There seems to be a lot of talk about citizenship in the US. It seems pretty easy to attain citizenship. (Aside from the number of applicants.) You can apply, you can be born on US soul, or you can be born to an existing US citizen. It seems that US citizenship in almost viral by design.
Were these rules typical at the time? Or were America's citizenship laws seen as advanced/backwards when they were put in place?
I can’t so much answer the specifics about US citizenship law in regards to the options of other countries, but I can try and offer a couple contextual points on the nature of citizenship.
So in terms of historical context, US citizenship law has a number of predecessors from which it takes influence. Often people describe citizenship as being ‘jus soli’ (right of soil) and ‘jus sanguinis’ (right of blood). The first refers to laws which grant citizenship due to domicile or birth within a country, and the second when citizenship is passed down through blood, i.e. hereditarily. The US system is pretty much a mix of the two.
The practice of jus sanguinis is relatively old, stretching back in various forms as far as Roman and Ancient Greek societies, where citizenship was often exclusive to certain social castes and groups, and was passed down through the family. Interestingly, a number of states (US included) have a similar policy to that of the Roman Empire, where non-citizens can serve in the military and be rewarded for it with citizenship. Applied on a much broader basis throughout society we can still see this in action today. Conversely jus soli is somewhat more modern, and in a European context, has origins in the enlightenment, the birth of nationalism of the 17/18th century. Various societies have used various models, France typically preferring jus soli, while Germany preferred jus sanguinis.
The reasons for why a state would adopt a mixture of the two is really down to a matter of enfranchisement. When citizenship is passed down solely through blood, this becomes challenging once societies have immigration, as it can leave individuals excluded from the franchise, and with less of a stake in the countries future. When people are citizens, can fully take part in social and political life, they have more ‘skin in the game’ so to speak, and this is often preferable to the alternative.
However, despite this relatively liberal citizenship stance, it has often been married with exclusionary immigration policies supported by various nativist movements. One such example would be the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese labourers from emigrating to the US, while further laws setting language and literacy standards for immigration have often had similar effects, limiting the access of foreign citizens to the country - and their by their ability to attain citizenship.