In this situation, wouldn't the kids already have citizenship of their parents countries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis#Jus_sanguinis_st...
Say one of your parents is a citizen of some other country.
If they're Canadian, you're a Canadian citizen. Period. The process is to get your documents that prove it. You don't apply for citizenship, you apply for proof.
In many European countries you are not a citizen. The process is to become one by descent. You apply for citizenship.
Very different.
> You don't just magically get citizenship for your parents home country, at least not for most countries.
China and Singapore are some of the more prominent examples.
China considers it a "nationality conflict," the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically, they can still be registered on hukou and get ID card. Apparently they used to unofficially force you to decide as an adult, but stopped a few years ago and now issue the Travel Document for life.
edit to add -- that assumes the parent is not a unconditional green card holder, which is the scenario here.
Singapore allows dual citizenship until 21. Which is not necessarily a good thing, as if you do not do their national service you will effectively get banned from ever going there even if you renounce it later.
Japan and Korea both allow it forever from birth in practice, but the latter also has some complexities regarding the military (either renounce before a certain age or you have some restrictions returning until past a certain age).
Also the USA used to have weird rules about young mothers not transferring citizenship automatically (which the whole Obama birther myth relied on).
> Any person born in China whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese national shall have Chinese nationality.
> Any person born abroad whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese national shall have Chinese nationality.
> But a person whose parents are both Chinese nationals and have both settled abroad, or one of whose parents is a Chinese national and has settled abroad, and who has acquired foreign nationality at birth shall not have Chinese nationality.
- "Settled abroad" means having unrestricted, legal permanent residence. Recently, it was clarified that the two-year conditional US green card does not count, for example.
- Due to an "interpretation," as this law was written pre-handover, the "settled abroad" limitation sentence does not apply where (one of) the Chinese parents is a HK/MO resident.
- A parent from HK/MO pre-handover, or Taiwan, is still a Chinese citizen and will transmit citizenship to their children.
If both/the only Chinese parent is a mainland or Taiwan resident, not settled abroad, the child would get a Travel Document to enter mainland China. They cannot get a visa to do so inside the foreign passport. Foreign passport can still be used for HK/MO/TW.
The child cannot get the ordinary red Chinese passport (unless they "resolve the conflict" by abandoning the other citizenship). They can, IIRC, still get a resident ID card if their parents still have hukou and register them?
In your scenario (not overseas citizen at birth), the child does have a regular red Chinese passport. Because they live overseas, they can get a permit from the Chinese embassy inside the passport to visit HK/MO, and they can also get an entry permit from the Taiwan authorities to visit for two weeks at a time, which is a loose leaf paper.
If one Chinese parent is a permanent resident of HK/MO, the child generally gets both Chinese nationality and HK/MO residence. Thus they are issued a full HK/MO passport. These passports still cannot enter the mainland directly, so they can ALSO get a Travel Document OR first visit HK/MO and then apply for the Home Return Permit using the domestic procedures.