On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Dennis Robert Redmond wrote:
> Be careful of that "we". *Some* US citizens would call them Amis
No -- they are legally Americans. Everyone born here is. Even if their mother and father aren't. Unlike in most countries.
> Sooner that that. The bar for citizenship was lowered from living 15 years
> in Germany to 8
Sort of. At 21, the young Turks who get automatic dual citizenship by being born after the law was enacted will have to choose one citizenship or the other. Although it is not clear what the German state can do if they refuse, since the Basic Law stipulates that no one can have his citizenship revoked. So this might be a great crack in the dyke of defining citizenship in ethnic terms that Schroeder and the Greens snuck through. We shall see. And even if it isn't, it is a great advance that some people who aren't ethnic Germans got German citizenship by virtue of being born there. That's a first in recent history. But it so far only affects a very small group of people, all of them under 2 years old.
Michael