When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"? If the answer is "no", would it change anything if I told you they would have been (like me) descended from a long line of US citizens going back to the 1790s?
Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".
> When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"?
No, because of the ties to a foreign country through your stepmother.
> Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".
No, although if it's only one great-grandmother among 8 I'm not super worried about your mom being more loyal to Norway than the US. Also realistically Norway today has many of the same issues with culturally-foreign immigrants that the US does, so maybe that wouldn't amount to all that much in the unlikely case that your mom did strongly identify with Norwegian cultural norms.
