Birthright Citizenship

[GnaGnaMan]

Maybe of interest here:
Summary of European Union states nationality laws

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citiz...on#Summary_of_member_states'_nationality_laws

 

[phiwum]

Birthright citizenship wasn't added to the "American experiment" until 1868.

Yeah, as the experiment goes, it seems that slavery is a more fundamental part, sadly.

 

[LSSBB]

The kid's? Mexican National parents = the kid is a Mexican National.

Just focus on the basic concept at first.

But being a Mexican National is fine if the parents are. That doesn't exclude them from also being American citizens. So do you mean exclusively Mexican citizens?

 

[WilliamSeger]

"Pedantry", you poser.

(Yes, yes, some may punctuate it thus: "Pedantry," you poser. This is not a convention to which I subscribe.)

I think he means the religion, not the hobby.

 

[theprestige]

What if the parents aren't resident of the place they're citizens of? The child would end up citizen of somewhere they've never been to.

Seems like that's the parent's responsibility. Why should their life choices unilaterally create obligations for me? If they don't have a problem giving birth outside their home country, why should I? Why should I suddenly be responsible for solving a problem they don't even have? Or, if they somehow decide they *do* have a problem, why shouldn't they also have the responsibility for solving it themselves?

 

[lomiller]

So long as they are providing cheap labor they don't actually seem to mind much. If they did actually care about that they would make it much more costly to employ illegal immigrants.

I don’t agree. Republicans would prefer American citizens provide the cheap labor.

 

[carlitos]

Seems like that's the parent's responsibility. Why should their life choices unilaterally create obligations for me? If they don't have a problem giving birth outside their home country, why should I? Why should I suddenly be responsible for solving a problem they don't even have? Or, if they somehow decide they *do* have a problem, why shouldn't they also have the responsibility for solving it themselves?

Obligations? Problems? I don't get it. Given that our budget is currently based on endless population and economic growth, people having new American babies is a very good thing. These kids are going to fund our social security and infrastructure when we're old.

 

[Cavemonster]

This only works if you plan to let them stay long enough to meet the residency requirement. I do not think this is part of the plan the US right has in mind.

Correct. xjx388 was asking about the lack of jus soli in the abstract. In the abstract it could work at least fairly well, and does in some places. In the US, it would be a problem.

 

[Tero]

Ivanka, Eric and Don jr are all anchor babies. Their mom Ivana was not a citizen at the time of their births.

And Obama. When will Trump declare that kids get the citizenship of their father? And retroactively make Obama a green card alien. Cause the mom at least was American.

This of course automatically repeals Obamacare.
/sarcasm

 

[WilliamSeger]

Both voting and running for office should be taken away from citizens specifically and given to everyone in the border. Citizenship should only be for paying taxes,conscription, and jury duty.

You're just redefining "citizen" to what be you want it to mean, then giving the conventional meaning to some other class. When you do stuff like that, Bob, it's no longer clear that when you say "citizenship" that you mean the same thing as someone else. At the end of the day, if we manage to get that straight, we're talking about the same things with different terms, and the only difference is the unnecessary confusion along the way.

 

[xjx388]

Nothing. So the legislators need to draft a new Constitutional Amendment and it needs to be approved by 38 States.

It's called democracy in case you didn't remember.

Well, it isn’t established that it must be a constitutional amendment. Congress could act and change the Immigration law that specifies birthright citizenship and then test cases can hit SCOTUS, for example.


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[LSSBB]

I don’t agree. Republicans would prefer American citizens provide the cheap labor.

Why wouldn't the Republicans? It appears their new base is ecstatic just to have a job, no matter how crummy it pays or how many jobs they have to hold to make ends meet.

 

[Dr. Keith]

I don’t agree. Republicans would prefer American citizens provide the cheap labor.

The evidence is completely to the contrary.

It would be trivial to preclude illegal immigrants from earning any substantial money in the US. And yet the GOP has fought tooth and nail to prevent any such moves.

Besides, unemployed white people will still vote GOP. They don't need jobs, just anger.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Seems like that's the parent's responsibility. Why should their life choices unilaterally create obligations for me?

But that applies equally to any kind of citizenship the parents have: why didn't they change it to something better? Why should the child inherit citizenship that way instead of geographically? Children are going to get stuck with quite a lot of baggage from their parents regardless of citizenship, it's just how reproduction works.

If they don't have a problem giving birth outside their home country, why should I? Why should I suddenly be responsible for solving a problem they don't even have? Or, if they somehow decide they *do* have a problem, why shouldn't they also have the responsibility for solving it themselves?

Who said anything about problems?

Birthright citizenship solves several problems--there's no question of it, for starters, whereas inherited citizenship could run into problems where each parent has different or multiple citizenships, the child isn't actually theirs, the parents' citizenship no longer applies because they come from a country that doesn't exist any more, etc. Whereas except for unusual situations like being born in an embassy or on board a ship or airplane, it's pretty clear what borders each individual was physically born inside. Simplifies the matter enormously. And contributes to our genetic diversity, which is always a plus in reducting a population's disease risk.

 

[lionking]

Not to agree with Baylor, heaven forbid, but hasn't there been a long history of only allowing white immigrants to stay in Australia?

Yes, and there's been slavery in the US .

The White Australia Policy started to be dismantled in 1949 and was fully swept away in the 1970s. Since then, we have become a veritable multiculturalism poster child. Baylor keeps dredging up ancient history to try to make a point about modern Australia. In vain.

 

[lionking]

So when did the Aboriginals become citizens or are they still not?

Again, ancient history.

All Australians, including aboriginal people, first became Australian citizens in 1949, when a separate Australian citizenship was created; before that time all Australians rather were British subjects. Most Indigenous Australians had been denied the right to vote in elections for the Australian Parliament until 1949

Both indigenous and non-indigenous people were not citizens before this time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_referendum,_1967_(Aboriginals)

The much mentioned 1967 referendum resulted in the Constitution being amended to allow more formal recognition of aborigines, but citizenship wasn't part of it.

There is a lot of Australian history, particularly that more than 100 years ago, which is shameful. We are not perfect, but we are certainly not a white supremacist nation at all.

 

[paulhutch]

Why was the Fourteenth Amendment implemented in the first place?

If I remember my US History classes correctly there were two main reasons. The first was to make sure that the slaves who were born here were citizens (we'd just freed them not long before), and so that children of non-citizen immigrants would be citizens rather than people with potentially no citizenship anywhere.

 

[Chanakya]

White Australians won't breed.

Why not?

 

[xjx388]

Are you suggesting that the hospital act as an arm of immigration enforcement? I hope I don't have to go too in depth about why that's a dangerous idea.

Not at all. It would be as simple as creating a new kind of birth certificate for births of foreign citizens. Immigration can follow it's usual course of action on it's own.

As it happens currently, the hospitals don't contact immigration or anything. Our hospitals in the Rio Grande Valley regularly get "birth tourists," and they aren't turned in and deported.

If I understand the system in France correctly, do you mean that a child born in France has an opportunity to become a citizen at certain ages given certain residency requirements are met? I'll agree, this mitigates the issue somewhat. I had intended my post to convey exactly that, so I apologize if it didn't come across.

I think the one issue I can see with citizenship awarded at a certain age in systems like France and Australia, is that it leaves children until that age prone to changing laws as regimes change. One might live one's entire life until your teens thinking you would become a citizen and then a particularly xenophobic legislature may dash it away. The best legal structures can protect against such capriciousness. The US policy, being enshrined in the constitution offers a little more stability. And if the US system offered such a deferred citizenship in an amendment that would be pretty much as good as what we have (unless I'm forgetting something, which is not unlikely).

The only thing I would add is that what would make it different is that it would create a requirement that the parents would have to apply for residency in order for the kid to establish residency. The way it works here on the front lines is that the kid, being a citizen, "lives" with a relative in the US, establishes residency and then gets to go to school here and get various other benefits. I use quotes because in reality, many kids live with their parents in Mexico OR the parents are actually living here illegally with the relatives.

I don't think a lack of jus soli is necessarily a problem, you're right. It is the particulars of countries, histories and immigration realities that make it work or not work.

Yeah, I think that citizenship law should be enshrined in a document that is very hard to change, like the Constitution. The problem is that, in the US anyway, it isn't at all clear that the 14th enshrines birthright citizenship. It's never been tested. It's what many people argue and it very probably is, but it's an ongoing debate.

 

[Random]

Yeah, I think that citizenship law should be enshrined in a document that is very hard to change, like the Constitution. The problem is that, in the US anyway, it isn't at all clear that the 14th enshrines birthright citizenship. It's never been tested. It's what many people argue and it very probably is, but it's an ongoing debate.

Actually it was tested over a hundred years ago in US vs Wong Kim Ark. In a 6-2 decision, they decided that the child of two Chinese workers who was born inside the US was a US citizen, regardless of the nationality of his parents. Considering that this was the Court that came out with Plessy vs Ferguson, you can hardly argue that the Wong Kim Ark decision was based on Liberal touchy-feelyness.