Protecting Minorities from De Facto Statelessness Conservative Party of Canada adopted a policy platform supporting limitations on jus soli citizenship.17 These proposed policy changes have never been implemented into law but they continue to be raised in debates about the future of immigration and citizenship laws in Canada, motivated by fears that non-residents could obtain social welfare or immigration benefits from Canada simply by giving birth to a Canadian child or inheriting Canadian citizenship.18 Jus soli is also the prevalent mode of citizenship attribution at birth in Latin America, arising from a different political and legal tradition than the AngloAmerican common law states. Upon gaining their independence, most of Spain’s former colonies chose jus soli to break with the former colonial order and to prevent Spain from asserting authority over persons born in newly independent states.19 Latin American states also shared a settler state experience with AngloAmerican North America, whereby jus soli facilitated the rapid integration of new immigrants by the second generation. 20 Spain’s former possessions in South America enshrined jus soli citizenship in their constitutions to ‘create “citizens out of colonial subjects” and to forge “national communities from colonial societies marked by stark social distinctions”’, all the while excluding those born outside the Americas with questionable allegiances to now-foreign sovereigns.21 In practice, this nation-building project meant eradicating pre-existing Indigenous rights, land claims and identities, with the aim of encouraging immigration and rapidly integrating the children of immigrants into a homogenous imagined political community.22 Brazil followed this pattern upon its independence, rejecting the prior Portuguese rule of citizenship by descent in favour of a qualified jus soli, which excluded African slaves who constituted a quarter of the population at the time of its independence. 23 Regardless of the tradition in which it is situated, the prevalence of jus soli citizenship in the Americas makes de jure statelessness rare in the Americas compared to the Eastern Hemisphere, where, in most 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Janice Dickson, ‘Scheer Defends Birthright Policy, Says Ending “Birth Tourism” is Objective’, Toronto Star (online, 27 August 2018) <https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/08/27/scheer-defends-birthright-policy-saysending-birth-tourism-is-objective.html>. Alyse Kotyk, ‘More Than Half of BC Residents Think Birth Tourism Degrades Value of Canadian Citizenship: Poll’, CTV News (online, 4 September 2020) <https://bc.ctvnews.ca/more-than-half-of-b-c-residents-think-birth-tourism-degrades-valueof-canadian-citizenship-poll-1.5093202>. David Fitzgerald, ‘Nationality and Migration in Modern Mexico’ (2005) 31(1) Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 171, 175 citing Eduardo Trigueros Savaria, ‘La Nacionalidad Mexicana: Notas para el Estudio del Derecho Internacional Privado’ (1940) 28 Jus: Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales; Diego Acosta, The National Versus Foreigner in South America: 200 Years of Migration and Citizenship Law (Cambridge University Press 2018) 33–38. Fitzgerald (n 19) 179; Olivier Willem Vonk, Nationality Law in the Western Hemisphere (Brill Nijhoff 2014) 9. While jus sanguinis, or citizenship by descent, is the primary rule of citizenship attribution in the Eastern Hemisphere, there are some modifications that favour the eventual inclusion of a third generation of immigrants. France is notable for its tradition of double jus soli, whereby a child born in France of foreign parents who had themselves been born in France acquires French citizenship irrevocably. This principle was originally designed in 1889 to end immigrant exemptions from military service. Yet, in the wake of the Algerian Civil War and independence movement, the double jus soli facilitated the integration of the French-born children of Algerians who left for France after Algeria’s independence: Dieter Gosewinkel, Struggles for Belonging (Oxford University Press 2021) 33. Acosta (n 19) 37 quoting Nancy P Appelbaum, Anne S Macpherson and Karin A Rosemblatt, ‘Introduction: Racial Nations’ in Nancy P Appelbaum, Anne S Macpherson and Karin A Rosemblatt (eds), Race and Nation in Modern Latin America (University of North Carolina Press 2003) 1, 4. ibid 53–54. ibid 38. 69