Balint, Sharice Davids, David Rouzer) and India (Pramila Jayapal, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Shri Thanedar). Two each were born in Peru (Robert Garcia, James Himes), South Korea (Young Kim, Marilyn Strickland), and Ukraine (Victoria Spartz, Eugene Vindman).⁵

The remaining representatives each bring a unique country of birth to the chamber: Sean Casten (Ireland), Andrew Clyde (Canada), Dan Crenshaw (Scotland), Diana DeGette (Japan), Adriano Espaillat (Dominican Republic), Carlos Gimenez (Cuba), Ted Lieu (Taiwan), Ilhan Omar (Somalia), Norma Torres (Guatemala), and Donald Beyer (Free Territory of Trieste). Democrats hold 18 of these seats; Republicans hold eight.⁵

The Senate

Six sitting senators were born outside the United States: Michael Bennet of Colorado (born in India), Ted Cruz of Texas (born in Canada), Tammy Duckworth of Illinois (born in Thailand), Mazie Hirono of Hawaii (born in Japan), Bernie Moreno of Ohio (born in Colombia), and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland (born in Pakistan). Bennet, Cruz, Duckworth, and Van Hollen were born to American parents abroad, a distinction the Senate’s own records flag with an asterisk.⁴

How the Citizenship Rules Have Been Tested

The duration requirements are not decorative. The most significant early challenge involved Albert Gallatin, a Swiss-born senator elected from Pennsylvania in 1793 and then denied his seat because he had not been a U.S. citizen for the required nine years.⁶ He served in the House instead and later became one of the longest-serving Treasury Secretaries in American history.

James Shields, an Irish-born senator elected from Illinois, was likewise denied his seat for coming up short on the citizenship clock. He won the special election that followed, once he had cleared the nine-year threshold, and went on to serve as senator from three different states (Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri), the only person in American history to do so.⁶⁴

The Longer Arc

Foreign-born representation in Congress has shifted dramatically over more than two centuries. Roughly 10% of members of the first Congress (1789–1791) were born abroad — nine out of 95. The share peaked at about 8% during the 50th Congress (1887–1889), when 31 of 407 members were foreign-born, alongside the major European immigration wave of that era.⁷

Then it collapsed. Between 1967 and 1974, no foreign-born member served in either chamber. As recently as the 114th Congress (2015), only six did, about 1% of the body. Across the entire history of Congress, 407 foreign-born Americans have served among more than 12,000 total members.⁷

The current 6% share is the highest in decades but still trails the foreign-born share of the U.S. population, which stood at 13.6% as of 2021.⁸ On the Senate side alone, the chamber’s records list 74 senators born outside the United States across its entire history, most commonly in Ireland (17), Canada (14), and England (12).⁴

How Members Got Here

The personal routes to Congress vary as much as the countries of birth.

Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is the first refugee ever elected to Congress. Born in Mogadishu in 1982, she fled Somalia’s civil war with her family in 1991, spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp, and arrived in the United States in 1995. She learned English watching television in Arlington, Virginia, before her family settled in Minneapolis in 1997, and she naturalized in 2000 at age 17.⁹ Her 2018 election also made her the first Somali-American and the first hijab-wearing Muslim woman in Congress.¹⁰

Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) came alone at 16 to attend Georgetown University after a childhood in India, Indonesia, and Singapore. Her path to citizenship took 17 years, set back when her daughter’s premature birth in India jeopardized her green card and restarted the clock.¹¹ Before Congress she spent 12 years leading OneAmerica, an immigrant advocacy organization she founded in Washington State after September 11.¹²

Representative Eugene Vindman (D-VA) was born in Soviet Ukraine and left as a three-year-old with his father, twin brother Alexander, another brother, and his grandmother. The family was stripped of Soviet citizenship on departure, granted refugee status, and resettled in Brooklyn with help from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.¹³

Representative Victoria Spartz (R-IN), the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress, immigrated in 2000 from Chernihiv after meeting her husband on a train in Europe. She holds degrees from the National University of Economics in Ukraine and a master’s in accountancy from Indiana University.¹⁴¹⁵

Representative Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), the only Cuban-born member of Congress, left Cuba with his family in 1960 at age six, the year after Castro’s revolution. He returned to the island for the first time in 64 years in June 2026 as part of a congressional delegation to the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay.¹⁶

Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) was born in Fukushima, Japan, and grew up on her grandparents’ rice farm before her mother brought her and her siblings to Hawaii at nearly eight, traveling in steerage from Yokohama to escape an abusive husband. She arrived without English, went through public schools, and later earned a law degree from Georgetown.¹⁷ She became the first Asian-American woman, first Japanese immigrant, and first Buddhist elected to the Senate.¹⁸

Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH), the Senate’s newest foreign-born member and Ohio’s first Latino senator, was born in Bogotá and moved to the United States with his family at five. He naturalized at 18. He has described his family’s early years with nine relatives sharing a two-bedroom apartment.¹⁹²⁰

1
Congressional Research Service. Membership of the 119th Congress: A Profile
2
Constitution Annotated. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 — Presidential Eligibility
3
Constitution Annotated. Article I, Section 2, Clause 2 — Qualifications of Members
4
U.S. Senate. Senators Born Outside the United States
5
U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Clerk. Foreign Born Members of the 119th Congress
6
Constitution Annotated. Article I, Section 3, Clause 3 — Senate Qualifications
7
Pew Research Center. Fewer Immigrants in Congress Today Than in Years Past
8
Pew Research Center. The Changing Face of Congress
9
Britannica. Ilhan Omar
10
UNHCR. Former Refugees’ Historic U.S. Congress Win a Global Victory for Refugees
11
The Nation. Pramila Jayapal on American Citizenship and Immigration
12
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. About Me
13
Kennesaw State University Veteran Stories. The Vindman Family
14
Congresswoman Victoria Spartz. About Victoria
15
The Washington Post. Victoria Spartz, Ukrainian-Born Congresswoman
16
Fox News. Cuba-Born Rep on Emotional Return After 64 Years
17
Senator Mazie Hirono. About Mazie
18
Carnegie Corporation. Mazie Hirono
19
Senator Bernie Moreno. About Senator Moreno
20
The New York Times. Bernie Moreno