Talk:French nationality law

Npov
Hey, I read: "The absence of official statistics on French citizens of foreign origin is not coincidental. The idea of French ethnicity is not one which informs mainstream discourse in France."

This does not sound very neutral to me, especially considering that France has the 'anchor baby' laws (e.g. if you are born on french soil to non-french parents, you don't gain citizenship until you are 18, and only then if you have managed to stay in the country for 5 years, in spite of your parents being undocumented) that the people considered to be members of the very crazy fringe of the racist right wing in the US want, it sounds unlikely to be true.

Personally, I think you should replace it with the following, more neutral statement:

"The French government keeps no statistics on French citizens of foreign extraction."

I don't think you can put in a "why" without seeming biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.175.24 (talk) 07:12, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I also read

"Thus, the French government's assimilationist stance towards immigration as well as towards regional identities and cultures, together with the political heritage of the French revolution has led to the development of a French identity which is based more on the notion of citizenship than on cultural, historical or ethnic ties."

this also seems somewhat unsupported by the facts. Unless someone can come up with some verifiable references that suggests that the french really are colorblind, I suggest we just remove that passage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.175.24 (talk) 07:21, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Flow
The structure and languistic flow of the article makes it hard to read and comprehend it places. Merge from French citizenship and identity to here (wikipedia standards British nationality law, etc.) Lapaz 17:07, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Should we just let it be and eventually merge it with French people page? I dont think the purpose of this page is simply to describe the legal rights of French citizens. (i mean the identity page)

Question of Accuracy
I wanted to note the information that the residency period for naturalisation as a French citizen is reduced for graduates of a French University course is not cited and I have not been able to find it on any other website (except for a few that were direct copies of wikipedia). I would suggest citing it or removing it.
 * I just wanted to put a note in here regarding my edits of the "Naturalisation" section. I added some information, and corrected the section titles.  "Naturalisation" is the process by which a person becomes a French citizen because of residence, while for married couples citizenship is acquired when the couple's "Declaration of Nationality" is accepted.  References here.
 * I would put some more info about the procedure and docs required, having been through the process of naturalisation last year myself... but maybe I'll do it some other day - Daniel
 * This link has the details about the reduction in residency requirements for graduates of french schools. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.237.199.144 (talk) 05:31, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The item that states, « The residence period may be waived for citizens of French speaking countries [...] » is not accurate. Simply being a citizen of a French-speaking country is not considered reason enough - especially following Sarkozy's amendments of 26 November 2003. See also this page (fr) and this page (fr) for more information. I would therefore propose that this bullet point be edited. phrawzty (talk) 09:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Child born in France to foreign parents
"at age 18, if resident in France, with at least 5 years residence since age 11, and if he explicitly requests at adulthood (before the 1992 reform of the Code de la nationalité, it was given automatically without administrative red tape)."

The bold part is not true anymore. There has been a new law in 1998 that abolished this reform. Now a child born in France to foreign parents is automatically given French citizenship once he reaches 18 (if he has lived at least 5 years in France since he is 11). However if he does not want French citizenship, he must explicitly requests it : there is a delay of 6 months before his 18th birthday and a delay of 12 after his 18th birthday. A child born in France to foreign parents can also be given French citizenship earlier under certain circumstances:
 * at 13 if the parents request it (with the child's consent)
 * at 16 : the child can request it himself

Source: "Depuis le ler septembre 1998, date d’entrée en vigueur de la loi du 16 mars 1998 relative à la nationalité, qui a supprimé le régime de la manifestation de volonté institué par la loi du 22 juillet 1993, tout enfant né en France de parents étrangers acquiert la nationalité française à sa majorité si, à cette date, il a en France sa résidence et s’il a eu sa résidence habituelle en France pendant une période continue ou discontinue d’au moins cinq ans, depuis l’âge de onze ans. Une faculté de déclination de la nationalité française dans les six mois qui précèdent sa majorité ou dans les douze mois qui la suivent, de même que l’acquisition anticipée par déclaration à partir de l’âge de seize ans, sous certaines conditions, sont également prévues. Enfin, la nationalité française peut être réclamée, sous certaines conditions, au nom de l’enfant mineur né en France de parents étrangers, à partir de l’âge de treize ans et avec son consentement personnel." 195.132.163.44 23:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Nationality through marriage
This page popped up on my watchlist with a change to the By marriage section. I noticed that this section begins: "Since 26 November, 2003, a foreigner living in France, married to a French citizen for two years can acquire French citizenship by declaration, so long as they have resided in France for one year uninterrupted. If the couple is living outside of France, a three year waiting period is required. ...". In the References section of the article, I see this link which translated to English by Google says,in part: " (Act No. 2006-911 of 24 July 2006 entered into force on 25 July 2006) [...] Art. 21-2 : An alien or stateless person who contracted marriage with a spouse of French nationality may, after a period of four years after marriage, acquire French nationality by declaration provided that the date of this statement community Life as effective material that has not stopped between the couple since their marriage and the spouse has retained its french nationality.". This appears to contradict the article. I don't know any more about this than I have said here, so I'm just flagging this here for a look by persons more knowledgeable in this area than I. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 04:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Translation of section Filiation
Just for the record, I tagged the section Filiation for translation a few days ago (it was a literal, possibly machine, translation from French) and posted it on WP:PNT. Removing the translation tags because the section has been fixed. Those guys at WP:PNT are fast! *grin* - Samuel  Tan  08:05, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

FFL
I noticed there is a link to the French Foreign Legion at the bottom of the article. This is definately linked to nationality law in France since three years service there is one means of acquiring French citizenship. Rather than link to it as a 'see also', shouldn't it be incorporated into and discussed in an abbreviated form in the article itself? Tyciol (talk) 20:39, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Attribution of French Nationality
I question the use of the word "Attribution" (which the article currently wikilinks to a disambiguation page). That word has been prominent in the article for some time, so I'm questioning it here rather than changing it in the article. I think the proper word here is "Assignment". Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:54, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Missing words?
Hello, there is a sentence in the introduction that makes no sense to me. I think there might be missing words. It's this one:


 * The 1993 reform (Méhaignerie Act), which required children born in France of foreign parents to request French nationality at adulthood, instead of being automatically accorded it (no conditions were required to acquire it).

When I read that, I see the subject of the sentence (The 1993 reform (Méhaignerie Act), followed a long dependent clause. Where's the verb, or in other words, what did the 1993 reform do? Loves  Macs  (talk) 03:35, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

revise this section
" Since the middle of the 19th century, France has exhibited a very high rate of immigration, mainly from Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Maghreb, Africa and Asia. According to a 2004 report by INED researcher Michèle Tribalat France has approximately 14 million persons (out of nearly 63 million) (see demographics of France) of foreign ascendancy (immigrants or with at least one parent or great-parent immigrant), mostly black or Muslim."

first, the vast majority of immigrants have been North African Arab-Berbers, that is not debated, second, the black immigrants are almost all Muslims themselves from West Africa.

since "Muslim" is not an ethnic group and both of the large immigrant groups are Muslim, this should be revised...

--Savakk (talk) 10:51, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Reorganization / rewrite / some copyediting with modest substantive changes
Some relatively minor changes would really improve this article, I think. I propose to undertake in two steps. Once this is complete, it could still use some additional substantive work

1. Combine "acquisition" and "attribution" sections. I understand what the original editor was getting at, as acquisition by birth does strike me as somewhat odd, nevertheless, this seems to be the generally accepted way of thinking about nationality law. (See corresponding articles on US and UK laws, for example, and also the glossary entry at http://eudo-citizenship.eu/databases/citizenship-glossary/glossary.

2. Rewrite sections most obviously in need.  There are a few oddities that stand out throughout article, the following coming first to mind:
 * repeated references to jus soli ("right of soil") and jus sanguinis ("right of soil") don't add anything to the article. They are jargon used by sp,e legal scholars to categorize different types of nationality regimes.  Not against mentioning them, but they don't deserve the prominence they have here.
 * section on adoption is original research, which puts undue emphasis on the exception rather than the rule. (Most legal adoptions are of the type described) As written, I'm not even quite sure where this belongs.  Is this about adoptions in france, foreign adoptions, both? It is referred to in other sections.

--Federalist51 (talk) 18:31, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * ~Actually, I may be wrong about exception/rule in adoption section to the extent that Filiation article accurately summarizes french law. Definitely merits more discussion than I had initially thought.  --Federalist51 (talk)

Before Revolution
Currently the article reads, "French nationality and citizenship were concepts that existed even before the French Revolution." Shouldn't more be added? The page for the history of British nationality law explains the history of English and Scottish law prior to the modern statutes. Can someone with knowledge contribute please? Emperor001 (talk) 12:42, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Global Poverty and Practice
— Assignment last updated by Smg02 (talk) 18:24, 24 April 2023 (UTC)