The first news of 2009: a baby girl named Sasha was born on Northwest Airlines Flight 59 from Amsterdam to Boston. The story starts out very pleasant:
“Everybody was there to help,” said [Dr. Natarajan] Raman, who helped deliver the child. “People offered baby food, people brought things, people vacated their seats.”
Then it throws out this whopper:
Customs officials deemed [baby] Sasha a Canadian citizen, because she was born over Canadian airspace. The flight landed about 45 minutes after the birth.
Well that’s a doozy. If she’d waited another 10 or 15 minutes the kid would probably have been born in the United States. Now she’ll be the only girl in her class whose nationality depended on the Global Positioning System, a radio, and a stopwatch. You know she’ll never live that down.
Anybody else remember the West Wing episode where Donna finds herself suddenly Canadian?
Donna: I’m very upset. I don’t know the words to my national anthem. I’ve been throwing out Canadian pennies my whole life. I’ve been making fun of the Queen. We don’t do that.
Sadly, it will expire in 5 days, but if you haven’t seen Samantha B’s “Provinces in Peril” .. It’s one of The Daily Show’s better moments as of late.
I thought births in the air would be like birth at sea; that is, the ship (or aircraft’s) registry determines the child’s nationality. I mean, what if the plane was over the ocean?
If the plane were over the ocean, the child would have been given over to the merpeople. Everyone knows that.
And I concur entirely about “Provinces in Peril.”