Issue Encyclopedia · Guideline B · Foreign Influence
Parent (citizen/resident of foreign country)
Does parent (citizen/resident of foreign country) affect a security clearance?
Basis: 2,286 decided hearing-level cases raising this issue. Descriptive history of decided cases, not a prediction.
Decided cases
2,286
hearing-level decisions raising this issue
Granted
52%
1,182 granted · 1,104 denied or revoked
Official mitigating conditions cited
| Condition | In granted cases | In denied cases |
|---|---|---|
| ¶ 8(a) · A conflict between foreign and United States interests is unlikely | 738 | 54 |
| ¶ 8(b) · Deep and longstanding ties to the United States | 472 | 31 |
| ¶ 8(c) · Contact so casual and infrequent that there is little risk | 131 | 14 |
| ¶ 8(f) · Foreign interests too small to be used for influence | 44 | 2 |
| ¶ 8(e) · Reporting requirements met promptly | 43 | 5 |
| ¶ 8(d) · Contact on United States Government business, or approved by the agency | 12 | 0 |
¶ 8(a) · A conflict between foreign and United States interests is unlikely
- In granted cases
- 738
- In denied cases
- 54
¶ 8(b) · Deep and longstanding ties to the United States
- In granted cases
- 472
- In denied cases
- 31
¶ 8(c) · Contact so casual and infrequent that there is little risk
- In granted cases
- 131
- In denied cases
- 14
¶ 8(f) · Foreign interests too small to be used for influence
- In granted cases
- 44
- In denied cases
- 2
¶ 8(e) · Reporting requirements met promptly
- In granted cases
- 43
- In denied cases
- 5
¶ 8(d) · Contact on United States Government business, or approved by the agency
- In granted cases
- 12
- In denied cases
- 0
Circumstances credited in granted cases
- deep U.S. ties · credited in 414 granted cases
- severed foreign contact · credited in 14 granted cases
- U.S. military service · credited in 6 granted cases
- foreign assets divested · credited in 2 granted cases
- foreign passport surrendered · credited in 1 granted case
Recent decided examples
The case involves an applicant seeking security clearance who faced allegations under Guideline B for foreign influence and Guideline H for drug involvement. The applicant admitted to the allegations …
Applicant, an armed security supervisor for a U.S. installation in Kosovo, faced Guideline B allegations based on family ties, a home, and a bank account in Kosovo. He admitted all SOR allegations but…
The case involves an applicant for a security clearance who has significant ties to Iran, including family connections and dual citizenship. The applicant's foreign contacts and interests raised secur…
The applicant, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sudan, was denied security clearance due to foreign influence concerns. She has close familial ties to citizens of Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and pr…
Related issues under Guideline B
How these numbers are measured
Scope: decided hearing-level cases whose per-allegation profile records this issue, matched to the same issue value the search filters use, so a count here and a filtered search always agree. A case raising several issues counts under each one. The mitigating conditions and the credited circumstances below were extracted for a subset of the record, so both are counts of cases rather than rates. Pages exist only for issues with at least 25 decided cases, and † marks any split built on fewer than 20.
Reading the statistics
- Granted = access granted or continued; Denied = denied or revoked.
- Grant rate = granted ÷ (granted + denied).
- † marks figures based on fewer than 20 cases, too few to be reliable.
- Hovering any rate shows its statistical range (a 95% confidence interval).
- Figures are descriptive counts over decided, public DOHA ISCR decisions, never predictions or assessments of any pending case.
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