It’s really really not as simple as you think. You’re angry about the US trying to change the rules, fair enough, but that doesn’t mean the US solutions are solutions to a different problem.
There are major conflicts between legal systems and Roma culture. They’re a persecuted minority, yup, but it’s a really complex situation, and many avoid all contact with outside authorities. It’s an insular community, with regular conflict between what’s accepted within the group and what’s legal. Roma tradition basically gives the ‘head of the household’ the final say on what happens within his house- if he considers violence against his wife and children acceptable, no-one else has a right to interfere. If outsiders, say, police, try to intervene, the whole community may turn against them. An estimated 1/3 of Roma women have been abused, few report it. There’s even been instances of the fire brigade being attacked responding to a fire in traveller encampments.
There are barriers to education from some schools discriminating, yep, but there’s also major pressure from within the community; kids are often pulled out from school at 11 or 12, especially girls, even if they want to go. I had a friend working with Roma kids for an inclusion project in England, she was often told by the kids that they really missed going to school, but their family didn’t want them to have friends outside the community- or worse, a boyfriend. They were told they don’t need educating as it’s a man’s job to provide. Traditionally, Roma girls were given in marriages arranged by their father as children, and unofficial child marriage is still widely reported.
Some groups of Roma accept local laws that override tradition, some don’t, but there is reason for some of the conflict. Balancing rights of vulnerable people within the culture with rights of a culture is not simple when they conflict.
Lots of Roma are still at least partially nomadic, which can mean they don’t live consistently in one country- within Europe, you can often just drive down a road and be in a different country, no checks, no record, especially within Schengen, but it’s not too hard to cross some of the other borders either. Within Schengen, if you move from one country to another with intent to stay, you are supposed to register, which may need evidence of sufficient savings and registration for health care schemes to officially move. Some people- not all Roma- don’t. For someone planning on living in a caravan who’s not working ‘on the books’, it’s not too hard to live under the radar, but of course not being officially resident comes with not being registered with local healthcare. On the flip side, once you go on the records, it’s a lot harder to move freely and you open yourself up to scrutiny from the authorities. There’s also no obvious country which should be granting citizenship to someone who’s lived in multiple countries over the last few years, but can’t actually prove any of it.
Any of the actual reports of kids being denied birth certificates on the basis of parents having no documents that I can find have been followed by reports of lawsuits by anti-discrimination groups resulting in the certificate being issued and mostly by new guidance being sent out, because kids born to stateless parents do qualify for citizenship. The normal legal limit to register a birth is 30 days. Of course it raises all kinds of red flags if you show up with a 3 year old and try register them, that probably shouldn’t be a rule with exemptions.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot of new refugees entering Europe who also often have no documentation, trying to leave no records of them entering the country. They are often doing so by extremely unsafe routes that literally no-one (except the people traffickers who are making money risking other people’s lives) wants to encourage.
Do European countries want a system where anyone showing up with no documentation and no record of entry automatically grants citizenship, or does that get granted only to one- not very well defined- ethnic group?
The belief that having identification helps refugees get permission to stay is already common, and already leads to people destroying passports or other evidence of existing citizenship, and incredibly risky attempts to enter Europe. There was literally a mass death event yesterday of refugees when about 50,000 people tried to enter a Spanish enclave in Africa, following a -false- rumour that anyone who made it there couldn’t be returned, and dozens of people are thought to have drowned.
