Just being born here doesn't make you a citizen. You must at the very least be able to speak the language. Having a citizenship test makes absolute sense.

Birthright citizenship is an absolutely stupid idea.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Birthright citizenship is an absolutely stupid idea.

It's no more stupid than citizenship by descent. Why should someone get citizenship just because of the citizenship of their parents? Shouldn't they have to live in the country? Shouldn't they speak the language? Shouldn't they go through the country's school system?

Europe's combination of freedom of movement and only Jus Sanguinis has resulted in a situation where there are lots of people with citizenship to a place they've never lived, and no citizenship to the place they've lived their entire lives.

Really though, how citizenship should be awarded depends on if it's an obligation or an opportunity. If a country is at war and drafting all citizens of a certain age, citizenship is an obligation the state puts on its citizens. If a country is at peace and provides a social safety net to all citizens, citizenship is an opportunity for its citizens. If the world were fair, people would be able to choose whether or not they wanted citizenship when they reached adulthood. It shouldn't be something that happened automatically to children based either on who their parents were or on where they were born.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 hours ago

I think that the Restricted Birthright citizenship which is most common in Europe tries to navigate somewhere between those two extremes - in it basically if you're a Resident in that country for more than X years (from what I've seen usually X years is 2 years) then your children born there get citizenship.

It filters out freeloading - well-off people who have no personal investment in a country and its future and never contributed to it in any way, just flying over and having their kids there to give them citizenship - whilst still extending the same rights as locals have to those who, whilst not having the local nationality, are participating members of that society.

I think the fairest way is to give equal treatment (including giving the local nationality to their children and making it available to they themselves after a few years living there) to those who are participating members of a society but not to those who are not members of that society, and that would also mean that the fairest treatment would be that the children of local nationals who have long ago left (and the children themselves never in fact lived there) do not get that nationality automatically for merely their parents having it.

Ultimately I think nationality should be earned by living as part of a Society and when they're born children, having not have had a chance to "earn" it, would inherited that from the or parents.

That said some level of obtaining nationality based on the nationality of one's parents makes sense to cover the time gaps of people who moved abroad and had children there before they could qualify for the nationality of the country they were born with, since otherwise those children would be stateless.

As for the decision mechanism being "years legally living in a country" it's just the simplest and most equal for all (passing no judgment for things like what people do for a living) way of judging "participating in that Society" whilst only excluding people who were neither invited in nor taken in because they've truly need help (i.e. it's only for legal immigrants and refugees).