Many states have added social welfare rights and political rights to this list. Public retirement pensions can, for example, normally be transferred to another country and often years of contribution from employment in different states can be added. Austria, also permit their citizens abroad to participate in general elections or referenda. Benefits of external citizenship are not only enjoyed by emigrants properly speaking but also by their offspring born abroad who acquire their parents' citizenship iure sangunis . The driving force for this de-territoralization of citizenship was ethnic nationalism rather than liberal democracy.
Emigration stretches a community of descent beyond the state territory.
However, liberals should be quite happy about this development as long as it guarantees citizenship for those who retain strong social ties to their countries of origin. When external citizenship is automatically transferred to a third or fourth generation born abroad and when absentee voting rights are granted to individuals who have not been involved in the political debates for decades, then liberals should probably resist such extension which grounds citizenship in mere descent rather than in societal membership or in political involvement. From a liberal point of view, external citizenship is not primarily an intrusion of claims of sovereignty over citizens into another state's territorial sovereignty. It is rather a highly relevant bundle of rights for migrants who retain social ties to their countries of origin and whose alien status in the host country makes them especially vulnerable. In this perspective it should be less difficult to reconcile legal duties towards a host state with rights and protection granted by a country of origin.