Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2017/03 The cause of children denied Chilean nationality and at risk of statelessness attracted the attention of the international community and local academic and civil society groups due to the negative consequences brought about by the denial of the right to a nationality. As a result, in the period from 2012 through 2014 the Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic at the UDP Centre for Human Rights and the Immigration Law Clinic at the UAH School of Law filed several nationality claims on their behalf with the Supreme Court. International treaty monitoring bodies have addressed this specific issue in their observations. In 2013, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD Committee) expressed its concern over this systematic practice and encouraged Chile to adopt legislation ensuring access to nationality for Chilean-born children of parents with an irregular migratory status.17 In its Concluding Observations for 2015, the CRC Committee encouraged Chile to “Review and amend its legislation to ensure that all children born in the State Party who would otherwise be stateless can acquire Chilean nationality at birth, irrespective of their parents’ migratory status.”18 The Committee further encouraged Chile to ratify the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954) and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961). The Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW)19 and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) issued similar recommendations.20 The Chilean Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the notion of transient foreigners must be interpreted "in its natural, obvious meaning", as required under Art. 20 of the Civil Code.21 Most dictionaries define the meaning of in-transit as “not residing in a particular place”. In this light, foreign tourists or crewmembers are clearly ‘transient foreigners’, but individuals living in a country and showing intent to remain should not be classed as such.22 The nationality claims and the advocacy efforts of migrant rights groups eventually led the Interior Ministry’s Department of Immigration and Foreign Residents to concede that the 1995 interpretation was incorrect.23 The Department publicly agreed that the ‘in-transit alien’ category should be reserved for the children of persons actually in transit at the time of birth, notably foreign tourists and ship or flight crew members. On August 14, 2014, the Department issued Memorandum No. 27601 noting that “… [A]s an exception to the constitutional doctrine of jus soli, the principle in question should be interpreted narrowly. As such, the ‘transient foreigners’ class will not be deemed to include cases not falling strictly within the above framework, including parental immigration status (…)”24. While the new interpretation was a step in the right direction, it did not repeal the 1995 directive, resolve the underlying CTF issue, or make reparations for violating the rights of many thousand improperly registered children, some of whom were now of legal age. All remained branded as CTF. 17 CERD Committee. Concluding Observations, Chile. 2013 CERD/C/CHL/CO/19-21, para. 18. CRC Committee. Concluding Observations, Chile. 2015, CRC/C/CHL/CO/4-5, paras. 33(a)(b). 19 Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, Concluding Observations, Chile. 2011, CMW/C/CHL/CO/1, para. 33. 20 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Concluding Observations, Chile. 2012, CEDAW/C/CHL/CO/5-6, paras. 27(a)(b). 21 “Terms in the law shall be interpreted to have the natural and obvious meaning given in common usage. When expressly defined otherwise, they shall be interpreted accordingly." 22 Supreme Court Cases No. 12551/2013, judgment of March 7, 2013; No. 10897/2013, judgment of January 14, 2014; No. 9422/2013, judgment of January 6, 2014; No. 5482/2013, judgment of November 26, 2011; No. 4108/2013, judgment of September 16, 2013; No. 300/2013, judgment of April 29, 2013 and No. 9168/2012, judgment of March 11, 2013. 23 Department of Migration, Memorandum No. 27601, August 14, 2014. 24 Id. 18 4