Jean-Marc Desperrier wrote:
> He certainly got it confused with, as used to be, automatic acquisition 
> of french nationality with no possibility of refusing it.
> 
> But this automatic acquisition concerns people who are born and living 
> in France from non-french parents. That was first changed to not be 
> automatic (after some nationalist uproar about peoples who were french 
> without even knowing it), and then changed again to be automatic, but 
> with a 6 month delay after majority to renunce it.

In the late 19th/early 20th century the British embassy in Paris
even had a small maternity wing, so that female Brits living in
France could give birth there without their offspring
irrevocably becoming French citizens (and liable for conscription
if male.)

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学