Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Children of Foreign Parents in Spain
Secretary of State for Immigration says that 17.56% of all children born in Spain in 2005 have at least one foreign parent, a percentage that is four times higher than a decade previously. In 1996, the lowest number of babies were born in Spain during the whole of the 20th Century - 362,626 - 4.54% of which had a mother and/or father of foreign origin. The number has been rising progressively, until 2005, when 465,616 babies were born, close 81,000 of whom had at least one foreign parent.
Between 1996 and 2005, 4,061,930 babies were born in Spain, on average, 10% of whom have a foreign mother and/or father and, 43% of these have just one foreign parent. Those with both parents of the same foreign nationality were, in the majority, from Morocco, Equador, Romania, Columbia and China. Unsurprisingly, the communities were there are the most immigrants; Madrid, the east coast of the Spanish mainland, the Balearic Islands and the Canary islands, are also where the highest number of children with at least one foreign parent are born.
The object of a new book which collated this data, Nacionalidad de los hijos de extranjeros nacidos en España (Nationality of children of foreigners born in Spain), is to analyse Spanish legislation and its legal interpretation in respect to the attribution, or not, of Spanish nationality to children born in Spain to foreign citizens.
The author of the book, Aurelia Alvarez, exposed cases where the children of foreign parents had acquired Spanish nationality, an attribution which is based not only in Spanish justice, but also on Article 7 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. In general (though there are many exceptions), the criteria is to attribute Spanish nationality if one of the parents is Spanish, if the parents are naturalized foreigners, if the parents are stateless (for example Palestinians or Saharauis), or if they are from countries that do not attribute nationality to children born outside their borders - always independent of whether the parents reside legally or not in Spain.
Los hijos de padres extranjeros son el 17,56% de los nacidos en España en 2005
