Citizenship
The Importance
The fundamental rights available to a person are determined by the citizenship of that person in a country. A country may be home to many people within its boundary, some people residing in the country are citizens of the country, while others are foreigners.
Citizens are those persons living in a country having all the rights, including voting rights. Some of these fundamental rights apply to foreigners residing in a country, but these are limited when compared to the fundamental rights exercised by a citizen of that country.
The citizenship debate has long existed in every country. Each country has faced this situation where a person claims or wants to be a citizen of a country. There can be a situation where a person may become stateless, where no country is willing to accept the person as their citizen. The world had previously witnessed such situations where an entire community had been made stateless due to some laws passed by countries.
A person can only have citizenship in one country at a time. Though many advanced countries in the world allow multi-citizenship. Most countries follow the principle of single citizenship. As soon as a person becomes a citizen of a new country the person loses the existing citizenship of the previous country.
Fundamental Rights
A set of fundamental rights apply to all persons residing in the country, either foreigners or normal citizens. Like the right to equality, this specifies that all persons would be treated equally before the law irrespective of whether a person is a foreigner or a citizen. The right to life and the right to live is another fundamental right that applies to all the residents preventing an individual to be illegally arrested and prosecuted in jail.
Right to practice their religion, any person is free to practice the religion of their choice. Right to movement within the country with certain restrictions. These rights apply to all the persons residing in the country irrespective of foreigners or citizens. Some additional benefits though are available to citizens of a country that do not apply to foreigners.
Reservation in jobs or education is always provided for a citizen of a country, the right to form groups and associations and the right to protest against government decisions are some such rights that are only applicable to the citizens of the country and not applicable to foreigners.
Citizenship Debate
Debate related to citizenship happens in every country due to various reasons. The foremost of them is inequality. Assume that there is a lot of economic disparity between two neighboring countries. The people of economically deprived countries suffer atrocities because of a lack of income, education, security, and health infrastructure. They always try to somehow sneak into the neighbouring country by any means to avail these facilities. A similar situation is witnessed between the borders of America and Mexico.
The next reason is the availability of opportunities. The people residing in a country that lacks work opportunities always try to enter into a country that provides more livelihood opportunities. Then there can be such persons who are persecuted in one country and try to flee to another country where their freedom is respected.
There are situations related to the place of birth that can cause citizenship disputes. Imagine a pregnant woman boarding a flight and it so happens that the birth of the child happens inside the plane itself flying over another country or Ocean, such a situation has already been encountered twice, and so what will be the nationality of that child?
It has been agreed by most countries that in such a situation where a woman gives birth to a child on a movable plane or ship, then the child will be considered a citizen of the country where the plane or the ship is registered.
Foreigners
Foreigners are not a citizen of the country they are residing in; they may be citizens of a different country residing in a foreign country for various reasons. Foreigners are further classified into different categories based on the legality of the foreign citizen. They are legal foreigners, illegal foreigners, and refugees.
A legal foreigner has a valid passport of a country of citizenship and has entered the country with a valid visa or work permit. A foreign citizen with having work permit is allowed to work in another country.
There may be countries where the citizen of one country may not require a passport or visa to travel to another country because of agreements between the governments. They can travel to another country with only proof of identity, like citizens of Nepal, and Bhutan can travel with valid documents to India. The citizens of America or Japan does not require visa across many countries in the world. Displaying their identity document is sufficient enough.
An illegal foreigner resides in the country without any valid documents. There are many such countries where people sneak in illegally through boats or porous border crossings and start residing. The second category of such illegal foreigners includes people having a valid document, but the time limit prescribed in their visa has expired, and they have not renewed it.
Then there are those people who enter another country illegally without any valid documents to stay in the country for a long duration. Such people are called illegal migrants. After a long stay in that country and participating in their economic development, the government may issue documents to these people, making them legal migrants.
Then there are those people, who are forced to leave their country of citizenship due to persecution or extreme devastation caused by some natural calamity or famine, and they all seek shelter in a neighbouring country, such people are called refugees. Initially, when flocks of people arrive under these extreme circumstances, they are called asylum seekers.
Once the country provides permission to such asylum seekers for residence, they are termed, refugees. They are allowed to stay in the land of a foreign country as long as the condition in their motherland does not normalize or they leave the country on their behalf. These refugees are also entitled to get the basic rights applicable to the citizen of the asylum seeker country.
Refugees are provided rights to basic primary education and health facilities however they are not allowed to higher education. Similarly right to formulate organizations or associations, is also forbidden for them. The person becomes a legal foreigner of the asylum seeker of that country when categorized as a refugee.
There can be a situation where the refugees can be made citizens of the country depending upon government policies like the Tibetan refugees residing in India and his holy highness Dalai Lama.
Stateless Citizens
Stateless citizens are the most deprived and neglected category of persons. They are not citizens of any country in the world and hence cannot avail any benefits available to any normal citizens. Such people do have rights which include the right to buy property, the right to vote, the right to justice, right to education to name a few.
How does a person become stateless in the first place? A person can become stateless when they do not have any legal documents to prove their identity and the country that he landed in is not willing to allow entry without valid documents. A popular true story in this respect is that of ‘The Terminal Man’, who resided in the Charles De Gaulle airport for 18 years and died recently as he lost all his documents while travelling.
An entire population of people can become stateless due to some laws passed by the government. In 1935 Germany passed the Nuremberg laws that completely wiped out the citizenship of Jews in Germany making them stateless. Similar laws were passed in Sri Lanka after attaining independence that made about 4 lakh Tamils stateless. In 1982, Burma passed a law Burma Citizenship Act, which made the whole Rohingya community Stateless.
Citizenship Process
There are many ways to attain citizenship of a country. Citizenship by birth, a child born on foreign soil to can claim to become a citizen of the country of birth, but it is the discretion of parents whether they want their child to become a citizen of the country of birth or their original citizenship country.
Jus Soli is the term used to denote that any person born on the soil of a foreign land can claim to be a citizen of that country. Most countries follow this principle including America. Some of the pregnant women in Mexico try to sneak into America to give birth to their babies and in turn get citizenship of that country.
Jus Sanguinis is the term used to check the bloodline of the parents for awarding citizenship to the newborn baby. So if the couple belongs to any other country then the newborn will also become a citizen of the country of the parents irrespective of the place of its birth.
The next way to attain citizenship is by the way of descent. Let us assume that an American couple is staying in another country and their baby was born in that foreign country. The parents want their newborn to be an American citizen similar to them. In that case, they can apply to the nearest American Embassy and get the registration done for the newborn.
There can be situations where a spouse wants to be a citizen after marriage. Each country has a different law. Some countries follow the rule for registration that the spouse must have resided ‘X’ number of years in that country and among them, the last ‘Y’ months/years should be residing in that country as a condition for granting them citizenship.
The most popular approach to attain citizenship is through the process of naturalization. There are two categories for naturalization. The first one is a special category and the second one is a general category. The special category is one where a well-known and renowned individual having excelled in the field of science, literature, philosophy, sports, arts, etc. is willing to attain the citizenship of a country. The country always gives due importance to such persons and provides citizenship to such person without the desired period of stay mandatory stay.
The general category of naturalization is the process where a foreign citizen has legally stayed so long in the country and is well acquainted with the language of the people that they do not want to leave the country and hence can apply for citizenship. The duration of permissible stay for such a person varies by country.
Yet another way to become a citizen of a country is the way where a new territory is occupied or annexed by the country. Let us assume that a country occupied or annexed a substantial piece of land through power or money.
The people residing in that part of the land would automatically become a citizen of the country annexing it. Alaska was originally not part of America, but they purchased it from USSR, thus the people living in Alaska became citizens of America.
Citizenship and its related debates thus continue to exist between countries and each time brings a new challenge to the demographics set up in the country arising from the influx of new people coming from different countries.
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