אזרחות נגזרת (באמצעות הורה) של ילדים קטינים (RA 9225 §4)

PH-CBN-01 is the derivative citizenship channel created by Section 4 of RA 9225. It is not an independent acquisition mode: the minor child's Philippine citizenship is a legal consequence of, and is wholly contingent upon, the parent's retention or re-acquisition of Philippine citizenship under the same Act (PH-RAQ-01). When a natural-born Filipino parent takes the §3 oath of allegiance and thereby retains or re-acquires citizenship, the parent's qualifying minor children "shall be deemed citizens of the Philippines" by force of §4 — the child takes no separate oath and files no independent petition for the acquisition itself.

The legal character is therefore best understood as a statutory by-operation-of-law grant attached to the parent's status change. David v. Agbay frames the parent-side mechanism that triggers it: "the authors of the law intentionally employed the terms 're-acquire' and 'retain' to describe the legal effect of taking the oath of allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines." Section 4 attaches to either of those parental effects ("of those who re-acquire Philippine citizenship upon effectivity of this Act"). Administratively, the Bureau of Immigration processes the child under the heading "Inclusion of Dependents under R.A. 9225" and issues an Identification Certificate evidencing the derivative citizenship. The route is operative as of 2026 and is one of the most commonly used channels for the children of returning or dual-citizen Filipinos.

Section 4 fixes three cumulative eligibility conditions on the child and one predicate on the parent:

Child-side conditions (all must hold):

1. Filiation — the child must be the parent's child, and §4 expressly covers all three filiation types: "whether legitimate, illegitimate or adopted." No filiation type is excluded.
2. Unmarried — the child must be "unmarried." A child who is married is outside §4 regardless of age.
3. Below 18 — the child must be "below eighteen (18) years of age." A child who is already 18 or older when the parent retains/re-acquires is outside §4.

Parent-side predicate: the parent must be a person "who re-acquire[s] [or retains] Philippine citizenship upon effectivity of this Act" — i.e., a natural-born Filipino who validly invokes RA 9225 §3 (see PH-RAQ-01). If the parent's RA 9225 invocation fails or is not made, there is no §4 derivation for the child.

The cut-off is assessed at the time the parent retains/re-acquires. The Evidence Table fixes the operative reading: "Derivative scope expressly covers legitimate, illegitimate, AND adopted children; cut-off is unmarried + below 18." A child who satisfies all three conditions is "deemed" a citizen; a child who fails any one (e.g., married at 16, or unmarried but 18) cannot derive under §4 and must, if otherwise qualified, look to a different route (e.g., jus sanguinis recognition under PH-REC-01 if born to a Filipino parent, since descent does not depend on the parent's RA 9225 act).

The decoded corpus establishes the legal predicates; the granular BI checklist is (access-blocked, post-ingest). On the primary record, the evidentiary set for a §4 dependent comprises:

• The parent's RA 9225 documentation — proof that the parent validly retained/re-acquired (the parent's oath and Identification Certificate). Without this, there is no §4 derivation. David v. Agbay exemplifies the parent-side IC ("Identification Certificate No. 266-10-07 … Consulate General of the Philippines (Toronto)").
• Proof of filiation to the qualifying parent — birth certificate (legitimate/illegitimate) or adoption decree (adopted), since §4 turns on the child being the "child, whether legitimate, illegitimate or adopted, … of" the reacquiring parent.
• Proof the child is unmarried and below 18 at the time of the parent's reacquisition — the two age/status cut-offs.
• The child's Identification Certificate (IC) — the BI's evidentiary output under "Inclusion of Dependents under R.A. 9225."

The BI services index distinguishes this dependent-inclusion service from both stand-alone "Recognition as Filipino Citizen" (PH-REC-01) and the parent's "Retention/Re-acquisition" service, confirming §4 inclusion is a discrete administrative product even though its legal force flows automatically from the parent's oath.

The §4 grant operates by force of statute upon the parent's qualifying oath, but it is documented administratively. The competent authority is the Bureau of Immigration (BI) domestically and the Philippine Foreign Service Post (DFA consulate/embassy) overseas — the same offices that process the parent's RA 9225 reacquisition (PH-RAQ-01). The BI's published service for the child is captioned "Inclusion of Dependents under R.A. 9225" (BI services index).

The procedural logic is parent-first: the parent files and takes the §3 oath; the qualifying child is then "included" as a dependent. David v. Agbay records the evidentiary output on the parent side — "Identification Certificate No. 266-10-07 issued by the Consulate General of the Philippines (Toronto)" — and the child likewise receives an Identification Certificate (IC) evidencing the derivative citizenship. Because the child "does not take a separate oath" (the derivation runs from the parent's oath), the child's process is documentary rather than an independent oath-taking. The precise BI documentary checklist for "Inclusion of Dependents" is administrative detail not decoded this cascade (BI sub-pages returned 403/404, scheduled post-ingest); the statutory predicate and the BI service caption are, however, primary- and source-pinned.

Section 4 derivation has no independent waiting period: the child is "deemed" a citizen at the moment the parent's retention/re-acquisition takes legal effect (i.e., upon the parent's §3 oath). There is no probationary period analogous to the two-year wait under judicial naturalisation (CA 473), because §4 is derivative, not a naturalisation petition. The practical timeline is therefore co-extensive with the parent's RA 9225 processing plus the administrative time for the BI/consulate to issue the child's Identification Certificate.

The temporal cut-off that matters is status at the time of the parent's reacquisition: the child must be unmarried and below 18 then. A child who turns 18 or marries before the parent reacquires loses §4 eligibility; conversely, a child who satisfies the conditions at the operative moment is covered even if the IC is issued later. The Act's effectivity (§8: fifteen days after publication, ~17 September 2003; exact calendar date ) is the broader temporal frame — §4 speaks of children "of those who re-acquire Philippine citizenship upon effectivity of this Act." Current BI processing times and fees for dependent inclusion are administrative detail (post-ingest).

RA 9225 §4 (Derivative Citizenship) — as transcribed on lawphil (PH-PRIMARY-07): "The unmarried child, whether legitimate, illegitimate or adopted, below eighteen (18) years of age, of those who re-acquire Philippine citizenship upon effectivity of this Act shall be deemed citizenship of the Philippines."

The cleaner verbatim rendering, quoted by the Supreme Court En Banc in AASJS v. Datumanong (PH-PRIMARY-23), reads: "The unmarried child, whether legitimate, illegitimate or adopted, below eighteen (18) years of age, of those who reacquire Philippine citizenship upon effectivity of this Act shall be deemed citizens of the Philippines." (The lawphil text's "deemed citizenship of the Philippines" is a transcription artefact; the authoritative SC quotation reads "deemed citizens of the Philippines.")

Constitutional anchor. Derivative citizenship under §4 is an exercise of the power in 1987 Constitution Art. IV §3: "Philippine citizenship may be lost or reacquired in the manner provided by law" — the same enabling clause that authorises the parent's reacquisition. The child's resulting status is naturalised-by-operation-of-statute in form but derivative in substance: §4 confers citizenship by the statute's own terms ("shall be deemed citizens"), distinct from the natural-born status the parent recovers. The Constitution recognises only two classes of citizens (Art. IV §1 enumeration; Bengson III), and a §4 child who was not himself a Filipino at birth and acquires status only through the parent's act is, in the constitutional taxonomy, a citizen acquired "in accordance with law" rather than natural-born — unless the child independently qualifies as natural-born by descent.