Merged Due process in the US

[bruto]

Somewhere several pages back in this hurricane of a thread, a poster said "I understand the concern over illegal immigration."

I don't. As far back as I can recall, the USA, like every other country, has had people crossing its borders informally, i.e., illegally. In my youth, we called them wetbacks. Now and then, some politician might harrumph about the wetback problem -- he might even try out calling it a crisis. Then we all went on with our American lives.

In the last several years, the MAGApublicans have managed to inflame their mudsill followers with shrieks about criminal hordes invading and devastating our spacious skies & fruity plains, and b'god they're making evil hay out of it.

All of it lies, flung around like ◊◊◊◊ from a monkey cage. Unfortunately, their stupid whoppers delight the Magats and inflame them to support a criminal regime.

Worse, much worse, far too many people who should know better have also bought this despicable line, and try to argue from it as if it meant something real.

Illegal immigration, even in large numbers, continues to be a normal situation. In plain language, it's not a big deal.

I think I'm guilty of that concern. Concern, mind you, not panic and paranoia. I think it appropriate to maintain some mechanism for legal immigration that works. I'm no expert on it all, but I think it should include some process whereby people who have entered illegally or seek asylum have at least some opportunity to establish permanence. But thinking more about it, maybe the price even of that is too high. One of the problems that I think has been misidentified is that of gangs and traffickers. The Maga nuts would like to say it's because there are so many illegal immigrants, but I think it's because so many immigrants are illegal. Their vulnerability makes them easier prey to control by criminal elements.

Maybe my language has at times been too appeasing. In a time when it's easy and almost obligatory to rant about so much, I keep hoping that people with whom I so often disagree are not completely off the rails. It gets harder and harder, doesn't it?

 

[I Am The Scum]

Its an important distinction.

Some folks talk like they have some sort of universal God-given right to be present in the USA.

That doesn't answer my question. I asked why it bothers you so much. You continually fall back to this position that there are people who belong here and there are people who do NOT belong here and it is of the utmost importance that these categories be legally distinct and, if possible, the populations segregated.

At this point, racism would be the simple explanation. If it's something else, let me know.

 

[Hercules56]

That doesn't answer my question. I asked why it bothers you so much. You continually fall back to this position that there are people who belong here and there are people who do NOT belong here and it is of the utmost importance that these categories be legally distinct and, if possible, the populations segregated.

At this point, racism would be the simple explanation. If it's something else, let me know.

Seems you're projecting.

 

[bruto]

Its an important distinction.

Some folks talk like they have some sort of universal God-given right to be present in the USA.

I don't know about that but I think some folks have the idea that they have a universal right (God optional here) to be treated decently wherever they are. That may or may not include safety from deportation, but I think it includes safety from warrantless search and seizure, masked gunmen in unmarked cars assaulting people on the streets, agents smashing into car windows with crowbars and abducting children, sending un-convicted aliens to life imprisonment in government-sponsored concentration camps, confiscating the property of people as they cry out that they're citizens and not the people sought, and so forth - and of course the peripheral threats by the administration to arrest those who attempt to prevent abuses, and the unopposed call by some of the administration's henchmen and women to have such people arrested for treason and executed...all of that is included. And if preventing that corruption of our way of life and our nation's character requires that we relax our anti=immigrant diligence and quell our xenophobic swivet, then I think that's a more reasonable price to pay than the opposite price some are demanding - that we allow ourselves to become what we hate in order to save us from what we fear.

 

[Hercules56]

For now, under current legal interpretation. The 14th amendment grands citizenship. But the Constitution doesn't say what a citizen is or define the rights of a citizen. That comes from international law, which in turn is based on something called the law of nations, which is one of the texts the Framers understood and drew upon. It is these extra-American sources, not the Constitution, that establishes the doctrine of the right to remain. What will you do when the Trump administration declares its own definition of "citizen?"


That matters literally only if you want to be President. Nowhere else in the Constitution is any such distinction mentioned. In fact, the Constitution rather wants to say the opposite. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." (U.S. Const. Amend. 14 § 1.) There is no special higher grade of uber-citizenship that exists for people who became citizens via birth. The Constitution says plainly that birthright citizens and naturalized citizens are the same thing....

Not so.

A citizen by birth, cannot legally have his citizenship taken away.

A naturalized citizen CAN.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Seems you're projecting.

I'm asking for alternatives and you're not giving them. You appear to have bought into the fascist rhetoric that there is an enemy within that is causing a bunch of problems, and we must root them out.

I hope I'm wrong. You've been given ample opportunity to clear up the matter.

 

[Hercules56]

I'm asking for alternatives and you're not giving them. You appear to have bought into the fascist rhetoric that there is an enemy within that is causing a bunch of problems, and we must root them out....

Umm....we have not once touched on such an issue.

You must be thinking about a discussion with another person in another thread. Perhaps in another forum.

 

[JayUtah]

Not so.

A citizen by birth, cannot legally have his citizenship taken away.

What guarantees this?

A naturalized citizen CAN.

Not really. Naturalization can be revoked only if it was improvidently granted in the first place by some fraud on the part of the petitioner. If naturalization is perfected, it may not be withdrawn.

 

[JayUtah]

Seems you're projecting.

Then it should be easy for you to come up with a more specific and more explanatory argument than, "Some people just deserve to be here and some others don't."

 

[Hercules56]

What guarantees this?

I said LEGALLY.

Not really. Naturalization can be revoked only if it was improvidently granted in the first place by some fraud on the part of the petitioner. If naturalization is perfected, it may not be withdrawn.

Someone can be a naturalized citizen for 50 years, and then have it revoked when it turns out they lied on their naturalization application that they were convicted of a crime in their home country, or were an anarchist or polygamist at the time, etc etc.

I expect Trump to take great advantage of this loophole.

 

[Hercules56]

Then it should be easy for you to come up with a more specific and more explanatory argument than, "Some people just deserve to be here and some others don't."

I never said that.

I said some people have an actual legal right to be here, and others do not.

Citizens vs non-citizens.

Citizens have a literal and legal right to be here, everyone else is our guest.

 

[JayUtah]

I said LEGALLY.

What law guarantees this, then?

Someone can be a naturalized citizen for 50 years, and then have it revoked when it turns out they lied on their naturalization application that they were convicted of a crime in their home country, or were an anarchist or polygamist at the time, etc etc.

As I mentioned, if the naturalization was illegally obtained in the first place, it may be revoked. If it was legally obtained, it is permanent.

I expect Trump to take great advantage of this loophole.

Pres. Trump is already deporting U.S. citizens with birthright citizenship who have committed no crime. What makes you safe from deportation?

 

[JayUtah]

I said some people have an actual legal right to be here, and others do not.

But you propose distinctions that you purport to exist in law, but which do not.

Citizens vs non-citizens.

There are laws that give non-citizens the right to reside in the United States.

Citizens have a literal and legal right to be here, everyone else is our guest.

The right of citizens to remain in the United States arises under one law. The right of non-citzens to remain here arises under a different law. If laws give rights to remain to people, the question was why you are so bent out of shape about non-citizens being here. The mere fact that there right to remain arises under different laws doesn't seem to justify such a strong belief in a difference of propriety in being here.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Umm....we have not once touched on such an issue.

You must be thinking about a discussion with another person in another thread. Perhaps in another forum.

I'll attempt to get at the issue by illustrating my perspective:

If I learned that the person living across the street from me was an illegal immigrant, I absolutely would not care. It wouldn't matter if they crossed the border at a young or adult age, or if they had overstayed a visa. It would not matter to me. I wouldn't report them to any law enforcement office. I wouldn't spread gossip. I would just go on about my business.

You, on the other hand, appear to care quite a bit. So my new question is this: What am I missing? Explain it to me like I'm five.

 

[Hercules56]

I'll attempt to get at the issue by illustrating my perspective:

If I learned that the person living across the street from me was an illegal immigrant, I absolutely would not care. It wouldn't matter if they crossed the border at a young or adult age, or if they had overstayed a visa. It would not matter to me. I wouldn't report them to any law enforcement office. I wouldn't spread gossip. I would just go on about my business.

You, on the other hand, appear to care quite a bit. So my new question is this: What am I missing? Explain it to me like I'm five.

There is a very long wait period, where immigrants need to prove to US officials that they have no dangerous criminal history and are not a threat to our community. They also prove that they will not become an immediate burden upon our social safety net. Illegal immigrants violate this.

How can we trust such people to be good and decent neighbors? How can we trust them to follow the rules of our society, respect our laws and our ways, be good and kind neighbors to us and our children, when their first act in our country was to VIOLATE soo many of our rules and policies?

Why cant they just wait online like everyone else? What makes them special?

Most other nations take this VERY seriously, why should the USA be any different?

 

[The Don]

How do you establish your citizenship without due process?

And why do "naturally born US citizens" have more rights than other US citizens ?

 

[I Am The Scum]

There is a very long wait period, where immigrants need to prove to US officials that they have no dangerous criminal history and are not a threat to our community. They also prove that they will not become an immediate burden upon our social safety net. Illegal immigrants violate this.

How can we trust such people to be good and decent neighbors? How can we trust them to follow the rules of our society, respect our laws and our ways, be good and kind neighbors to us and our children, when their first act in our country was to VIOLATE soo many of our rules and policies?

Suppose the neighbor in the next house down was born in America. Then we ask the same questions:

How can we trust such a person to be a good and decent neighbor? How can we trust them to follow the rules of our society, respect our laws and our ways, be good and kind neighbors to us and our children?

 

[bruto]

Not so.

A citizen by birth, cannot legally have his citizenship taken away.

A naturalized citizen CAN.

HERE is a link to the circumstances that can lead to revocation of naturalized citizenship. Note that this is a prohibitive law, not a permissive one. It tells you what you may not do. Everything else you may.

Elsewhere in the extensive document a part of which is linked above, appears this VERY IMPORTANT SENTENCE. This sentence has no footnotes.

Naturalized U.S. citizens share equally in the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship

So just to be clear, though the law provides a small number of circumstances under which naturalized citizenship is revocable, outside of those circumstances it is not. A citizen is a citizen, and like any person, citizen or not, is entitled to the freedom of expression and freedom from improper search, seizure and self-incrimination guaranteed to all by the Constitution. The attempt of our current administration to stretch those circumstances and to make naturalized citizenship more conditional, more fragile, and more subject to the fear of abuse, is, in my opinion, unconscionable. This is not abstract. The threat of reprisal and warrantless raids, nuisance arrests, incorrigible errors, etc., and the willingness of the administration to act illegally and immorally has already begun the task of corrupting our freedom of expression and dissent.

 

[JayUtah]

HERE is a link to the circumstances that can lead to revocation of naturalized citizenship. Note that this is a prohibitive law, not a permissive one. It tells you what you may not do. Everything else you may.

As a corollary, we should consider the things you can do that will put your citizenship in danger no matter how you acquired it. Conviction for treason. Renunciation of citizenship. Being naturalized in a different country. Serving in the armed forces of another country. No condition of citizenship is unconditionally guaranteed. Naturalized citizens are not second-class citizens. Natural-born citizens are not somehow inherently endowed with perpetual citizenship.

 

[dirtywick]

How does one not have access to federal courts if they are in the USA?

well you’re getting awful close to understanding why people have a problem with illegal deportations here