If a baby is born on an airplane, where will the baby's citizenship be located? The countries they flew over? The country from which the plane took off? Where will it land? Completely somewhere else?
It's not common for babies to be born when flying at 36,000 feet, but it's happened dozens of times since humans first flew. The first recorded birth in the air actually dates back to 1929. Since this situation is very rare, when a baby is born in the air in the world, the plane will land one more passenger when it is flying.
What citizenship does an infant acquire when it is born on board the plane, and is this affected by the location of the plane at the time?
The citizenship of a baby born in mid-air like this depends on several factors. Many countries, including the United States, grant citizenship to anyone born in their airspace or waters.
So what if the baby was born on a sea without territorial rights? In this case, it may fall on the nationality of the aircraft itself. All aircraft have the nationality of the country in which they are registered, regardless of where they take off and land.
In fact, there are not many countries that grant citizenship based solely on place of birth, although it is worth noting that the United States is one of the countries that grant citizenship based on birth within or within the border 12 nautical miles, including in the sky.
Has anyone used the law of descent to acquire the citizenship of a country?
There are also many people who travel to the United States in order to have children on American soil, which is called "maternity tourism" or "fertility tourism". Every year, thousands of foreigners, many from China and Russia, come to the United States on travel visas to take advantage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and those subject to their jurisdiction, are citizens of the United States and citizens of the states in which they reside." ”
This means that no matter where you come from or what your intentions are, no matter what you have done in the past, if you give birth in the United States, the birthplace law (or "soil law") applies. With a few exceptions, your child automatically becomes a U.S. citizen.
While the place of birth on the birth certificate of a baby born in flight may be in the air, citizenship will depend on the place of birth, the citizenship of the parents and, finally, if all other methods fail, it may be that the country of birth is registered. Because being born in the sky is such a rare (and complex) event, there is no one-size-fits-all citizenship solution.
So, when a baby is born in space, what nationality does it belong to?