Single mothers, birth cert and citizenship question?

Factual Questions
1

This is an interesting but not too improbable scenario that I was pondering.

I didn’t know until a few years that a man’s name did not have to be included on the Birth Cert. I assume that this does not just apply in the United States but perhaps in many other Western nations and some developing ones.

Correct me if I’m wrong but single mother’s can add the name of one of her partners to the birth cert and make him legally the father. Some jurisdictions require DNA tests and some just require signatures from the father.

Now this isn’t a whiny men’s rights thread but one about obtaining citizenship. If an unmarried, single woman can legally place a man who is definitely not the father on her babies birth cert it then brings up a question of whether she could easily obtain citizenship for her child through fraud.

Example, Alex (18M) and Abigail (22F) at the time of child’s birth. Alex is a native born black Irish citizen and Abigail is a native born Canadian citizen. Abigail gets pregnant by a man in Canada and moves to college after obtaining a student visa to Ireland in her second week with Alex and his widowed mother. After six months, she decides to drop out of college but still stays in Ireland illegally. She is an unlawful citizen; no student visa, no parents living there (which wouldn’t make a difference seeing as she is over 18), and no real form on employment makes her child have virtually no chance of becoming Irish citizen (since laws were changed to grant citizenship only by blood).

Now, during the last few weeks of pregnancy, her and Alex decide attempt to give the child citizenship by claiming that he’s the father since children can get citizenship if one parent is Irish regardless of whether the parents are married.

The baby comes out, looks roughly biracial and they are both in the hospital to sign the birth cert. Now the father applies for Irish citizenship based on paternity.
This is obviously fraudulent, but if the child genuinely is not told until they are an adult, would the Irish State have the authority to revoke the child’s citizenship if they find out?

2

IIRC, from the news, Canada is not above demanding DNA proof when someone claims citizenship by paternity.

There was even a case recently where an ethnically east Indian lady was denied a passport renewal and stuck in Africa because the Canadian authorities claimed she did not look like her previous passport pictures.

I knew a (white) woman married to a Canadian of Turkish origin. She had two sons. When she applied for a passport for the second one at age 10, initially it was denied because “the child was too dark to be her child”. He had a deeper colour than even the father, and this was not long after the 9/11 paranoia about fake passports. She had to go get supporting documentation like the child’s doctor since birth.

So Canada requires a bit more proof than simple birth certificate if questions arise, or unusual circumstances, or it’s a foreigner attempting to get Canadian documentation.

Not sure about Ireland. After all, if the hospital does not raise the alarm, and the child proceeds with life on the assumption by everyone that he is Irish, who will raise the question? Possibly the first alarm comes when the mother tries to get citizenship based on the child. Someone in the citizenship office might see photos of the mother, child, and the claimed father an notice a problem? Or when the child applies for a passport, and lists mother and father, and the passport office perhaps checks that someone born in backwoods Ireland probably is not the father of a biracial child and looks up his photo… Especially if that prompts them to look at the mother’s photo.

Canada also has a few cases of children who came over very young, then as adults got into trouble with the law. When it was discovered that they had never been naturalized for one reason or another, a person who spent almost all their life in Canada, gets deported to a place where they may not even speak the language.

3

I’m not sure how this is fraudulent. Alex might not be the biological father, but he’s now, by his own volition, the legal father of the child and has acquired all the resulting obligations. As such, this baby is now his baby, and it’s perfectly normal that he would also get Irish citizenship, like his father.

4

I checked the rules in the England and they are complicated now, with single sex couples, possibly both male, being included. However, if a man and a woman who has given birth less than 42 days earlier, go along to the local Register Office and say they are the parents, with the mother producing the form given to her at the time of the birth and both providing proof of identity, the Registrar is unlikely to query it. As said above, it is far more usual for the putative father to absent himself from the proceedings.

In the case the OP refers to, the mother would be sent off for extradition, but the child would quite probably give her enough excuse to be granted citizenship, whatever the nationality of the father. Of course thai assumes that there is no evidence of intent to deceive.

A woman on her own cannot register a man as the father without some legal process.

5

As I understand the OP, the difference is that for Ireland, newborns don’t become anchor babies.

I suppose it depends on the main question - is the father listed on the birth certificate automatically accepted, or does the Irish government demand that the legal match the biological?

One wrinkle I read of in California, for example - if the alleged paternity was not challenged within 2 years, it was established in law. This lead to the welfare department suing fathers for child support, after possibly deliberately routing notices to obsolete addresses - certainly not trying to hard to find the father until the two years were up and it was too late. (The law dated back to before DNA when the only physical test was the relatively broad blood type.)

6

When my wife gave birth, I was listed as the father on the birth certificate. Nobody asked me for a DNA sample to prove I was the father. And in no country is a DNA test required to prove paternity, unless there is some dispute about paternity. Then and only then does a DNA test come into play. Either someone is asserted to be the father, but they deny it, or someone is asserted to not be the father, and they assert paternity. Or in the case of a single mother with no father listed, the state as an interest in establishing paternity so they can go after the father for child support rather than having to give out welfare payments.

It is also a well established legal principle in the United States and most other countries that a women’s husband is the legal father of her children unless he takes some positive action to dispute paternity.

And it is also a well established legal principle that once a putative father accepts legal paternity, they can’t back out of that legal relationship later if they find out the child is not theirs, genetically. You can’t raise a child for 10 years, get a DNA test and find out the child isn’t yours, and walk away. You’re still the legal father of that child, and are legally obligated to support that child. Just like you can’t dump adopted kids on the sidewalk by claiming that they’re not your genetic kids.

In any case, here’s the law in the United States:

https://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-29/0-0-0-9774.html

7

Anchor babies?

Yeah, the kid doesn’t automatically get Irish citizenship just for being born in Ireland. But what exactly do you think an anchor baby is?

The point of an anchor baby, in right-wing circles, is that if you have a baby that is an American citizen, they can’t deport you even if you’re in the country illegally. Except that’s not true. Having a child that is an American citizen doesn’t mean the parent can’t be deported. They can and are. And they can either leave their US citizen child behind in the United States, or take them along with them back to their home country.

8

Many countries would permit the citizenship of the child to be revoked on the grounds of the parents’ fraud, but most have some sort of time limit. For example, in Finland it is five years–if the kid is listed as Finnish and raised in Finland for at least five years, then the question of citizenship cannot be reopened. (Mom and/or Dad might go to jail for fraud, but Junior gets to stay Finnish.) Germany has something similar.

Given the overall incidence of paternity fraud (depending on which study you believe, anywhere from one to 26% of kids are being raised by a man who thinks he’s the father but really isn’t, with most studies in the 2-5% range), it is a certainty that many kids have been granted citizenship even though they were not strictly entitled to it. Reopening a bunch of cases years after the fact would disrupt lives of innocent people who were not aware of the original deception. If the fraud gets discovered relatively soon, Junior is likely to have problems, but if nobody discovers it until he’s an adult, not so much.

In the case presented by the OP, the parents are posited as being of different races (I presume by “native born black Irish citizen” he means somebody of recent sub-Saharan descent, as opposed to the stereotypical “Black Irish” supposed descendants of the Spanish Armada), so a bi-racial child alleged to be the product of a given white mother and a given black father isn’t likely going to appear so unlike the putative parents as to attract all that much scrutiny.

9

I’m not sure, but my guess would be that putting one’s name on the birth certificate implies that one is the biological father, and not just assuming legal fatherhood. Otherwise this would be an avenue to legally unsupervised adoption.

10

However, the U.S. government can, and does, require proof of a genetic relationship to a U.S. citizen above and beyond listing the father’s name on the birth certificate. I currently have a client (a naturalized U.S. citizen) who, upon being widowed, took a vacation in his home country, knocked up a woman half his age there, and subsequently married her (and has remained married to her for now the past 6+ years).

His name is on the child’s birth certificate, but the U.S. Embassy in fact did require a DNA test to prove the child was his (she was). The Embassy reasoned that he was not married to the child’s mother at the time of conception. After many gyrations, the Embassy finally issued the Consular Report of Birth Abroad to a U.S. Citizen to his daughter. I’m sure my client would have preferred not to spend several thousand dollars in legal and lab fees, but it was the only solution.

Eva Luna, U.S. Immigration Paralegal

11

Sorry, just an attempt at humor - I’m well aware of the reality of “anchor”.

As I misread the OP - the problem is the father is not a citizen of Ireland and obviously genetically different (black) and and so is the child from the claimed Irish citizen non-father. So by law, the child should not be a citizen.

Sorry… Re-reading - the OP presumption is that the claimed father is also black(ish), so the child looks close enough to pass for a child of the couple, and therefore a child of the Irish citizen even though it is not.

Just to clarify, marriage is not mentioned, so there’s none of the common law presumption of paternity.

So unless there’s a reason to check, it would be like any other child who does not look different than the parent. Unless, along with the Irish law, comes a requirement that even children born in Ireland* to foreign mothers* (race irrelevant) must prove paternity, like those born to Americans abroad in Eva’s example. In both cases, the incentive to misrepresent paternity exists and the technology also exists to prevent such fraud. And of course, being an illegal resident would set off more alarm bells that say, a student visa or tourist .

12

Each country has its own rules about who is naturally entitled to citizenship at birth. Generally, in the Western Hemisphere, a child is entitled to the nationality of his country of birth, but in Eurasia, it is the opposite (except France and a few others). In the Old World, a child born in that country is assumed to be the nationality of his parents, not of the nation in which he is born. Some countries allow nationality of mother if no father is specified, or even if a father is specified. But not all countries allow a child born of a citizen mother to be automatically entitled to nationality of the mother. I don’t think Canada recognizes citizenship of a baby born in the USA whose mother is Canadian, unless the father is too.

In any case, the OP’s question cannot be answered unless one knows the country of citizenship of any claimed parents, or the country in which the birth takes place, because every country has its own rules. Furthermore, each country has its own complicated rule about the citizenship of a child born to a “stateless person”, and that might cover any situation where a mother cannot convey citizenship and the father is unknown, and therefore stateless.

13

But that’s the point of the OP.
Child - mother Canadian, residing illegally in Ireland, presumably in a common-law (if that exists) relationship in Ireland. Gives birth to a child - father not known (except to mother) and an Irish boyfriend who claims to be the father, and looks “close enough” to be so, but is not.

So the questions are simple:
If the “parents” don’t contest paternity, will the authorities dig deeper or allow the child to have citizenship on the parents’ say-so?
Do illegal resident or non-citizen women (ie. student visa, tourist) who give birth in Ireland have to prove paternity (a) out of wedlock or (b) even in wedlock?
If the “pedigree error” (nice euphemism) is discovered later would the government retroactively withdraw citizenship? Is there a statute of limitations on this?

Some observations:
The website where I got the quote from about the law noted that current citizenship law was “complex”.
In the vast majority of births, the mother would be Irish so the issue is irrelevant.
Does the government routinely demand paternity proof if the child is born in Ireland to a non-Irish mother? Do they only get involved if someone raises a question?
I assume like the USA, having a child born in Ireland doesn’t get you any brownie points in the residency application, while being in the country illegally is a really bad idea when applying? (AFAIK, even marriage is not a slam-dunk to residency in most countries)

What is “Irish Citizenship”? Do you get a “social Insurance Number” or some such at birth, at 16, or would the issue only be noticed when the child applied for a passport? Presumably if an Irish man applies for a passport for his 10-year-old son, and they look close enough, the passport office takes the word of the birth certificate?

14

The naming of Alex on the birth certificate as the child’s father creates a legal presumption of paternity. If Alex and Abigail agree that he should be named on the birth certificate, nobody will ask for DNA tests or similar at the time of registration.

The presumption will stand unless somebody with standing to do so challenges it, and rebuts it with appropriate evidence. The child will be presumed to be an Irish citizen, and will be treated accordingly.

What will happen if the deception comes to light? That will depend, I suspect, on when and how it comes to light. The presumption of paternity is most usually challenged (a) by the putative father, defending a claim for maintenance, or (b) by the putative father’s other children, seeking to exclude the putative child from inheritance. (The latter would be after the death of the putative father.)

If such a challenge were to be made, and were to succeed, it would obviously put a question mark, to put it no higher, over the child’s citizenship status, but it’s entirely possible that the relevant government departments would never join the dots. It’s not as if they go around scouring the newspapers for reports of family court proceedings that they can use to challenge people’s citizenship status, and the fact that Alex isn/t his father doesn’t, in itself, mean that his father wasn’t Irish.

Still, suppose the relevant government agencies did join the dots, and did e.g. refuse an application by the child for renewal of his Irish passport? In the ensuing court proceedings the onus would be on the Department to show that the child was not an Irish citizen; this might not be easy, if neither the child nor Alex nor Abigail was co-operative, but let’s suppose they discharge the burden of proof. The child is not now an Irish citizen. He is, presumably, a Canadian citizen.

if he has lived in Ireland all his life he (or, if he is still a minor, his parents on his behalf) can apply for naturalisation based on length of residence. His residence status during this period is unclear; on the one hand, he never had a visa entitling him to residence; on the other hand, he was born in Ireland and was never asked to leave, and both he himself and the Department of Justice have always believed, in good faith, that he was entitled to remain by virtue of being an Irish citizen, so it’s hard to say that there has been any breach of the migration legislation. You’d need more facts, but I would have thought his prospects of success in an application for naturalisation were pretty good. Strictly speaking the period of residence as a supposed but not actual Irish citizen is not “reckonable residence” for the purposes of a naturalisation application, but the Minister for Justice has power to waive the reckonable residence requirement for a person with “Irish associations”, and I would have thought the case for a waiver here could be a strong one.

15

I know it doesn’t impact anything if one parent doesn’t sign the birth certificate materials but the mother still enters the parents’ names - at least in one US state. At the birth of my child, I was involved in the whole process, but I did not sign the paperwork because of a genuine dispute over some of the information the mother (note: we were divorcing at the time) wrote on it (it was later successfully fixed by the court). However, she/the hospital/whoever wrote my info in, and there were no hangups due to my lack of signature.

16

[EMAIL=“History of Canadian nationality law - Wikipedia”]It looks like since at least 1976, possibly earlier, Canadian women have had the capacity to transmit their citizenship to their offspring as Canadian men.

17

Something I’ve noticed about the US government is that there is a wide range of response depending on the circumstances and perhaps even the gut feeling of the officer.

My older sister got married to her Indian boyfriend just about the time he was finishing up his PhD. Red flags! He’s found a fraudulent partner! They went all Green Card on them.

The officials separated them into different rooms and grilled them extensively despite the fact that my sister and her husband had lived together for over a year and had been in a relationship for several years. At one point, one of the agents was openly sarcastic with my sister who wisely bit her tongue rather than lose her cool.

When my ex-wife applied for for green card, I expected the same treatment. However, we fit another stereotype. This was in Utah, I had gone to Japan on my LDS mission and spoke Japanese. Most of these or damn near all of these type of marriages are genuine.

When the official came to interview us, I translated most of the questions so he knew I spoke Japanese. He simply [del]asked[/del] verified with me “This marriage is on the up and up, right?” We were in and out in 10 minutes.

When my current wife and I had our first child (who didn’t survive) they didn’t question us despite the conception predating the time of marriage. I’m not sure if they would have questioned us more if the child had survived and we were looking for a passport and such, but given the differences in circumstances with Eva’s case, I would be really surprised if they had wanted me to jump through more hoops.

If the baby had survived, I would likely have taken in more supporting evidence (one such evidence was the baby who looked very similar to me :slight_smile: ) especially if he was like our third child and didn’t look that much like me :eek: )

“OK, here is evidence of a relationship predating conception, such as plane tickets to Taiwan together. Here is the confirmation of pregnancy in February, the wedding in April with an album including family and friends.”

Eva would have far more experience with this, but in my experience, having a plausible story, supporting evidence and such greatly simplifies things.

Years before I was married, I had a Japanese friend with benefits who had a boyfriend in the States. She went to visit him and for some reason triggered suspicion by the agent and was pulled into an office. They thought she might be visiting a boyfriend (yup) and perhaps overstay (which she wasn’t planning on).

She (foolishly) had enough evidence that we were having a relationship and was able to convince them her boyfriend (me) was back in Japan. I certainly hope she deleted all of those message in her pager (remember those?) and tossed our photo before she got to New York.

For the OP, there are some potential red flags. Officials at the Home Office (or whoever in Ireland looks at these things), have most certainly graduated from first grade and are able to count to nine. Her not being in Ireland during the conception would need to be explained.

18

Nah. Remember, in this scenario the child doesn’t start out by seeking naturalisation or applying for residence or anything of the kind. At no point are naturally suspicions Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service officials involved in scrutinising the case.

The first interaction is the registration of the birth by the mother, and the officials of the Health Services Executive who deal with birth registration will be disposed to accept what she says, since she has better information on who the father of the child is than anyone else has. The only circumstance in which they would doubt her attribution of paternity is if the putative father disputed it at the time. The fact that she was outside Ireland when the conception occurred while the putative father was not probably won’t emerge; investigating the circumstances of the conception of the child, or where it occurred, is not part of the standard birth registration process. The birth registration process does not assume that informants are lying in the information they give, and does not require them to substantiate it with evidence.

Some way down the road, let’s say, there’s an application for an Irish passport for the child. The application is supported by an Irish birth certificate creating a presumption of paternity, plus an Irish birth certificate showing that the presumed father is an Irish citizen. Again, there’s absolutely no reason for the Department of Foreign Affairs to investigate the whereabouts of the mother and the father at the likely time of the child’s conception, and this is not normally part of the passport issuing process. The paternity evidenced by the birth certificate is not investigated unless there is some particular reason to do so.

The genuineness of Alex’s paternity won’t be investigated unless somebody with standing challenges it, and it’s hard to imagine real-world circumstances in which the issue would be raised first of all by government officials; they have absolutely no reason to make the kind of investigations which would cause them to doubt the attribution of paternity in the birth certificate. Any realistic challenge must come from Alex or from someone connected with him, and such a challenge may very well never come.

19

Reread the OP. The father applies for citizenship for the child.

This takes us back to what I said.

20

Not in Ireland, he doesn’t. If you’re an Irish citizen from the circumstances of your birth, you don’t have to “apply for citizenship”. Why would you apply for something that you already have? Apart from the pointlessness of the application, there is no application process that you can follow. I suppose you could bring a declaratory action in the High Court seeking a declaration that your child is an Irish citizen, but I’ve never heard of such a thing, and it’s inconceivable that anyone would launch such proceedings if no challenge to the child’s citizenship had been raised.

In an official sense, the issue of the child’s citizenship is most likely to be raised for the first time when someone applies for a passport on behalf of the child. And, as already stated, investigation of the circumstances of conception is not standard in passport applications. Unless there’s a reason to look behind the birth certificates offered, they don’t look behind the birth certificates offered.