Children of immigrants born in Mayotte, the French overseas territory situated between Madagascar and the African mainland, will no longer automatically become French citizens, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said late on Sunday.
“It will no longer be possible to become French if one is not the child of French parents”, Darmanin told journalists upon his arrival on the island, announcing the scrapping of birthright citizenship there - a first in recent French history.
I’m confused because I thought the whole developed world (with the exception of the US and Canada) scrapped birthright citizenship decades ago.
What about mainland France? Does this rule cause Mayotte to deviate from mainland France, or align with it?
France don’t have a birthright citizenship as strong as US, if I am not mistaken it’s something
Non conditional double birthright citizenship : If one of your parent is born in France and you’re born in France, you automatically get citizenship.
Conditional birthright citizenship based on residency when turning 18. If you’re a foreigner born in France, and still live in France when turning 18, you get automatically the citizenship. (While a foreigner who spent 18 year in France would still need to apply to citizenship)
So not as strong as in the americas but stronger than many other countries
Thanks for the clarification.
That raises the question: if someone is born in France to parents who were naturalized in France (born elsewhere) and perhaps gave up their previous citizenship, is the child stateless up until turning 18? I must be missing something because I believe that would go against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which IIRC says everyone is entitled to a citizenship of some kind).
If someone is born in france from naturalized parents (who are citizen at the time of birth) the kid has a french citizenship, even if born abroad
Ah, makes sense.
I don’t know about the rest of the developed world, that’d be interesting to know. EDIT: the wiki page has a nice map of the world giving this info https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
To answer your question, it would cause it to deviate from the rest of France, be it mainland or overseas France. All the territories have “jus soli”, but Mayotte already had lessened rights compared to the rest.
But this would need a revision of the constitution, to specifically remove this right from Mayotte. It’s possible that it may not pass though, given the controverse it created.