Roughly 35 countries grant unconditional birthright citizenship, and a map of birthright citizenship around the world shows them clustered almost entirely in the Americas. Nearly every country from Canada to Argentina automatically makes anyone born on its soil a citizen, regardless of the parents’ nationality or immigration status. Outside the Western Hemisphere, the practice is rare: a small number of African and Pacific nations follow the same rule, and no European or Asian country grants citizenship on territory alone without conditions attached.
Countries That Grant Unconditional Birthright Citizenship
Unconditional birthright citizenship, sometimes called unrestricted jus soli, means the country recognizes any child born on its territory as a citizen from birth. Parental status is irrelevant. The countries that currently follow this rule are:
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Argentina
- Barbados
- Belize
- Bolivia
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chad
- Chile
- Costa Rica
- Cuba
- Dominica
- Ecuador
- El Salvador
- Fiji
- Grenada
- Guatemala
- Guyana
- Honduras
- Jamaica
- Lesotho
- Mexico
- Nicaragua
- Panama
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Tanzania
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Tuvalu
- United States
- Uruguay
- Venezuela
Mexico writes the rule directly into Article 30 of its constitution, granting nationality to anyone born on Mexican territory regardless of the parents’ citizenship. Brazil’s constitution contains a nearly identical provision. Canada’s Citizenship Act grants nationality to virtually everyone born on Canadian soil, with a narrow exception for children of accredited foreign diplomats, and a provincial birth certificate generally serves as proof of citizenship on its own.1Justice Laws Website. Citizenship Act2Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Check if You May Be a Citizen
Why the Americas Cluster on the Map
The hemispheric pattern is not random. It traces to colonial-era policies designed to encourage settlement and grow populations in vast, sparsely inhabited territories. Newly independent nations kept those policies because territory-based citizenship helped unify ethnically and linguistically diverse populations under a shared national identity. Every country in the Americas that grants unconditional birthright citizenship today inherited some version of that logic.
Countries With Conditional Birthright Citizenship
Plenty of countries outside the Americas grant citizenship based on birth in the territory, but they attach conditions that reach beyond the birth itself. The conditions usually involve the parents’ residency or legal status, or a minimum number of years the child spends in the country before nationality kicks in. No country in the European Union grants automatic, unconditional citizenship to children born on its territory to foreign-citizen parents, though five EU member states offer conditional forms of the policy.3European Parliamentary Research Service. Acquisition and Loss of Citizenship in EU Member States
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom moved away from unconditional birthright citizenship through the British Nationality Act 1981, which took effect on January 1, 1983.4Legislation.gov.uk. British Nationality Act 1981 A child born in the UK now only acquires citizenship at birth if at least one parent is a British citizen or has settled status, meaning permanent residence.5GOV.UK. Automatic Acquisition Children who don’t meet that requirement at birth can register for citizenship after living in the UK continuously until age 10.
France
A child born in France to two foreign parents does not become French at birth. That child can acquire citizenship automatically at age 18, provided they live in France at that time and have lived there for at least five years since age 11.6Service Public. French Nationality of a Child Born in France to Foreign Parents – At 18 Parents can also request nationality on behalf of a child as young as 13 if the child has lived in France since age eight.7Service Public. French Nationality of a Child Born in France to Foreign Parents
Australia
Australia requires at least one parent to be an Australian citizen or permanent resident at the time of birth for a child born on Australian soil to acquire citizenship automatically.8Department of Home Affairs. Confirming Australian Citizenship Children born in Australia who don’t meet that condition can qualify if they live in the country for their first ten years.
Countries That Have Rolled Back Birthright Citizenship
The direction of change globally has been toward more restrictions, not fewer. Several countries that once granted unconditional birthright citizenship have imposed conditions in the past two decades.
Ireland was the last country in Europe to grant unconditional birthright citizenship. In 2004, Irish voters approved a constitutional amendment by a 79% margin requiring at least one parent to be a citizen, permanent resident, or legal temporary resident before a child born in Ireland could claim nationality at birth.
India made a similar shift in December 2004. Birth on Indian soil was previously sufficient; now a child born in India is a citizen only if both parents are Indian, or if one parent is a citizen and the other is not an undocumented migrant.
The Dominican Republic went furthest. A 2010 constitutional amendment redefined citizenship to exclude children of undocumented migrants born in the country, and a 2013 Supreme Court ruling applied that exclusion retroactively to 1929, stripping nationality from tens of thousands of people, many of Haitian descent.
How Birthright Citizenship Works in the United States
The Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”9Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment Federal law codifies the rule at 8 U.S.C. § 1401, which begins with “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1401 – Nationals and Citizens of United States at Birth
The Supreme Court set the breadth of this guarantee in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). The case involved a man born in San Francisco to parents who were Chinese subjects, not U.S. citizens, but who had permanent residence and a business in the United States. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory” and “includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States.”11Justia Law. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649 (1898)
Three narrow categories of people born on U.S. soil have historically been considered outside U.S. jurisdiction and therefore excluded: children of accredited foreign diplomats with full diplomatic immunity, children born on foreign public vessels, and children of enemy forces during a hostile occupation. Children of consular officials and other foreign government employees with only limited immunity are not excluded and do acquire citizenship at birth. Members of Native American tribes were originally excluded under this clause after Elk v. Wilkins (1884), but Congress overrode that exclusion with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, and 8 U.S.C. § 1401(b) now explicitly grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States to a member of an Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal tribe.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1401 – Nationals and Citizens of United States at Birth
The 2025 Executive Order
On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which sought to reinterpret the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause. The order directed federal agencies to stop recognizing automatic citizenship for two categories of children born in the United States: those whose mother was unlawfully present and whose father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident, and those whose mother was on a temporary visa (tourist, student, or work) and whose father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident.12The White House. Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship
Federal courts issued preliminary injunctions blocking the order. In June 2025, the Supreme Court in Trump v. CASA, Inc. partially stayed the nationwide injunctions, concluding that universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority Congress has granted to federal courts, but the Court only narrowed the scope of the injunctions rather than allowing the order to take effect. Lower courts continued to issue injunctions on behalf of individual plaintiffs and affected groups. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Trump v. Barbara and heard oral arguments on April 1, 2026. As of early 2026, the executive order has not been enforced, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship guarantee remains in place as it has been interpreted since 1898.13Congress.gov. Birthright Citizenship: Litigation Status Update
Why the Map Matters: Birthright Citizenship and Statelessness
Birthright citizenship is one of the main mechanisms preventing statelessness, the condition of having no recognized nationality anywhere. The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, requires signatory states to grant citizenship to children born on their territory who would otherwise be stateless. States may grant nationality automatically by operation of law or upon application, with the requirement that no such application may be rejected. States may require the application be filed between ages 18 and 21 and may impose a residency requirement of up to five years.
Countries that rely entirely on parental lineage risk creating stateless children when the parents are themselves stateless or come from countries that don’t recognize their nationality. That is why even countries without unconditional birthright citizenship typically include a fallback provision for children who would otherwise have no nationality at all. The Convention was designed to give effect to Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes that everyone has the right to a nationality.
Read together, the map, the rollbacks, and the statelessness rules make one point clear: birthright citizenship is a policy choice each country makes and can revise, not a permanent feature of any legal system.