Comment by throwaway2037
15 hours ago
> You don't just magically get citizenship for your parents home country, at least not for most countries.
Are there any countries where this is not true? I struggle to think of any, especially amoung highly-developed democratic nations. (There might be a couple of weirdo dictatorships that do not allow it.) It seems this would be necessary to prevent statelessness. For example, if your parents are living in the Netherlands as foreigners, children born there are not entitled to automatic Dutch citizenship. As a result, they will obtain citizenship through their parents (in a foreign nation).
Quite a few countries do not allow dual citizenship. So a person who was born in the US and is therefore US citizen at birth will not be allowed to have that country's citizenship until they revoke the US one.
China and Singapore are some of the more prominent examples.
Both of your examples are wrong.
China considers it a "nationality conflict," the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically, they can still be registered on hukou and get ID card. Apparently they used to unofficially force you to decide as an adult, but stopped a few years ago and now issue the Travel Document for life.
edit to add -- that assumes the parent is not a unconditional green card holder, which is the scenario here.
Singapore allows dual citizenship until 21. Which is not necessarily a good thing, as if you do not do their national service you will effectively get banned from ever going there even if you renounce it later.
Japan and Korea both allow it forever from birth in practice, but the latter also has some complexities regarding the military (either renounce before a certain age or you have some restrictions returning until past a certain age).
> Both of your examples are wrong.
They are not entirely wrong. The person you replied to said "that country's citizenship":
> So a person who was born in the US and is therefore US citizen at birth will not be allowed to have that country's citizenship
Taking example of China, you said "the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically"
"Treated as a citizen" is not same as "having Citizenship". OCI card holders are India are pretty much treated as citizens, except few rights such as the right of suffrage/ability to engage in agricultural land use etc, but that doesn't make them citizens of India.
The Netherlands as well.