2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(1) countries, newborn children inherit their citizenship status, or lack thereof, from their parents.24 Nevertheless, irregularities in birth registration sometimes lead to instances of de facto statelessness characterised by a lack of access to the political and social rights of citizenship in the absence of documented citizenship. 25 This problem has only become more prevalent amidst the operational constraints resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020.26 In the Caribbean, countries like the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, which have transitioned from a predominantly jus soli citizenship rule to a jus sanguinis citizenship rule, have seen a marked increase in de facto statelessness in their territory, where native-born residents cannot access social and political rights.27 In both countries, persons of Haitian ancestry (who face considerable discrimination as economic migrants) make up the bulk of persons who are affected by the abandonment of the jus soli rule, which occurred first in the Bahamas at independence in 1973 and then, more significantly, in the Dominican Republic in 2010.28 In the latter case, the Dominican Republic amended its Constitution to exclude children born to parents who illegally reside in Dominican territory from jus soli citizenship, mainly affecting the children of Haitian labourers who already suffer from racism and economic marginalisation.29 In the absence of documentation, Dominican citizens of Haitian descent are targeted for deportation, simply because of the colour of their skin.30 Unlike in the former British dominions, which are common law jurisdictions that transitioned from a jus soli birthright citizenship rule to a regime dominated by jus sanguinis or citizenship by descent, based on the immigration and nationality status of one’s parents, in the United States, territorial birthright citizenship is explicitly entrenched in the Constitution and rooted in the nation’s historical democratisation. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution is the centrepiece of the United States’ commitment to legal equality emerging out of the American Civil War (‘Civil War’) and post-war reconstruction. Even before the Civil War, the struggle by emancipated AfricanAmericans for recognition as free and equal citizens augmented existing legal arguments for jus soli citizenship in the United States. 31 Nevertheless, jus soli birthright citizenship is still politically contested in the United States, where debates about birthright citizenship and the future status of its estimated 11 million unauthorised immigrants and their children are linked. Legislative efforts to reinterpret the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution to exclude the children of irregular immigrants continue. 32 The US 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Kristy Belton, ‘Heeding the Clarion Call in the Americas: The Quest to End Statelessness’ (2017) 31(1) Ethics and International Affairs 17, 18. Polly Price, ‘Jus Soli and Statelessness: A Comparative Perspective from the Americas’ in Benjamin Lawrence and Jacqueline Stevens (eds), Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness (Duke University Press 2017) 27, 42 (‘Jus Soli and Statelessness’). Carla Abou-Zehr et al ‘The COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects on Civil Registration of Births and Deaths and on Availability and Utility of Vital Events Data’ (2021) 111 American Journal of Public Health 1123. Price (n 25) 31, 39. Kristy Belton, Statelessness in the Caribbean: The Paradox of Belonging in a Postnational World (University of Pennsylvania Press 2017) 57, 87. ibid 87–88, 97–98. ibid 96. Martha S Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (Cambridge University Press 2018) 9–10. See, eg, Birthright Citizenship Act of 2021 (2021) HR 140 (USA). 70