emma69

How do they police it? If I obtain my citizenship by descent, get my passport, live in that country, how do those authorities know how I became a citizen in the first instance? Can a person who lives in a country all their life from, say, the age of 2, but happens to give birth to their child overseas, really not have their child be a citizen? What happens if the child is born in a country that doesn't extend citizenship just because you were born there? They have no citizenship? That is screwed up.

Gigantor

The nation-state will soon be a relic of the past... another concept that has outlived its usefulness and will be thrown upon the dust heap of history.

Get ready for global human registration...

In fact, a prerequisite for Schengen agreement was the introduction of a pan-european database.

STBCypriot

This is most certainly true , but I was referring to the consular fees only.

Maluku_Flyer

You are right, I should have said "in some foreign armed forces". The IDF is apparently OK as well as (most?) NATO countries. The Iranian army might be a bit problematic, though.

Santander

If you are born abroad and settle in the country of your citizenship there should be a way to classify your citizenship as "other than by descent" through registration some how. I am officially a UK citizen by descent (born abroad) but I think I can register as a citizen other than by descent if I go live in the UK again for a certain period of time. I don't have kids so it makes no difference to me so I haven't really done the research into this. They will know how you got your citizenship because of a) Your place of birth, clearly marked on your passport and b) Where your birth was registered, if it was registered at an overseas consulate you obviously obtained citizenship by descent.

If two parents both have non-transmissible foreign citizenship by descent and their child is born in a lex soli country other than the one of their citizenship ("easy countries", e.g. USA, Canada, etc.) the child should be solely a citizen of the country of their birth. If the child is born in a jus sanguinis country but the parents are legally resident in the country, most countries have a law which allows the child to become a citizen of that country regardless of their parents' nationality. Furthermore, almost every country has a law that allows children born in that country who would be stateless to become citizens of that country as a sort of a catch-all. If there are more complicated circumstances which the local laws do not recognise (e.g. parents are tourists in a country with very stringent nationality law), the parents would most likely have to appeal to their country's consulate for assistance. The laws limiting transfer of citizenship by descent are to prevent mass immigration of "returning citizens" and abuse of the system, not to ruin the lives of peoples' children. Every country frowns on statelessness, there will be some solution.

ajax

The US requires citizens who bear children outside of the US to have lived in the US for at least five years since the age of 14 in order to be able to confer citizenship upon their children (or something very similar; my memory is failing me at this exact mo).

The UK does something similar. There is a residency requirement to be able to pass citizenship along to your children. I believe the assumption is that if you live outside the country long enough (and thus in another country), you are probably very near to acquiring citizenship of that other country if you haven't already and thus this will be the citizenship of your child.

FWIW, the UK has something called "settled status" which is the status of right-of-abodeholders, ILR-holders and Irish citizens (and some other British Overseas Citizens). Although these people are not British Citizens, any children of their born in the UK are automatically citizens.

If they are a citizen of that country, then citizenship will almost always be conferred upon their child even if it is born overseas (NB: there are a few Middle-Eastern countries which do not allow mothers to confer citizenship upon their children if they are born overseas, although such a restriction does not apply to those children's fathers).

There are approximately twelve million 'stateless' individuals around the world. A very good example are the children (and grandchildren) of Tibetan refugees in Nepal and India. They are not citizens and instead are given refugee passports and have refugee status. States with large refugee populations are very familiar with this concept. And it is screwed up, indeed.

K�nig

Latvia and Estonia also have a large number of non-citizens - at one point as high as 1/3 of total population. They are former Soviet citizens mostly of Russian ethnicity who permanently resided in these republics (some were born there) at the time they announced independence from the USSR. These people were given non-citizen passports (not merely alien travel documents) and a special status - different from that of later alien permanent residents.

ajax

Ah yes - I remember the passage of the citizenship laws a few years back that required all citizens and applicant to speak fluent Estonian, disqualifying hundreds of thousands of people who are ethnic Russians.

http://news.err.ee/politics/83444b84...1-b071096ccc86

Very tricky politically.

hfly

Ajax, that only applies when only ONE parent is a US citizen, if both have US citizenship then no such proof is needed. BTW it is five years BEFORE THE AGE OF 18 of which at least TWO must be after the age of 13 if only one parent is a US citizen.

Aviatrix

There is another category to whom this applies - EU citizens permanently resident in the UK.

bankops

Uh, no. Never saw any mention of this anywhere. I was exacly in this case with the birth of my daughter. Got married 3 weeks before the birth.

http://travel.state.gov/law/citizens...ship_5199.html

The references to "before 18" is for the child, not the parent.

ajax

How does an EU citizen become permanently resident in the UK? I honestly don't know. Do they need to apply for ILR? What's the qualifying period? I know nothing about this route to citizenship, as all EU citizens I know in this county have no need for British citizenship nor British settled status. Genuinely curious.

GUWonder

Take a child born in Canada this year who has: a Moroccan father who is a naturalized citizen of the US; a Swedish-Brazilian mother; a paternal grandmother who is Irish; and a maternal grandfather who is Italian. How many countries' passports can one little boy need? I doubt parents think it worth the time and money to get them all.

GUWonder

I'm not sure about the context of your post. You may want to consider clarifying the above post as it seems to have combined things or left out things (or both) in such a way that it is not representative of how the State Department is currently handling determinations of US citizens born abroad this year, last year, and for some years before.

Those determinations as you know are done under the INA, as revised, in conjunction with material submitted by such children's US parent(s).

GUWonder

Most of those non-citizens resident in those Baltic Republics weren't born in one of the Baltic Republics?

Shameful treatment of ethnic minorities by those countries, and yet the EU let them in anyway.