Report on Citizenship Law: Ghana Rules for those born after independence remained as they were: jus soli for those born in Ghana and jus sanguinis for those born outside of Ghana (Nationality and Citizenship Act, No. 1 of 1957, section 1-2).‘’ As Malki (2018) argues, through these laws, the NLC sought to form alliances with Ghana’s immigrant community, particularly mercantile descendants of Middle Eastern immigrants who had settled along the West African coast at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. From 1968 onwards, however, the NLC changed its immigration politics, introducing a number of anti-immigration policies that prohibited ‘aliens’ from running businesses and curtailed their housing rights (Pinkney 1972). Crucially, in February 1969, the NLC reharshened citizenship provisions with another decree which retroactively reintroduced a descent clause for citizenship by birth. ‘A person born in Ghana is a citizen of Ghana by birth if […] having been born in Ghana after the 6th day of March 1957 one at least of his parents at the time of his birth was a citizen of Ghana’ (Ghana Nationality Amendment Decree, No.333 of 1969, section 1(b)). The NLC thereby not only made it again more difficult for secondgeneration immigrants to acquire citizenship in Ghana (see also for the case of Middle Eastern immigrants’ struggles for citizenship in Ghana Akyeampong (2006); Malki (2018) and Manby (2018)). It also based citizenship solely on descent. The same year, elections were held to transition power back to a democratically elected, civilian government. The reformulation of who would count as a citizen by birth was thus clearly meant to exclude those not deemed indigenous from participating in the election. 2.1.2 Citizenship Law under the Government of Prime Minister Kofi Busia (1969 – 1972) After immigration issues dominated the 1969 election campaign, the newly elected government of Prime Minister Busia stepped up anti-immigration policies. The 1969 Constitution again removed the clause granting citizenship to persons who had previously held the status of citizen of the UK and colonies or British-protected person, though not retrospectively. It also provided that women who had acquired Ghanaian citizenship through marriage would automatically lose their citizenship on divorce – while immigrant men, as in previous and later legislation, did not even have the option to acquire citizenship through marriage (Constitution of 1969, section 8). These changes in citizenship laws were accompanied by increasingly nationalist rhetoric, blaming immigrants for rising unemployment and crime rates. The rhetoric was followed by action when the government passed the Aliens Compliance Order in November 1969, which forced ‘non-indigenous people’ to obtain residence permits within two weeks or leave the country (Kobo 2010, 78). Given the absurd notice period of merely two weeks, many people were unable to acquire the necessary documentation to legally stay in Ghana. Actual figures of how many people were forced to leave the country due to the Aliens Compliance Order, however, do not exist. Shortly after the Aliens Compliance Order, the Ghana Business Promotion Act of 1970 nationalised businesses previously owned by nonGhanaians. In 1971, the Busia government again amended Ghana’s citizenship laws by passing the Nationality Act to repeal the NLC’s citizenship decrees. This 1971 Nationality Act introduced two main changes which further curtailed access to citizenship for immigrants and their descendants. On the one hand, it introduced new requirements for naturalisation, such as ‘making a substantial contribution to the well-being and progress of Ghanaian life’ and being ‘assimilated into the Ghanaian way of life’ (Nationality Act, No.361 of 1971, section 7(1)). On the other hand, it introduced different rules for people born before independence, between independence and the 1969 constitution, and after the entry into force of the 1969 constitution. The most restrictive provision concerned those born in the nine years between independence and the 1969 constitution. For them, the 1971 Nationality Act added a generation to the GLOBALCIT 5