I thought the question was the other way round. If you were a citizen of Ruritania, visiting the US (on business, as a student or as a tourist), and gave birth in the Ruritanian embassy in Washington DC, your child would presumably be counted as being born in the US. (Whether it would be counted as Ruritanian would depend on the citizenship law of Ruritania).
About 40, apparently. Ireland recently passed a referendum to amend its constitution to remove the jus soli principle, and in the course of her research on the subject, one of my colleagues came up with this number. Canada is one of the other countries. Ireland is too, still, because the legislation enabling the referendum hasn’t come into effect yet. I don’t know what the other 37 are.
The Master speaks. Dunno how up to date his old column is, though.
To clarify, are you accusing me of racism?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=empathy&r=67
em·pa·thy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mp-th)
n.
Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. See Synonyms at pity.
I’ve always used “empathy” to mean a direct, personal understanding of the other person’s situation. As in I’ve been in the same situation. For some reason I can’t explain, I’ve talked with so many women who have been sexually molested in childhood it is shocking. Either some quirk of my personality is such that women sense this is something OK to talk about with me, or I have grossly underestimated how common girls are sexually molested. I’m hoping it is the former. I’ve got a MP3 on my website of Janis Ian’s “Breaking Silence” available for download (and I asked Janis directly about this, and she has no problems with this), so maybe it is a quirk of my personality. However, I can’t empathize with people who were sexually molested in childhood. I just can identify with this based on contact with others.
No, sorry. The people who exaggerate or create these stories often do so with a racist undertone. That the stories become credible urban legends is quite separate. I’m sure you fall into the latter category. (I could have been more clear in the first place. :smack: )
Thanks for clearing that up; I had a feeling I was being a bit sensitive. Now I’m kind of curious about whether there are any good statistics on children born to illegal aliens in the US. I’m guessing that the waters are a bit muddied by the fact that it’d be hard to prove that one were crossing the border for the purpose of giving birth, as opposed to simply giving birth after crossing for other reasons.
Two things-
My former nanny was a Mexican citizen, and all her kids were born in Mexico. But a number of her friends came here specifically to have their children for citizenship reasons.
Also, a know a couple who were having trouble with the husband’s status (she had dual US/NZ, he had just NZ). They were told bluntly by their immigration attorney that it would help his case if they would have children, as soon as possible. Not only would he then be the parent of a US citizen, but it would show an intent to stay in this country. The twins were indeed born here and received dual US/NZ citizenship.
Off the top of my head, I recall that Germany has (or at least recently had) a very liberal immigration policy for people of German ancestry.
I will have to check that out since my ancestors left Germany in 1837. Do you think I can put in a claim for a German passport?