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How to determine the nationality of a baby born on an airplane

B.C. couple arrive home with baby Chloe, who was born last weekend on a flight to Japan

Birth has enough drama and confusion to it when it’s done in a hospital bed. So it must be even more interesting when you do one at 500 miles per hour, seven miles above the ocean, and hoping desperately that the person who answered that ‘doctor on board’ call isn’t actually a psychopath.

And of course, once that’s all over, you get to not only come up with a name, but also figure out what the little miracle’s nationality is.

A Canadian couple is currently sorting through that quagmire after giving birth high over the Pacific while on a flight to Tokyo. Baby Chloe is just fine, but her parents Wesley Branch and Ada Guan (who actually didn’t know Guan was pregnant, which probably makes the citizenship issue item 14 on their list of new things to think about now) have some red tape to wade through.

“There’s all these different iterations that are possible when a child is born on a plane,” says Kelly Goldthorpe, an immigration lawyer at Green and Spiegel LLP.

We’ll file this under ‘modern times problems’, with its own urban legends to go with it. What if your baby’s born over Belgium? Is she then Belgian? Will she have to spend 6 months a year in Belgium while she waits for her citizenship to go through 12 years down the road?

The answer is no, but the confusion is understandable, as different countries have different rules over who gets to be citizens. And as with anything modern and legal, there are about five answers to each question.


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The national registration of the plane, the location of the plane when the birth happens, and the nationality of the parents all factor into it.

The United Nations, for instance, says the birth takes place in the country where the plane is registered. However, birthplace isn’t the same as nationality.

Thankfully for baby Chloe, this situation should be fairly cut and dry, says Goldthorpe.

“For Canada, a baby that wants to claim Canadian citizenship must prove either that they were born over Canadian airspace, that they were born on a Canadian registered plane, or that they were born to Canadian citizen parents,” she says.

So basically, Canada has pretty liberal rules for this kind of thing, and Chloe should be munching on Timbits in no time.

It won’t be without some hassle, though. While they landed in Tokyo with three people, they only had two passports. Taking their baby back to Canada involved getting hold of some travel documents and doing the red tape dance at a time they’d surely rather be getting to know their new baby.

“They can contact the vital statistics office and see if they can get a birth certificate or contact the embassy or the Canadian consulate to issue a travel document for the child,” says Goldthorpe.

With air travel making our previously flat world ever more three-dimensional, this kind of thing can only become more common, with potential disputes over the degree to which countries own the thin air high above them.

For many countries, the key factor in determining it is the nationality of the parents. Of course, the nationality of both parents may not be the same. And many countries, including Canada and the U.S., extend citizenship to babies born in their airspace.

So if you’re Canadian, and you give birth over the U.S., then your baby might have a chance at the coveted dual citizenship that lets you turn that Florida winter into 10 months of glorious sunshine and beaches.

With citizenships more valuable than diamonds these days, it’s tempting to envision (admittedly impractical) scenarios of renting a Learjet outfitted with a stirrup bed and a good supply of towels and setting out for your favourite foreign country, and then one day mooching visits off your Belgian offspring. Of course, if we think this is complicated, then just wait until commercial space travel takes off, and someone has to figure out the passport situation for the first baby born in orbit.