This week's hype: Dutch citizenship only for babies

Besides the Afghanistan conference this week in The Hague and the economic crisis, one of the most discussed issues this week is about citizenshhip for babies. What’s the matter? Well the problem is that if parents register their newborn babies they cannot choose what citizenship the baby gets. Over the last week two cases appeared. One in which children of a Moroccan mother do not only get Dutch citizenship but also Moroccan, whether the parents want to or not (and they did not want that). The second case got the most attention. In this a boy with a nice ‘Dutch’ name Friso got Turkish citizenship causing great dismay with his parents Suzan and Vincent van Saase (also nice ‘Dutch’ names). This happened because the mother Suzan has a Turkish father and a Dutch mother.
Several bloggers responded: Ger Blog: Citizenship issue is a human rights issue, MP Paul de Krom blogged about his appearance on tv in a talk show that also featured the Van Saase couple, and stated that according to him it is unacceptable that there are 17 countries in the world that make it impossible for their subjects to give up their citizenship and that the Dutch authorities comply to that policy. Weblog Geen Commentaar (calling it earlier shameful pampering by public servants) quoted Christian Democrat MP Sterk who stated that not the public servants are responsible for the double citizenship for the children , but their parents. She stated this during the debate in the parliament about the issue; the social-democrats (PvdA), the socialists (SP) and the conservative liberals (VVD) agreed with her while Geert Wilders stated to be against the ban on registration (as proposed) because ‘it is important to recognize the issue of double citizenship’. This seems to be sort of opportunistic, you do not want people to get rid of their double citizenship, so you can problematize it..something that is recognized by others such as Cindy Schneider as well.Weblog Boilingpoints asks questions about the public servants such as their citizenship and state that although your child is white and has 100% Dutch blood in its vains, the traitors at city hall find a way to give your child a foreign citizenship. Paul Lieben at Elsevier magazine calls people to cancel their Dutch citizenship as a form of protest and links the issue to other unwelcomed issues pertaining to double citizenship. According to Verdekkeme the Netherlands imposes the second (meaning non-Dutch) citizenship and links it to integration. Medicalfacts warns parents to pay attention their child gets the right citizenship(s).

So why calling this serious issue a hype?

1. The issue has been on the agenda several years ago already. On December 2004 (!) TV columnist (and now minister of Education!) Plasterk already pointed to the hypocrisy of asking migrants to have only one citizenship but at the same time imposing dual citizenship and follow foreign requirements about the names of the babies.
2. Also the same practice has been revealed here as early as 2007 during the debate about the dual citizenship of the secretary’s of state Albayrak and Aboutaleb. According to me then it was also strange to request them to denounce their Turkish and Moroccan citizenship while at the same time force Moroccan migrants to register their children as Moroccan. At that time I compared it to the racist one-drop rule whereby a Dutch mother can have a Moroccan child, but a Moroccan mother cannot have a Dutch child.

So why the hype now? Two wild guesses:

1. The cases of 2004 were about children with both parents coming from Morocco. The most cited case now is about two parents with nice ‘Dutch’ names and ‘Dutch looks’. The other case is about a mixed couple. And although there are 16 other countries with the same policy as Morocco making it impossible to losing ones citizenship (such as Algeria, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt (not entirely impossible) Greece, Iran (in some cases), Libya, Mexico, Nauru, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia (not entirely impossible) Syria, Tunisia, Uruquay,Yemen) they are not mentioned. You decide what this means.
2. The cases of 2004 were talked about during the debates about dual citizenship; it was probably not very convenient then to expose the role of the Dutch authorities in imposing dual citizenship.

Other reasons for why all the fuss is a hype is because the matter is more complicated than appears in most statements and reports:

1. The case about the child that got Moroccan citizenship could happen because of a change in the family law in Morocco resulting that citizenship does not follow only male lineage but also female. This strenghtens the position of Moroccan women.
2. Moroccan (and other rules) have to applied in the Netherlands according international private law agreements. Moroccan family law (and that of other countries) is applied in the Netherlands as long as it is not at odds with Dutch law. NRC weblogs makes this clear and refers to an interesting article with Leila Jordens-Cotran who did a PhD on Moroccan family law.
3. PhD student Jan Jaap at his blog refers to the whole issue of the role of the public servants. These people do what they do because they have to. Period. According to him it is not up to the parents, that would actually amount to fraud and can cause problems for example when little Friso wants to travel to Istanbul with a Dutch passport while, according to Turkey, he has Turkish citizenship. Moreover as Jan Jaap makes clear many countries such as Israel and the United States require people with dual citizenship to use their ‘own’ (read citizenship by birth) passport to travel into and out of the country.
4. The whole issue about dual citizenship maybe not only not up to the parents at all but also not only to the Netherlands. More and countries, although reluctantly, approve of dual citizenship because of increasing pressures to nationalized forms of citizenship caused by globalization as Saskia Sassen argues.

And yes, again some serious and difficult multiculti issue is being abused for political gain.