2011] AN INTERNATIONAL LAW OF CITIZENSHIP 731 Watch,255 had condemned the previous regime as overly restrictive of citizenship access; the reforms were welcomed by the international human rights community.256 Other European states have also adopted jus soli components in their citizenship regimes.257 More recently, countertrends have emerged under which states, particularly in Europe, have raised thresholds to acquiring citizenship. Some states have made jus soli citizenship contingent on the legal residence of a parent.258 Others have lengthened residency periods.259 Yet others have adopted or deepened integration measures—for instance, in the form of citizenship examinations testing applicant knowledge of history, governance, and culture.260 Germany itself has retrenched since the 1999 reform measures, adopting a citizenship examination in 2008.261 These countertrends cut against the identification of international norms mandating access to citizenship. If they continue, they may reinforce the traditional doctrine under which state sovereignty has afforded states broad discretion over citizenship practice. The countertrends may nonetheless be consistent with the emergence of norms on access to citizenship. Recent reversals in liberalization of citizenship practices have not eliminated earlier advances.262 It may be a matter of two steps forward, one step back. Developments in an area long marked by autonomous decision making are unlikely to evolve in a linear or synchronized manner. In Germany, for instance, the current citizenship regime remains more liberal than that antedating the 1999 overhaul; a proposal to eliminate its jus soli innovation was rejected in 2004; and the more recently adopted citizenship test has not proved much of a barrier to naturalization.263 Some bunching around the mean has also occurred. Some states have scaled back generous jus soli policies, whereas others have expanded or added jus soli elements to regimes formerly Id.; see also Ingram & Triadafilopoulos, supra note 165, at 359 (“transnational norms played an important role in the process leading to German citizenship reform”). 255 “GERMANY FOR GERMANS”: XENOPHOBIA AND RACIST VIOLENCE IN GERMANY (1995). 256 E.g., CERD, Concluding Observations: Germany, para. 109, UN Doc. A/56/18 (Oct. 30, 2001) (“[t]he committee notes with satisfaction the improvements brought by the recent reform of the nationality law”). 257 See, e.g., HOWARD, supra note 5, at 89 (Portugal). Greece recently adopted double jus soli, under which the child of a person born and residing in Greece automatically acquires citizenship at birth. See Dimitris Christopoulos, Greece: Comprehensive Citizenship Reform Passed in Parliament on 11 March, EUROPEAN UNION DEMOCRACY OBSERVATORY ON CITIZENSHIP (Mar. 13, 2010), at http://eudo-citizenship.eu/citizenship-news/. 258 Portugal and the United Kingdom scaled back jus soli in this respect in the 1980s. In the wake of a referendum amendment to its constitution, so, too, did Ireland in 2004. See Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act of 2004 (Act No. 38); HOWARD, supra note 5, at 164. 259 Luxemburg has increased its residency requirement from five to seven years, and Denmark from seven to nine. See HOWARD, supra note 5, at 82, 101. 260 Those adopting a citizenship test include Australia, Australia, Denmark, France, and the United Kingdom. The Netherlands has introduced tests for admission and for obtaining long-term residence status. See Michalowski, supra note 198; Harald Waldrauch, Acquisition of Nationality, in 1 ACQUISITION AND LOSS OF NATIONALITY, supra note 5, at 121, 156. 261 See Ingram & Triadafilopoulos, supra note 165, at 353. 262 See HOWARD, supra note 5, at 30 (even taking account of countertrends, “the recent liberalization of citizenship policies is undeniable”); Weil, supra note 191, at 34 (“[a]ll stable, democratic nation-states with immigrant populations have moved in the same legislative direction” with respect to citizenship acquisition practices). 263 See Who Wants a Passport? Minuscule Fail Rate for German Citizenship Test, SPIEGEL ONLINE INT’L ( Jan. 2, 2009) (reporting 99.4 percent pass rate), at http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,599131,00. html; see also HOWARD, supra note 5, at 83 (on a liberalization scale of 1 to 5, Dutch citizenship policy has increased from 2.72 to 4.22 in the period 1980 –2008, notwithstanding adoption of recent restrictionist policies); JOPPKE, supra note 152, at 127–28 (describing watered-down nature of test). This content downloaded from 82.196.111.31 on Thu, 07 Oct 2021 15:20:30 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms