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Birthright Citizenship

TragicMonkey said:
Oooh, let's adopt a "family register" system like Japan had. That never caused any problems. Oh wait, it did. Serious, serious problems.

(Also, if you're really a 45 year old multi millionaire business man, have you considered ditching foreign ladies for nice home grown American gentlemen? I only ask because I'm available, and as my parents are into geneaology I can prove my Americanity to an astonishing degree. I'm more American than most Americans, in fact.)
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I'm sorry, not only am I not a multi millionaire, or American, even the 'de la' in my name is an affectation to make me sound more like the people Thunder is scared of.
I thought it best to let you know before you got your hopes up and started sending me naked pictures and stuff.
 
Guybrush Threepwood said:
I'm sorry, not only am I not a multi millionaire, or American, even the 'de la' in my name is an affectation to make me sound more like the people Thunder is scared of.
I thought it best to let you know before you got your hopes up and started sending me naked pictures and stuff.
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That does it, America needs to shut the borders to keep out the teases, leading me on with dreams of millions of dollars...I mean, true love. No more immigration of any kind unless the immigrants can provide evidence of enormous wealth, availability, and being compatible with certain deserving monkeys who could have rocked your world, baby, you'll never know what you're missing. Humph!
 
Kestrel said:
I have yet to hear a reason that isn't at it's core an appeal to nativismWP.
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The entire concept of citizenship is a form of nativism. But the system Thunder is proposing - the one I'm arguing against - is more restrictive than the current US system, not less, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
 
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Thunder said:
ok, well....I propose the following addition to the 14th:

"natural-born citizens of the USA, who were born of parents who were in the USA illegally or on a tourist or work visa, cannot sponsor anyone for citizenship or immigration to the USA"
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I'm sorry, but you've been quite consistently putting words into the authors of the 14th amendments' collective mouth regarding their intentions, despite seeing direct transcripts of debates that took place during its authorships. You've also discounted case law precedent, and are now saying "well I think that the authors intended x, therefore we should rewrite the amendment to fit with my opinion of what the authors intended, which just so happens to coincide with what I want to see in the world."

If your problem is immigrants not paying taxes, etc. while still being residents, why make it harder to become a citizen instead of easier?
 
sol invictus said:
The entire concept of citizenship is a form of nativism. But the system Thunder is proposing - the one I'm arguing against - is more restrictive than the current US system, not less, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
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Just challenging Thunder to come up with a reason for his change that doesn't fall back on natives being somehow superior to the newcomers.
 
Thunder said:
Please show me a court opinion that the 14th was meant for the children of ALL people in the USA, regardless of their legal status and visa situation.
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First, you're moving the goalposts. Second, the court cases have already been cited here.

Now, will you answer my question? If the authors of the 14th Amendment think they way you claim they were thinking, how did they distinguish children born of slaves (who had no legal immigrant status, and were the nearest thing to "illegal aliens") from children born of other undocumented people?

And Kestrel has already given the legislative history that proves they did indeed anticipate that this would mean children born of undocumented foreigners would be U.S. citizens.

The wording isn't vague and it wasn't accidental.
 
sol invictus said:
So if my parents legally immigrated, had me while they were on legal work visas, then were naturalized when I was 2 years old, I cannot sponsor someone I marry 30 years later, even though I was born and raised in the US and my parents are citizens? That's absurd, unfair, and creates a complex and confusing two-tiered citizenship system for no good reason.

The system as it stands is simple, logical, and tested over the last 150 years and more. You haven't presented one single logical argument for why it should be changed. Even your "worst" case - parents here illegally, child born, 18 years later the child sponsors her parents - I have no problem with at all. If 18 years after having their child here the family still wants to live in the USA, welcome them. They have as much claim to being American as anyone else, and I couldn't care less that they violated the letter of our broken immigration laws at one point any more than I care if they jaywalked once.
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We all know the real reason why people want to make all the crazy complicated rules and interpretations; because they don't have the gall to propose the very simple rules they really want: Automatic citizenship for babies is for white people only.

Very similar to the Jim Crow poll tax laws. To register to vote, or hold public office you had pay a huge poll tax (which the average person could not afford). However, if you were registered to vote before 1866, or you were related to someone who was, you didn't have to pay the tax.
 
Kestrel said:
Just challenging Thunder to come up with a reason for his change that doesn't fall back on natives being somehow superior to the newcomers.
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ooh...another strawman.

clearly there is no reason to oppose birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, other than overt racism.

:p
 
Thunder said:
ooh...another strawman.

clearly there is no reason to oppose birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, other than overt racism.
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You've been asked repeatedly to provide one yet you haven't.
 
Thunder, I would like you to do a quick bit of research on precisely when the behavior you're describing as illegal became illegal. Hint: it's not when you think it was.
 
Thunder said:
once is one too many.

but I believe there are hundreds of thousands of US citizens who were born of illegal parents.
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Interesting as your beliefs may or may not be, it would be awful nice if you had some actual evidence that the problem you've been trying to fix actually exists.
 
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Thunder said:
once is one too many.
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Why?

These are people you're speaking of, you know. On another thread I think you were trying to argue that they're taking our jobs, but I've yet to see a good correlation between immigration (legal or illegal) and unemployment. It seems that unemployment rates are more related to the state of our economy than to immigration. Most economists agree that the net effect of immigration on our economy is positive.

So what's the harm? What is so bad about the Fourteenth Amendment?
 
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