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The law that anyone born in Canada is automatically Canadian is an “outdated” relic from a time when immigrants arrived on a one-way boat ticket, and it leaves Canada’s modern welfare state open to exploitation by “birth tourists,” according to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

Known in legal circles by the Latin name jus soli, or right of soil, as opposed to jus sanguinis, or right of blood, the citizenship policy is unique, among developed nations, to Canada and the United States. All other countries that take in immigrants base their citizenship on blood, and require at least one parent to be a citizen, or to have lived there for a certain time, in order to confer citizenship on the child.

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“I think [automatic citizenship by place of birth] is outdated in this respect. When we established that legal approach, specifically in the 1947 Citizenship Act, most immigrants, if they came to Canada, they were not going back. People would come by sea, and they would leave behind their countries of origin, and rarely if ever have the chance to go back,” Mr. Kenney said in an interview Monday about his proposal to scrap jus soli by the end of the year.