• AbnormalHumanBeingA
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    8 hours ago

    Basically: Resident enfranchisement. It’s weird, when people born in our country and having lived here their whole life can’t vote outside of local elections. My own father, for example, had a Dutch background, and was never allowed to vote in federal elections until his death. (Neither he nor I even spoke/speak a single phrase of Dutch)

    Yes, things have gotten somewhat better and easier with applications for citizenship, but that there are hurdles like that to begin with, is a bit… weird.

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      3 hours ago

      That’s fine and is what most European countries have. What they have is minimum levels to say that a parent is resident (e.g. over a couple of years of a legal status). This is to avoid pregnant women doing exactly what the OP suggests. Make journeys last minute just to get their child a different nationality.

    • esa@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 hours ago

      Yeah, the way things work in Norway and I expect in most other European countries is that you don’t get a citizenship for just being born here, but if you’re born and raised here, then by the time you’re of school age you’d have lived here long enough to become a citizen, and unless your parents isolated you, you shouldn’t have any problems with language requirements.

      Basically the system here is “stay here for long enough and make a bit of effort for integration and sure you can become a citizen”.

      Of course, the far right loves to portray this as “unrestricted immigration” and make it harder for people to do that, or even live normally, get education and services for their kids, etc. And then complain when the result is people who feel that the system isn’t working for them, or who have trouble because they’re uneducated and poorly integrated anywhere.