Citizenship ?

[colddiesel]

A baby girl was born to an Afghan woman a couple of days ago on a US military plane on German soil. So is she a citizen of the USA, Germany(EU), or Afghanistan. The owner of the airforce base is Germany but it is under US military control.

We had a debate here which split into 4 different points of view. What do you think her status is/should be?

 

[pecksniff]

Well, she's not German -- in that country, citizenship goes by jus sanguinis, not jus solis. That's why Turkish guestworkers aren't German citizens even after the third generation.

 

[KeithD]

Has German law changed? I have a sister who was born in Germany while we were there with the U.S. Army, and, because she was born in a German hospital rather than on a U.S. base, she held dual citizenship, U.S. and German, until she declared one at twenty-one.

If both of the parents here are Afghani, I'd say the baby has Afghani citizenship. The plane was on the ground when the baby was delivered, so it depends on what the current German law is whether she could claim German citizenship too. Not U.S., I don't think.

 

[Champakian]

A baby girl was born to an Afghan woman a couple of days ago on a US military plane on German soil. So is she a citizen of the USA, Germany(EU), or Afghanistan. The owner of the airforce base is Germany but it is under US military control.

We had a debate here which split into 4 different points of view. What do you think her status is/should be?

Refugee

 

[mayfly13]

Airports --before immig. control-- are not national spaces,

remember the movie The Terminal
or how Snowden lived in two airport terminals for days?

 

[Comshaw]

A baby girl was born to an Afghan woman a couple of days ago on a US military plane on German soil. So is she a citizen of the USA, Germany(EU), or Afghanistan. The owner of the airforce base is Germany but it is under US military control.

We had a debate here which split into 4 different points of view. What do you think her status is/should be?

Me? I haven't a clue and not having enough information to do so, I won't even hazard a guess. This is one of those ticklish questions that even legal scholars will wrangle about for decades.

Comshaw

 

[ll74]

A baby girl was born to an Afghan woman a couple of days ago on a US military plane on German soil. So is she a citizen of the USA, Germany(EU), or Afghanistan. The owner of the airforce base is Germany but it is under US military control.

We had a debate here which split into 4 different points of view. What do you think her status is/should be?

She's a US citizen. Debate all you want, but it seems the law clearly says she is.

 

[ishtat]

She is an Afghan if both parents are Afghan. She is not German but Germany has the most generous refugee admissions policy in the world. They granted residency to 56,000 refugees last year compared to the USA about 30,000. I am pretty certain that the Germans would give her that status which then is possible to convert into citizenship through residency, time, and education.

She might have some US entitlements but they seem remote. She was born after the plane landed, but possibly not after the plane had 'legally landed' ie the flight was officially over. Adding to the mix is that on the Ramstein base the Base commander has almost 'God' like powers and if he 'decides' what happened, the detailed facts might not count for much.

So put me down as a don't know.