Lawful permanent residents of the United States (LPRs) who apply for naturalization as United States citizens must show, inter alia, that they have resided in the United States continuously for five years. See 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(1); 8 C.F.R. § 316.2(a)(3)-(4). Each of the two Plaintiffs- Appellants in this case had resided for several years in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a territory of the United States, when federal immigration law replaced CNMI immigration law there in 2009. The issue we must decide in this appeal is whether the time plaintiffs resided in the CNMI before the 2009 transition date counts toward the five-year residence requirement for naturalization. The district court held in a published decision that the time does not count. Eche v. Holder, 742 F. Supp. 2d 1136, 1141-45 (D.N.M.I. 2011). That is the correct answer under the clear language of the controlling statute, and we affirm.

The Plaintiffs-Appellants are Peter Eche and Perry Po-Sheung Lo. Each became a permanent resident of the United States and each later moved to the CNMI before the CNRA transition date. Eche, a Nigerian citizen, entered the United States at Seattle and was admitted as an LPR in September 2004 as the immediate family member of his United States citizen father. He moved to the CNMI in January 2005, and his father apparently remained in the continental United States. Lo, a Chinese citizen, was admitted as an LPR in February 1989 as the immediate family member of his United States citizen sister. He lived in the CNMI between October 2000 and 2009 with no citizen immediate family member.

Both Eche and Lo filed applications in the CNMI to naturalize as United States citizens and appeared for examination in late 2009. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) rejected both applications on the ground that their pre-transition date residence did not count. The agency said that if the LPRs had no US-citizen immediate relative also living in the CNMI, the residence before the November 28, 2009 transition date “cannot be counted as residence in
the United States for naturalization purposes.”

The Naturalization Clause does not apply of its own force and the governments have not consented to its applicability. The Naturalization Clause has a geographic limitation: it applies “throughout the United States.” The federal courts have repeatedly construed similar and even identical language in other clauses to include states and incorporated territories, but not unincorporated territories. In Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 (1901), one of the Insular Cases, the Supreme Court held that the Revenue Clause’s identical explicit geographic limitation, "throughout the United States," did not include the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico, which for purposes of that Clause was “not part of the United States.” Id. at 287. The Court reached this sensible result because unincorporated territories are not on a path to statehood. See Boumediene v.Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 757-58 (2008) (citing Downes, 182 U.S.at 293). In Rabang v. I.N.S., 35 F.3d 1449 (9th Cir. 1994), this court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s limitation of birthright citizenship to those “born . . . in the United States”did not extend citizenship to those born in the Philippines during the period when it was an unincorporated territory. U.S. Const., 14th Amend., cl. 1; see Rabang, 35 F.3d at 1451.Every court to have construed that clause’s geographic limitation has agreed. See Valmonte v. I.N.S., 136 F.3d 914, 920-21(2d Cir. 1998); Lacap v. I.N.S., 138 F.3d 518, 519 (3d Cir.1998); Licudine v. Winter, 603 F. Supp. 2d 129, 134 (D.D.C.2009).

Like the constitutional clauses at issue in Rabang and Downes, the Naturalization Clause is expressly limited to the “United States.” This limitation “prevents its extension to every place over which the government exercises its sovereignty.” Rabang, 35 F.3d at 1453. Because the Naturalization Clause did not follow the flag to the CNMI when Congress approved the Covenant, the Clause does not require us to apply federal immigration law to the CNMI prior to the CNRA’s transition date.

The district court correctly granted summary judgment on the merits to the government Defendants. Eche and Lo may, of course, submit new applications for naturalization once they have satisfied the statutory requirements.