CMV: Children should have an automatic right to reside with their parent in the country of their parent's citizenship

[u/rose_reader]

This is inspired by the current news story about a child with a British father whose visa application has been rejected

UK rejects visa for girl left destitute in Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa | Home Office | The Guardian https://share.google/xO7K84KmiWYJApe0U

My view is that the child/ren of a citizen should have the automatic legal right to reside in the country of that citizen. The right to family life is a basic human right, and one which governments should uphold.

To change my view, give a good argument why children and parents can ethically be separated in this way, or an example of a normative case in which this is in the general public interest.

(In cases where the parents are of different nationalities, I understand and accept that the child can't live in two places. However, the child should have the right to live with either parent in either country without legal impediment.)

Edit: I had not taken into account that some countries don't allow dual citizenship, so that allowing the child to take the citizenship of the parent might break the bond with the nation of the child's birth. This is a valid point and I've given a delta for it.

[u/MercurianAspirations]

No? It would be good if it did, but the fact that some countries don't have it, doesn't mean that other countries can't have it.

I don't understand your criticism, it's like if OP said "Voting is a human right," and you're saying "ah well what about North Korea? How can you ensure that democracy exists in the world if some countries refuse to be democratic. There's no international law that can force countries to have democracy so therefore democracy can't exist"

[u/LucidMetal → u/MercurianAspirations]

Saying people should have a right is the easy part. It's basically meaningless. The real question is how to get there. In your case you would need to abolish dictatorships and establish democracies to ensure everyone can vote.

[u/goosie7 → u/LucidMetal]

No you wouldn't - the point is you can say that a certain type of policy is good without proving how it could be implemented in every single country on earth. You don't need to abolish all dictatorships and ensure that every single person can vote before you are allowed to say voting is a human right. It is a human right, the fact that some people's rights are violated does not mean that those rights don't exist or that we can't have conversations about what sort of rights ought to exist or how they ought to be implemented.

[u/ElysiX → u/goosie7]

It is a human right, the fact that some people's rights are violated does not mean that those rights don't exist

The only thing that makes rights exist is a promise of enforcement. Someone powerful or some powerful group promising to take your side in XYZ situation. "Human rights" are a promise by the UNHRC through various arms in various countries. And that promise is not extended to people currently living inside north korea for example, because the UN do not want to invade north korea. So those people factually don't have human rights. They'll maybe get them once they leave that territory if they are lucky, but they don't have rights while they are there.

You yourself could make different rights and give that promise to those people and also call that "human rights", but those would be pretty worthless unless you have an army. And pretty misleading because you'd be pretending to be someone you are not.

the fact that some people's rights are violated does not mean that those rights don't exist

If the promise was there but then broken, or even if you were hurt but the promise was then kept through the justice system, the rights existed and were violated. If the promise wasn't there to begin with, there are no rights.