We work where families were built.

Argentina received one of the largest migrations in modern history, and its nationality law has long reflected a certain generosity toward the families that resulted. The framework of Ley 346 — a statute of remarkable age — recognizes the children of native Argentines born abroad, who may take up Argentine nationality through a procedure known as the opción de nacionalidad.

In practice this makes Argentina one of the more open descent jurisdictions we work in. The option right belongs to each generation in turn: the child of a native Argentine may opt, and once recognized, their own children acquire the same right. Longer family chains are therefore built patiently, one generation at a time, rather than claimed in a single filing.

Paraguay’s constitution has long promised natural nationality to the children of Paraguayans born abroad — and Article 146 states the condition just as plainly: the promise is perfected when the descendant settles in the Republic permanently. That settlement requirement, radicación, is written into the constitutional text itself; no statute could waive it, and none has.

Law No. 7052, adopted in 2023, gave the framework its modern administrative shape. Its real headline is security: no natural Paraguayan now loses that nationality except by express renunciation, so the emigrant generations — and the claims that stand on them — no longer dissolve with a foreign naturalization. For the descendants themselves, the law defined the procedure: recognition by declaration before the civil courts in Paraguay, on proof of permanent settlement. What it did not create, despite persistent reports to the contrary, is a general consular route for the diaspora.

Uruguay recognizes the children of Uruguayan citizens born abroad as natural citizens under Ley 16.021, and — since Ley 19.362 of 2015 — extends registration to the grandchildren of Uruguayan-born grandparents. On paper this places Uruguay among the more generous descent jurisdictions in the region.

The distinctive feature is avecinamiento: the requirement that the descendant demonstrably settle in Uruguay before citizenship is perfected. Unlike Argentina or Italy, Uruguay cannot generally be claimed entirely from abroad. For families genuinely drawn to Montevideo or the interior, that requirement is an invitation; for those seeking a document without a connection, it is a firm and rather characteristic Uruguayan answer.

Mexican nationality rests on Article 30 of the Constitution, which combines two generous principles: birth on Mexican soil confers nationality regardless of the parents’ status, and birth abroad to a Mexican parent transmits nationality by descent. A constitutional reform in 2021 broadened the descent rule further, reaching children born abroad to Mexican parents who were themselves born outside Mexico.

For families this means a Mexico-born ancestor can anchor claims across several living generations — provided each link in the chain can be documented and registered. The work is procedural rather than adversarial: births registered at a consulate or before the civil registry, records reconciled with RENAPO, and identity documents issued in course.

For over a century, Italian citizenship by descent — jure sanguinis — recognized no generational limit: a great-great-grandchild of an emigrant from Liguria could, with a complete file, be recognized as Italian. That long era ended abruptly in 2025, when a decree-law, later converted with amendments, restricted recognition for new applications: in broad terms, an applicant now needs a parent or grandparent who held exclusively Italian citizenship, or a parent who resided in Italy for two continuous years before their birth, subject to defined exceptions and transitional rules.

The reform reshaped rather than closed the practice. Families who meet the new ancestor test still have a path; cases filed before the cut-off proceed under the older rules; maternal-line cases affected by the pre-1948 rule continue to run through the courts; and the reform has now been tested — Italy’s Constitutional Court upheld its core in April 2026, while referring the question of its retroactive effect to the EU Court of Justice that July, where it remained pending at the time of writing. Few jurisdictions better illustrate why descent rights should be examined while they exist.

Irish descent citizenship is orderly, well-documented, and administered with a certain quiet rigour. A person born abroad to a parent who was born in Ireland is an Irish citizen automatically. A person with an Irish-born grandparent may become one by entry in the Foreign Births Register, maintained by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The register carries one rule that families overlook at real cost: registration takes effect from the date of entry, not from birth. A registered person’s children born after registration can themselves be registered; children born before cannot. For families thinking a generation ahead, the order of events matters more in Ireland than almost anywhere else we work.

Spanish descent law is best understood as a set of doors that open and close by statute. The Democratic Memory Law of 2022 opened a broad, time-limited window for the children and grandchildren of Spaniards — including descendants of those exiled for political reasons — and that window, after one extension, closed to new filings in late 2025. Applications lodged in time continue through the consulates. An earlier window for descendants of Sephardic Jews, under the 2015 law, closed in 2019 on similar terms.

Between windows, Spain still offers durable routes: children of Spanish nationals may opt for nationality, and nationals of Ibero-American countries — a status many of our families reach through Argentine, Mexican, or Uruguayan descent work — qualify for Spanish naturalization after only two years’ legal residence. Spanish strategy, more than most, is about sequencing.

Portuguese nationality law still offers one of Europe’s more workable grandparent routes: the grandchild of a Portuguese national who has not lost that nationality may acquire Portuguese nationality by attribution, on demonstrating effective ties to the Portuguese community. Children of Portuguese nationals born abroad may be registered more directly. But the framework was substantially rewritten by Lei Orgânica 1/2026, in force since 19 May 2026, and every Portuguese assessment now divides at that date.

The 2026 reform pulled in three directions at once. It tightened the grandchild route, giving the effective-ties requirement more demanding content — including demonstrated knowledge of the Portuguese language and of Portuguese culture. It closed the Sephardic naturalization route to new applications, ending a chapter opened in 2015; files lodged before the reform continue under the prior rules. And it created, for the first time, an express route for great-grandchildren — conditioned on a period of legal residence in Portugal. Portuguese assessments, like Italian ones, should be dated.

German descent law divides into two very different bodies of work. The first is restorative: Article 116(2) of the Basic Law restores citizenship to those deprived of it between 1933 and 1945 on political, racial, or religious grounds — and to their descendants. Legislation in 2021 added parallel routes, notably §15 of the Nationality Act, for descendants of persecuted people who fled and lost their citizenship in ways the constitutional text did not quite reach.

The second body is corrective and ordinary: a declaration route under §5 of the Nationality Act, open for a ten-year window ending in 2031, for children — and their descendants — who were excluded from German citizenship by the gender-discriminatory rules of the past, such as birth before 1975 to a German mother and foreign father. Alongside both, the standard rule endures: children of German citizens are German by descent, subject to a registration requirement for some born abroad to parents themselves born abroad after 1999.