Why is it in many European countries, your citizenship is not based on being born in said country but by the citizenship of your parents?
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Because that makes things easier if a child happens to be born during travel. In border regions many people cros into other countries for stuff as basic as grocery shopping; now imagine a pregnant woman has a surprise birth there and her kid is now German instead of Swiss because of a one hour long “international trip.” Nobody needs that kind of beurocracy.
Because it seems obvious that Spanish parents have Spanish babies and German parents have German babies.
The American idea of being a citizen by virtue of being born on the physical landmass…. is a very new idea and somewhat of an oddity in the world.
It’s not actually that different for the US – a child born to American parents outside the US has automatic US citizenship. Imagine how difficult it would make things if they weren’t!
Likewise a child born in the US to foreign parents is entitled to the citizenship of their parents. The only difference is the US allows them to also claim US citizenship.
European states are approximately based on what we call nations. A nation is a somewhat mystic entity of humans that feel they belong together. If two people of nation X have a kid the nation feels that kid also belongs to them. Add a thousand asterisks and migration and racism and all that fun stuff but that’s roughly the idea.
In some countries, it’s based on both – for instance Ireland used to have citizenship by descent for Irish citizens having children while living abroad, and also anyone born on the island of Ireland could claim citizenship. The law was changed in 2005 so that babies born in Ireland to non Irish parents were only entitled to citizenship if a parent had been resident for a certain length of time.
This is not just European thing. It’s the most common option around the world
It’s just that some countries also offer citizenship to those born on their land.
Even US, which is famous for offering citizenship to all born on its soil practices citizenship by blood. As child of US citizens born outside the US can get citizenship like Rafael Edward Cruz, also known as Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada.
Partly because it was a loophole exploited to allow immigration. If your kid had citizenship, it would be harder to deport you…..the term used was anchor baby.
Historically birthright citizenship was from common law traditions ( Germanic / Anglo Saxon law). When Britain established colonies this came over as well. In America it was also useful when dealing with the massive numbers of newly emancipation slaves who did not have clear birth records.
In contrast bloodright citizenship was historically from Latin traditions. In Roman society there was large groups of conquered foreigners who the Roman’s were reluctant to incorporate into their society, as being a Roman citizen came with many advantages they did not want to give to everyone.
Most modern countries incorporate elements of both into their immigration systems.
So it’s something called land right citizenship vs blood right citizenship.
On the entertaining side of things, it results in kids like my son who despite being born in the UK and speaking with a super adorable English accent that seems to be sticking (he’s almost 10) he’s only Canadian because the way our successive visas lined up there was a short gap in the parental residency requirements the reset the clock.
Less entertaining, until fairly recently the UK only gave blood right citizenship to children whose *father* was a UK citizen (with paternity being decided based on parents being married iirc, but not positive on that point). So UK mother with any other nationality father you were out of luck.
My nephew popped out a month to soon, while his mother was visiting some friends om vacation in germany. Ill know hell be very pissed if you started calling him german !. And there a lots of expats in The netherlands, many planning to return to their country in a few years* It would be a nightmare if they were hungarian, but there son was suddenly dutch. And i think the india might start a war if we suddenly claimed al indian babies here are claimed as dutch.
* Funnily though that “a few” years, usually always seem to be a few years later then the first time they mentioned 🙂
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