Mariam Sobayo came achingly close to feeling like she belonged in Ireland.

玛丽亚姆·索巴约曾经眼看着就要对爱尔兰产生一种归属感。

She was born in Dublin on Feb. 10, 2005, just a few weeks after the country halted its longstanding practice of granting citizenship to all children born on Irish soil. Her parents immigrated to Ireland from Nigeria in 2001, and she is the youngest of five children. Two of her older sisters were born in Ireland in 2002 and 2004.

她于2005年2月10日出生在都柏林，就在该国停止施行多年的“凡在爱尔兰土地上出生即自动获得公民身份”做法几周后。她的父母于2001年从尼日利亚移民到爱尔兰，她是五个孩子中最小的一个。她的两个姐姐分别于2002年和2004年出生在爱尔兰。

Because of the timing, they were automatically Irish citizens. For Ms. Sobayo, it would take years of filing paperwork and waiting for answers to finally obtain her citizenship at 18.

由于出生时间的差异，她们自动获得了爱尔兰公民身份。索巴约则花了多年时间提交文件、等待答复，直到18岁才最终获得公民身份。

“I was born in Dublin, I never left Dublin,” she said of growing up in the Irish capital, and described getting exceptional grades in Irish language studies in school. “It’s like, ‘Oh, here’s this new citizenship.’ Where I’m like, I’ve been here since Day 1.”

“我出生在都柏林，我从未离开过都柏林，”她在谈到在爱尔兰首都长大的经历时说，并提到自己在学校爱尔兰语课程中成绩优异。“这就像，‘哦，现在有了这么个新的公民身份。’而我想说，我从第一天就在这里。”

Without a passport, she could not travel outside the country, even as classmates went on school trips. When her Irish naturalization was approved, she felt a mix of relief and anger. “I feel like it was carrying a heavy weight that wasn’t supposed to be mine,” Ms. Sobayo said. She is now a social worker, caring for children seeking international protection.

没有护照，她无法出国旅行，即使同学们去参加学校旅行时也是如此。当她的爱尔兰入籍申请获得批准时，她感到既解脱又愤怒。“我觉得这就像背负着一个本不该属于我的沉重负担，”索巴约说。她现在是一名社工，照顾寻求国际保护的儿童。

In the coming weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will issue its decision in a landmark case through which the White House has sought to end the 157-year-old legal standard of birthright citizenship.

在未来几周，美国最高法院将就一宗里程碑式案件作出裁决，白宫试图通过此案结束有157年历史的出生公民权法律标准。

When President Trump talks about this issue, he calls America “STUPID” for automatically granting citizenship to U.S.-born children of immigrants. The policy does stand out for its permissiveness: Although many countries in Central and South America have similar laws, most nations require that at least one parent be a citizen for a child to qualify.

当特朗普总统谈论这个问题时，他称美国“愚蠢”——因为它自动向在美国出生的移民子女授予公民身份。该政策的宽松确实有目共睹：虽然中美洲和南美洲的许多国家有类似法律，但大多数国家要求至少父母一方为公民，孩子才有资格获得公民身份。

But research has shown that more restrictive policies can diminish the potential of children who are born and raised in a country as noncitizens — and that loosening the policy can improve the prospects of the generations born with the benefit.

但研究表明，更严格的政策可能会削弱那些在某国出生并长大、却没有公民身份的儿童的潜力，放宽政策则能改善受益一代的前景。

For example, a study by an international team of researchers last year found that the children of immigrants to the United States excelled further past similarly aged children of citizens than did second-generation immigrants in other developed countries. Across the 12 nations studied, birthright citizenship was correlated with higher economic mobility for the children of immigrants.

例如，去年一个国际研究团队的研究发现，与其他发达国家的第二代移民相比，美国移民的子女比同龄公民子女的表现更为突出。在所研究的12个国家中，出生公民权与移民子女更高的经济流动性相关。

“Of all the developed economies in the world, the U.S. is the most successful at integrating immigrants, and you might wonder why,” said Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, an economics professor at the University of California, Merced. “Maybe that access to citizenship from very early on is important.”

“在全球所有发达经济体中，美国在移民融入方面最为成功，你可能会好奇原因，”加州大学默塞德分校经济学教授卡塔利娜·阿穆埃多-多兰特斯说。“或许从很早开始就能获得公民身份这一点非常重要。”

The ‘Sins of the Parents’

“父母的罪过”

It is difficult to tease out the effect of different immigration policies across countries because there are so many variables and few natural experiments that allow researchers to compare one set of people with another. Ireland’s shift away from birthright citizenship provides such an experiment.

要区分不同国家移民政策的影响非常困难，因为变量太多，且很少能通过自然实验让研究者将一组人与另一组人进行比较。爱尔兰放弃出生公民权的转变提供了一个这样的实验。

For much of Ireland’s history, anyone born there had a right to citizenship. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which forged peace in Northern Ireland, enshrined it in Ireland’s Constitution. That changed in 2005, after 79 percent of voters supported a referendum to remove the constitutional amendment on birthright citizenship.

在爱尔兰历史上大部分时间里，任何在那里出生的人都有权获得公民身份。1998年促成北爱尔兰和平的《耶稣受难日协议》将其写入爱尔兰宪法。2005年，这一情况发生了变化，当时79%的选民支持公投，取消了宪法中关于出生公民权的条款。

The vote came during a period when Ireland’s economy was booming and the quality of life was improving, making the country an immigration destination rather than an exporter of people, as it had been for centuries. Ireland also faced some pressure from the still-young European Union, since it was the only member country to offer birthright citizenship, and citizens of all E.U. countries were now entitled to live and work anywhere within the bloc.

公投发生在爱尔兰经济繁荣、生活质量改善的时期，使该国从几个世纪以来的移民输出国变成了移民目的国。爱尔兰还面临着当时尚年轻的欧盟的一些压力，因为它是唯一提供出生公民权的成员国，而所有欧盟公民都有权在欧盟任何地方生活和工作。

But the public debate largely centered on claims that “birth tourism” was leaving maternity hospitals overcrowded. In reality, most non-Irish mothers giving birth were European nationals already entitled to residency, and hospital strains stemmed from underfunding. One study found that immigrants who arrived in Ireland from 1999 to 2004 had more education and fewer children than those who came before or after.

但公众辩论主要集中在所谓“生育旅游”导致妇产医院人满为患的说法上。事实上，大多数在爱尔兰生产的非爱尔兰母亲是已有居留权的欧洲国民，医院压力主要源于资金不足。一项研究发现，1999年至2004年间抵达爱尔兰的移民受教育程度更高，子女数量少于此前和此后的移民。

After the referendum, citizenship for anyone born in Ireland on or after Jan. 1, 2005, would depend on their parents’ nationality and residence history.

公投后，2005年1月1日及以后在爱尔兰出生的人的公民身份，将取决于其父母的国籍和居留历史。

Even though the Constitution no longer protected automatic birthright citizenship, other generous provisions were introduced, explained Samantha Arnold, a senior manager with the immigration consultancy Fragomen.

移民咨询公司Fragomen的高级经理萨曼莎·阿诺德解释道，尽管宪法不再保护自动出生公民权，但还是引入了其他宽松条款。

Children born in Ireland with at least one parent legally residing on the island for three out of the four years before their birth can still qualify for citizenship. Children born in Ireland and not entitled to citizenship of another country are also eligible, preventing them from becoming stateless.

在爱尔兰出生、且至少父母一方在其出生前四年中有三年合法居留于该岛的孩子仍可获得公民身份。在爱尔兰出生且无权获得其他国家公民身份的孩子也有资格，以防止他们成为无国籍人士。

“There are a lot of things to try to catch people, but of course people are going to fall through the cracks,” Ms. Arnold said, adding that those most at risk of not having access to citizenship are the children of parents who did not have permission to live in the state.

“有很多措施试图把人们兜住，但当然还是有人会掉进裂缝，”阿诺德说。她补充道，最可能无法获得公民身份的是那些父母没有合法居留许可的孩子。

Ebun Joseph, the special rapporteur for Ireland’s National Action Plan Against Racism, recently produced a documentary about the young people born in Ireland to non-Irish parents shortly after the referendum who have been left in limbo.

爱尔兰国家反种族主义行动计划特别报告员埃本·约瑟夫最近制作了一部纪录片，讲述了公投后不久在爱尔兰出生于非爱尔兰父母家庭、至今仍处于悬而未决状态的年轻人。

“It created a huge policy gap that is impacting young people particularly in their education and mental health,” Ms. Joseph said. “The sins of the parents are visited on the children. If a parent is criminal, or for whatever reason doesn’t get citizenship, then the children are locked out of citizenship.”

“它制造了一个巨大的政策缺口，特别影响了年轻人的教育和心理健康，”约瑟夫说。“父母的罪过报应在孩子身上。如果父母是罪犯，或者无论什么原因没有获得公民身份，那么孩子就无从获得公民身份。”

More Citizenship, More Integration

更多公民身份，更多融入

The change in Ireland is still too recent to have generated much data about how young adults born after 2005 are faring compared with their slightly older peers. But there is more research on a similar change in Germany — one that moved in the opposite direction.

爱尔兰的这一变化发生时间尚短，还没有产生多少数据，从而可以将2005年后出生的年轻成年人与稍年长的同龄人进行比较。但德国的一项类似变化（方向相反）有更多研究。

On Jan. 1, 2000, Germany began extending citizenship at birth as long as at least one parent had been living in the country legally for eight years, a period later shortened to five years. It created an opening for many children of immigrants, who at that time were generally guest workers from Turkey and Eastern Europe. In 2024, about 47,500 babies born to foreign parents qualified for citizenship, while 100,000 did not, according to Germany’s statistical office.

2000年1月1日，德国开始在孩子出生时授予公民身份，前提是至少父母一方已在德国合法居住八年（后来缩短至五年）。这为许多移民子女打开了大门，当时他们主要是来自土耳其和东欧的客工。据德国统计局数据，2024年约有47500名外国父母所生的婴儿获得了公民身份，有10万名没有获得。

Research has found that boys born just after the cutoff who were eligible for citizenship integrated better with their peers. Both boys and girls enrolled in preschool at higher rates, progressed faster in primary school and were more likely to pursue more rigorous academics in secondary school. They committed 70 percent fewer crimes than those who were not granted citizenship at birth, and their parents were more likely to speak German and integrate with their local community.

研究发现，刚好在截止日期后出生、有资格获得公民身份的男孩与同龄人融入得更好。男孩和女孩入读学前班的比例都更高，在小学进步更快，更有可能在中学攻读更艰深的学业。他们犯罪率降低了70%，他们的父母也更有可能说德语并融入当地社区。

Simone Schüller, a research fellow at the German Youth Institute, said the effect of citizenship was likely subconscious — young adults may not fully understand how it shapes their lives.

德国青年研究所研究员西蒙娜·许勒表示，公民身份的影响可能是潜意识的——年轻成年人可能并不完全理解这在如何塑造他们的生活。

“We see it in how they behave, how they make decisions, how they make educational choices and whether they choose to engage in criminal behavior or not,” Ms. Schüller said. “I’m not sure if the individuals themselves are that aware of it.”

“我们从他们的行为、决策、教育选择以及是否选择犯罪行为中看到了这一点，”许勒说。“我不确定他们自己是否有这个意识。”

Nevertheless, having a parent with legal residence for five years is still a high bar. According to Magdalena Benavente, a legal adviser for the Berlin Migration Council who counsels families with immigration issues, lacking citizenship can have a major effect on children who are born in Germany without eligibility.

然而，父母有五年合法居留仍是一个很高的门槛。据为有移民问题的家庭提供咨询的柏林移民理事会法律顾问玛格达莱娜·贝纳文特说，对于在德国出生但不符合资格的孩子来说，缺乏公民身份会产生重大影响。

For example, immigration authorities often ask parents about their children’s school attendance and grades as indicators of how well the family has integrated into German society when their residency permits are up for renewal.

例如，移民当局在更新父母居留许可时，经常询问孩子上学出勤率和成绩，以此作为家庭融入德国社会的指标。

“This means the children pretty soon feel this pressure that they could be deported at any time,” Ms. Benavente said, in German. “This fear is completely breaking them.”

“这意味着孩子们很快就会感受到他们随时可能被驱逐的压力，”贝纳文特用德语说。“这种恐惧正在彻底击垮他们。”

Christina Felfe, an economist at the University of Konstanz, said that despite the benefits of birthright citizenship, it had not erased disparities with children whose parents are German.

康斯坦茨大学经济学家克里斯蒂娜·费尔费表示，尽管出生公民权有诸多好处，但它并未消除与父母为德国人的孩子之间的差距。

“We see huge issues of when there is a high share of immigrants and natives, and in particular if they’re culturally distant, we do have a large share of discrimination, a lack of trust,” she said. “It’s just one policy that could contribute to integrating, but it’s not enough.”

“当移民和本地人比例很高，尤其是文化差异较大时，我们看到了大量歧视和信任缺失的问题，”她说。“这只是一项可能有助于融入的政策，但还不够。”