https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis#Jus_sanguinis_st...
Say one of your parents is a citizen of some other country.
If they're Canadian, you're a Canadian citizen. Period. The process is to get your documents that prove it. You don't apply for citizenship, you apply for proof.
In many European countries you are not a citizen. The process is to become one by descent. You apply for citizenship.
Very different.
> You don't just magically get citizenship for your parents home country, at least not for most countries.
Are there any countries where this is not true? I struggle to think of any, especially amoung highly-developed democratic nations. (There might be a couple of weirdo dictatorships that do not allow it.) It seems this would be necessary to prevent statelessness. For example, if your parents are living in the Netherlands as foreigners, children born there are not entitled to automatic Dutch citizenship. As a result, they will obtain citizenship through their parents (in a foreign nation).China and Singapore are some of the more prominent examples.
China considers it a "nationality conflict," the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically, they can still be registered on hukou and get ID card. Apparently they used to unofficially force you to decide as an adult, but stopped a few years ago and now issue the Travel Document for life.
edit to add -- that assumes the parent is not a unconditional green card holder, which is the scenario here.
Singapore allows dual citizenship until 21. Which is not necessarily a good thing, as if you do not do their national service you will effectively get banned from ever going there even if you renounce it later.
Japan and Korea both allow it forever from birth in practice, but the latter also has some complexities regarding the military (either renounce before a certain age or you have some restrictions returning until past a certain age).