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.
Oh no, if the entire island were to emigrate to France they would have 270000 immigrants to deal with. Typical right-wing bullshit policy.
It’s true that this is coming from the right-wing french politicians. But it has nothing to do with immigration to mainland France though (read the article).
The situation in Mayotte is explosive: only a third of the adult population has a job, and 34% are registered as unemployed. You also have one inhabitant out of two coming from abroad. You have shanty towns growing everywhere. And in the past years, there has been a surge in violence between gangs, kidnappings etc… causing some inhabitants to install roadblocks in protest against the governement inaction. It’s effectively blocking the island, along with its economy, worsening the problem…
This looks like a desperate attempt to please the pissed locals to lift the roadblocks. So calling that a move to make sure the island’s inhabitants don’t go to mainland France is cliché and missing the whole context. This does not make the decision less controversial though. Nor useful…
Sounds like exactly the kind of situation that would incentivize people who have the right to immigrate to France to want to move to France though?
Mayotte’s is part of overseas France, so I guess you are talking about mainland France?
So yes it may be the case for some of the island inhabitants, who as French citizens can travel to mainland France. Surely and understandbly some do, but reading the press this isn’t really part of the debate. At the same time, these citizens are also the ones installing the roadblocks and demanding these changes. Mayotte is also the French department where Le Pen’s right-wing party got the highest score (42.68%!) during the presidential 1st turn, so that’s not entirely surprising.
My point being, putting it under the scope of “this is mainland France government who wants to discourage immigration to mainland France” is wrong. A more accurate summary could be “this is mainland France governement giving in to demands of Mayotte inhabitants to discourage immigration to Mayotte”.
Ah, now that makes sense, I think the problem was this part of the post
Children of immigrants born in Mayotte
which I read as
Children of (immigrants born in Mayotte)
while they probably meant
Children (of immigrants) born in Mayotte
That’s indeed a pretty confusing wording!
Getting a head start on implementing the policies of the Le Pen regime, avoiding the rush
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
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Non conditional double birthright citizenship : If one of your parent is born in France and you’re born in France, you automatically get citizenship.
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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.
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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.
