this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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As a non-American I can’t believe that my wife and I could fly to the USA when she’s 8 months pregnant, give birth while there, and our kid would then be a US citizen, and as such we could probably then just choose to stay in the USA indefinitely. It makes no sense.
The fact that this has been possible all this time is baffling. Passport tourism is not something that should ever have been allowed, especially when it is mostly used by illegal immigrants in order to gain protection from being deported.
This shouldn’t even be a “left vs right” or “progressive vs conservative” thing. It’s just a bad thing that has no reason to exist.
You're looking at one scenario which doesn't come up too frequently, and based on that you've decided that the way your country does it is better. Maybe you're right.
Here's a different scenario where I think the US does it better: when citizenship is only inherited, a person could be born in your country, live their whole lives knowing only your culture, and still not be considered a citizen because their parents were immigrants. Or worse, their grandparents were immigrants. That's a homegrown underclass.
I don't assume that the US has everything figured out, but there's a reason a nation of immigrants values the rights of immigrants.
I’m not saying my country does it better btw.
In your scenario, the parents lived in the country all that time without becoming citizens, so were there illegally.
There’s a difference between immigrants and illegal immigrants.
There is a difference between legal & illegal immigrants. I was talking about legal ones & made no mention of illegal immigration. It sounds like you might be saying that legal immigrants become illegal after some period of time? If that's true in your country, that's fine. But in many countries, people can legally be non-citizen residents for extended periods. In countries without birthright citizenship, their kids aren't automatically citizens.