Bronze Roman military diploma honorably discharging an Anatolian sailor after 26 years of service and granting citizenship, 140 AD
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So that's where they got that from!
Service grants citizenship.
Do you want to know more?
[desire to know more intensifies]
My ancestors, the most ancient of whom was made at once a citizen and a noble of Rome, encourage me to govern by the same policy of transferring to this city all conspicuous merit, wherever found.
...
What was the ruin of Sparta and Athens, but this, that mighty as they were in war, they spurned from them as aliens those whom they had conquered? Our founder Romulus, on the other hand, was so wise that he fought as enemies and then hailed as fellow-citizens several nations on the very same day.
That's actually a very interesting counter point to the racist anti immigration chuds that fetishise the Roman Empire.
Indeed. Romans certainly had their fair share of xenophobia and cultural chauvinism, but the racist anti-immigration chuds would balk at Rome's actual attitudes towards folk-who-aren't-lily-white.
African-born Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, his Syrian wife, and their mixed-race children (one of whom was posthumously erased by his brother when he came to power - family squabbles!)