Citizenship of the birth: The importance of the birthplace in America

31. Januar 2025

WOM

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The US President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that refuse citizens from undocumented immigrants in the United States would. With this step, he aims at a principle that he sees as typically American: the birthright for citizenship.

birth law on citizenship: a controversial debate

"It is absurd. We are the only country in the world that does this in terms of birthright, and it is just absolutely crazy," said the 47th President of the United States, while he questioned a principle that some of his opponents look at what it means to be Americans. For over 150 years, the 14th additional article of the constitution has been guaranteeing all persons born on US soil.

inadequacies of argument

While the courts tried to temporarily block its order, various media pointed out that the presidents' statements were not entirely precise. According to the Law Library of Congress, more than 30 countries worldwide unconditionally recognize the birth law on citizenship - this means that children who are born on their ground automatically acquire the right to citizenship regardless of their parents' residence status.

a special American concept

Despite the exaggerated rhetoric of the President, the data situation of the Law Library indicates that there is a particularly American (both in North and South America) concept of unreserved birth law on citizenship, as the following card shows.

It is noteworthy that almost all of these countries that recognize the unrestricted birth law are in the western hemisphere, i.e. in North, Central and South America. However, the majority of the countries outside of this region recognize the principle of Jus Soli (Latin for "right of the soil"), on which the unrestricted birth law is based, either do not even do it or only do so under certain conditions - often in connection with the residence status of the parents of the newborn child.

The roots of the right
But how did this division come about? In North America, the concept of the "right of the soil" was introduced by the British about their colonies, according to a study by Graziella Bertocchi and Chiara Strozzi. This principle was established in English in the early 17th century by a judgment that said that anyone who was born in a place that was subordinate to King of England was a "natural born in England".

When the United States explained its independence, the idea remained and - ironically against the departing British - was used to prevent foreign influence, such as in the requirement of the constitution that the president must be a "natural -born citizen" of the United States.

The effects of civil rights movement

However, it was only in the 1820s that a movement under black American leadership, whose civil rights were not expressly guaranteed at the time, caused the country to seriously think about the topic, according to the history professor Martha Jones from Johns Hopkins University.

"You come to birth law, partly because the US constitution of 1787 demands that the President of the United States have to be a natural citizen. Therefore, they hypothesize that if there is something like a natural citizen, just like the president, also natural-born citizens of the United States."

economic motives in the background

However, it was not just the British in North America who introduced this idea. Other European colonial powers also brought the concept to the countries of Central and South America. In many of these areas, an economic need often promotes economic needs. At that time, the populations in the western hemisphere were significantly smaller than in other, colonized parts of the world, and the settlers often saw the granting of civil rights as an opportunity to strengthen their workers.

"These Europeans came and said: 'This country belongs to us now, and we want more Europeans to come here, and we want them to become citizens of these new countries.’ It is a mixture of colonial dominance and the idea of settler peoples that want to populate, "explained the sociologist John Skrentny from the University of California, San Diego.

A change of the principles: From the right of the soil to bloodthetic

So what is with all the countries in other parts of the world that have also been colonized by Europeans, but today does not recognize the "right of the soil"? Many of them - especially in Asia and Africa - also turned to the nationality laws to send their former rulers a message.

In most cases, however, these countries tended to a different form of citizenship that has their roots in European law: Jus Sanguinis (the "right of blood"), which is generally based on ancestry, parenthood, marriage relationships or origin. In some cases, this system was transferred to Africa by European powers, as Strozzi and Bertocchi found in their study. In other cases, newly independent countries took over on their own drive to form their nations on an ethnic and cultural basis.

The effects on national identity

The changeover was relatively simple. As Skrentny notes, the "right of the soil" in many of these countries was never as deeply rooted as it was in the America, which is partly due to the fact that the large local populations meant that the colonizers did not have to strengthen their workforce.

The departure from the "right of the soil" sent a message to the former colonial masters that "they no longer wanted to hear from it", while the assumption of the "right of the blood" ensured that descendants of colonizers who stayed in Africa were not regarded as citizens. "Everyone switched to Jus Sanguinis," said Bertocchi. "It seems to be paradoxical, right? To build a national identity, you had to accept this principle."

The end of the Jus Soli?

There is a last turn that explains why the principle of the "right of the soil" today appears largely American. Over the years, the colonial powers, which once followed the "right of the soil", have either abolished or restricted them in its application, similar to some of their former colonies. In the United Kingdom, it was abolished by the British Nationality Act of the 1980s, which determined several conditions to obtain British citizenship - including those who relate to parenting, as in Jus Sanguinis.

experts confirm that the driving force behind these changes - in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe - was concerned that migrants could take advantage of the system by entering the country to give birth to a child with automatic citizenship. In other words: the same reason that many of Trump's supporters in the United States today.