This initiative “is a long tradition that can be traced back to the French Revolution, which is to grant citizenship to the benefactors of the country,” Didier Leschi, the director of the French Office of Immigration and Integration told Le Figaro.
This isn’t the first time that France has recognized contributions to the nation with citizenship.
In 2018, a young man from Mali was offered French citizenship and a job as a firefighter after he scaled an apartment building to save a child dangling from a balcony. The three Americans who thwarted a 2015 terror attack on a Paris-bound train were also awarded French citizenship in 2019.
