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Comment by HuwytNashi_006 | Hacker News Reader

So if you're an indigenous Frenchman you're automatically entitled, but Africans must literally risk their lives before being eligible? And people are celebrating this...

Why should ethnically French have a greater right to France than newcomers? It may have been their grandfather's homeland but it must not be their grandson's if we're ever going to progress. We're better than that now.

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This is like asking why ethnically African people have a greater right to Africa than non-African people. Sounds dumb doesn't it?

Yes, certainly.

Ideally, this would be about all of us humans being responsible custodians of the entire earth during our short passage here.

In the mean time, you're free to celebrate this baby step towards humanity in France.

I'm talking about France, not Africa. This is basically the same thing that white supremacists say: "Europe for Europeans".

The sooner there is no longer even a concept of 'European' or 'French', the sooner humanity can move beyond racist policies such as in the related link.

> The sooner there is no longer even a concept of '(Arab|Jew)' or '(Yemeni|Israelite)', the sooner humanity can move beyond racist policies such as in the related link.

Colonialism would like to have a word with you

You're looking at it from the wrong point of view.

France's colonies were, unlike Britian treated as part of france. That meant all of these areas in blue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire#/media/... are french, with the entire population being french citizens.

So this means that someone who is algerian could have french parents, but not be eligible for french citizenship. However if I as an EU citizen wanted to live in france, there is nothing stopping me.

In the same way that up to the 70s an english "colonial" had the right to a british passport. Until it was decided that it wasn't acceptable to have too many "colonials" about the place.

Only Algeria was actually part of France, the rest had different statuses. Locals definitely did not have french citizenship, not even in Algeria (they had an intermediate partial citizenship)

Also, anyone with (at least one) French parent, is eligible to citizenship.

The reason people migrate is to take advantage of the institutions and wealth built by French people, not because they specifically enjoy the climate there (although that's, to a small extent, one possible reason for migrating).

A good example of the nice institutions built by Europeans is Australia. No one really cared to migrate there until the country was all built and nice, and now it's coming from all over the world (mostly Europe and Asia). Before that it was (and to some extent it still is) a fairly hostile land.

Because natives inherit the land from their forefathers.

Yeah but you are missing the essential part of the french empire: you're french.

So most of north africa has french ancestors.

You’re confusing the French Empire and Metropolitan France. Algeria was part of Metropolitan France, the rest of what we’d now can the Empire wasn’t. All of France’s remaining extra-European possessions have every right French in the Hexagon do, and are French citizens. Algerians had it extremely easy moving to and naturalist got in France for decades after de Gaulle left Algeria. And Algeria was treated as French in law until such time as the French left. Thus the spat between the two countries in the 70s over children of Algerian immigrants automatically being granted French citizenship at 18. That was because their parents had been born in what was then France.

France and the Empire were not legally coextensive, and Tunisia and Morocco were never legally part of France. The generation that were born in what was legally France are done having children too.

Under this logic, everyone in Britain has Italian ancestors.

I'd like to claim Huns citizenship, please.

France did that during WW1 and WW2 they fought that war mostly with North Africans specially Algerians and rewarded them with genocides.

There's a lot to be said about France and other European powers treatment of their colonial troops, but North Africa certainly wasn't the main provider of soldiers.

From Wikipedia: "At the end of the war on November 11, 1918, the French had called up 8,817,000 men, including 900,000 colonial troops.". Note that this includes all colonies as well as "French troops" stationed in the colonies (apparently half that number).

Another Wikipedia article cites around 270'000 people from Northern Africa among them 180'000 soldiers.

> rewarded them with genocides

That is a strong claim. Any evidence to back it up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre

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