The French parliament has definitively adopted a bill to restrict citizenship rights for children born in its Indian Ocean overseas territory of Mayotte.

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Mayotte is a French archipelago, part of the Comoros in the Mozambique Channel. Around 320,000 people live in Mayotte, according to France's national statistics agency. As per AFP, a 2019 study found that half the population were foreigners, a third of whom were born in the French territory. Citizenship laws for Mayotte have changed since 2018 but this latest bill will make it stricter.

Mayotte is one of the five overseas departments of France located in the Indian Ocean, off the East African coast. The Muslim-majority overseas territory, which voted to stay part of France in 1974, became a full-fledged French department in 2011. France administers 12 territories outside of Europe, known as French overseas territories. These territories are largely remnants of the French colonial empire.

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What does the bill states?

As per the latest bill adopted by the Parliament, both parents would need to have legally lived in Mayotte for at least a year, with an exception in place for single parents. As per a report by AFP, until now, children born there needed to have a parent who had resided there legally for at least three months at the time of birth to apply for nationality. 

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Right vs left over the citizenship bill 

Prime Minister Francois Bayrou in February had called for a national debate on immigration and what it means to be French. His debate call had come days after stirring controversy with comments about immigrants "flooding" France. In line with the same sentiments, right-wing politicians are backing teh bill. 

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The bill stated that it did not affect the "right of soil", also known as "jus soli", for the rest of France. However, experts are sounding alarm bells over the text’s legal integrity and social consequences and change in laws between the archipelago and mainland France.

Lawmaker Philippe Gosselin, from the right-wing Republican party, while proposing the bill said, "The prospect of obtaining French nationality is an undeniable factor in irregular migration" to the overseas territory."

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Greens member of parliament Dominique Voynet warned the bill foresaw "the end of the right of soil in France...Mayotte is about to become a laboratory for the ideas of the far right," she said.

Marine Le Pen, still a member of parliament despite a court last week sentencing her to a five-year ban on running for office, said that the new law's impact would be minimal and that it was urgent "to simply ban the right of soil across all national territory".

(With inputs from agencies)