One thing I don’t understand is how this is even a choice the parents have the legal right to make, assuming their US citizen children do not have passports (I don’t know if the answer to that is publicly known). Can a child legally be taken out of the country without a passport and some kind of verifications?
That’s a strawman argument that I would never advocate, and completely ignores my question.
Alternatives include arranging legal custody for the child and to stay in the US with a relative (as one family was attempting), or finding a legal way for them to leave the country with their parents.
Instead, it seems the government is rushing to illegally remove these children before the courts can intervene
Delay deporting the non-citizen parent at least until the citizen children have reasonable accomodations to remain in the country? "The plan" isn't sacred. Humans rights are sacred.
The government has a duty to protect its citizens. So in this case, that would mean finding suitable childcare for the citizen child before making them an orphan.
Birthright citizenship is explicitly included in the 14’th amendment of the US constitution. Technically the constitution could be amended again. But if we include wildly controversial constitutional amendments that one of our parties would be completely opposed in the list of possibilities, the conversation will quickly get silly.
> But if we include wildly controversial constitutional amendments that one of our parties would be completely opposed in the list of possibilities, the conversation will quickly get silly.
You're this <> close from becoming a dictatorship, things could become very silly regardless.
If anything, I'd say Trump is just a silly Sulla. Sulla was somewhat benevolent, he retired. But he paved the way for Caesar and Augustus (people who really meant business, especially Augustus).
I mean, I’m worried about the trajectory of the country generally. But, we need to be able to talk about the actual laws and process (this assumes we still have laws and processes).
If the country turns into a dictatorship, then it is just rule by dictatorial fiat. But in that case this whole conversation is sort of pointless because we wouldn’t have democracy and our opinions about how things should be run wouldn’t matter anymore.
No. What the law says is that birthright citizenship does not apply to those *not* subject to US law. Foreign diplomats with diplomatic immunity. It's not the foreign power that matters, it's the lack of the US power.
> 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.
All people in the US are subject to the jurisdiction of the US (other than some very unusual situation like diplomats and, in the past, some Native American tribes).
Can someone who down voted this comment please explain why? Is this because you do not agree with his general stance or because it simplifies and doesn't contribute to the debate?
“End Jus Soli” would require a constitutional amendment and would be universally opposed by at least one party. So, it is bringing the conversation in the direction of ridiculous out-there topics.
And it can cause headaches with people being stateless because neither the country of their parents nor the country of their birth recognizes them. And that's something that's normally prohibited by treaty: you can't take an action that will render someone stateless.
Is that really so? It seems odd because not every country has soil-based birthright citizenship. So, there must be some combinations that will result in a stateless person (although I would expect that this is an exceptional case that is just handled as an exception).
Where? I haven't really heard of many cases like this. Usually the most abuse that happens is someone "forgetting" their citizenship and trying to gain asylum, because they know they can't get citizenship otherwise, anyway.
No, I'm saying that the US government should be able to change the constitution, if its citizens want it. Apparently about 50% of the US population is rabidly anti-immigration.
All this status quo is doing is creating all sort of gray area cruelty. Just be open about it, become anti-immigration, but make it fair. The US is basically the only developed Western country that I know of where you don't even have fixed time frame to become a citizen. In the EU + CANZUK if you live lawfully in a country you become a citizen in N years. The N is well known ahead of time.
Why? Why should someone be a citizen because they were born in a specific country? With jus sanguinis things are much clearer: one of your parents is a citizen, you're a citizen. Your kids are citizens. In perpetuity.
Jus solis is a bit like right of way at American intersections: the person that's been there the longest goes first. Whaaaaaa? What if two cars arrive at the same time? What if 4 arrive at roughly at the same time? What is people can't agree who arrived first? A lot of the rest of the world gives way to the car coming from the right. Which is obvious and basically non-negotiable.
Not sure who downvoted, but simply ending jus solis because authoritarians want to make people's lives miserable is an extreme position with an awful BATNA.
The same happens to US citizens who have/bear children in other countries. Moreover some will do much as assume the children do not have local citizenship but US citizenship despite being born in that non-US country.
I've known children of US citizens who were presumed Americans though having been born in a south American country. Government kicked them all out for being personae non grata Americans --children not excepted.
That’s because, for a while, the USA has been seen as the main exponent (although obviously not the only one) of western ideals such as freedom, democracy, human rights, etc. So yeah it’s logical that people would expect that the “leader of the free world” does not act like some other random country.
Rather a different interpretation of the XIV. It was intended for slaves and the children of slaves (there were few non-British foreigners in the US) at the time. However, over time, it was interpreted to mean anyone not only the descendants of slaves/ex-slaves). That could very well be re-interpreted.
“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.”
This seems pretty clear to me. How else could you interpret it?
The entire interpretation of that amendment turns on this phrase:
>and subject to the jurisdiction thereof
And if you go back and read what the drafters of that amendment stated they meant on the floor of congress, they did not intend it to mean Jus soli. The idea was so ridiculous at the time that no one thought it worth writing it down. Pity. The controlling Supreme Court case spends a lot of time talking about English Common Law and what "subject to the jurisdiction of the King" meant. It is not hard to believe, at all, that the current SCOTUS may have a different interpretation than "anyone who happens to be born across this line on the map is a US citizen and is granted all rights, responsibilities, and privileges thereof".
Having read the Senate debate on the amendment to grant citizenship to what would become the 14th amendment, I can't disagree more.
They were absolutely aware that is what it. Indeed, they stated it outright:
> The proposition before us … relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that
they shall be citizens. … I am in favor of doing so. … We are entirely ready to
accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.
- Senator John Conness (R-CA), May 29, 1866 during Senate debates on citizenship amendment introduced by Senator Jacob Howard (R-MI)
The only real change came when they worried that citizenship would be extended to Indians in tribes we had treaties saying we wouldn't do just that leading to a change that excluded them.
Conness wasn't an author of the amendment, and was an immigration advocate as part of a Machiavellian strategy to lock out the Democrats in Reconstruction-era America. I agree with you, though, there certainly were other opinions on what those words meant, and the actual author doesn't do himself any favors by trying to tread right on the line to ensure the amendment passed. In any case, SCOTUS will eventually weigh in, and probably just settle the question, at least for now. It's a pity that the argument is about just the one phrase, because the arguments about the wisdom of Jus Soli policies are much more interesting.
Do you have more info about what they said they meant?
Certainly that clause has weight. It excludes diplomats, members of occupying armies, and members of Native tribes. But it seems strange to apply it to others, unless you’re also going to say that they have immunity from our laws as well.
It's not that they have "immunity", it's about whether the US Government has jurisdiction over them, meaning they can conscript them in time of war, collect taxes and so on, and that there isn't another foreign power that can do or already does this.
Howard, who introduced the Amendment, said this[1]:
>This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.
>Now, all this amendment provides is, that all persons born in the United States and not subject to some foreign Power—for that, no doubt, is the meaning of the committee who have brought the matter before us—shall be considered as citizens of the United States ... If there are to be citizens of the United States entitled everywhere to the character of citizens of the United States, there should be some certain definition of what citizenship is, what has created the character of citizen as between himself and the United States, and the amendment says citizenship may depend upon birth, and I know of no better way to give rise to citizenship than the fact of birth within the territory of the United States, born of parents who at the time were subject to the authority of the United States.
Doubly funny that he added a line in that speech where he thinks all ambiguity is gone.
Thanks. Dude couldn’t even make his own statements unambiguous. And he can’t seem to make up his mind about whether the “subject to the jurisdiction” clause refers to the child or the parents.
People born in the Germany made up about 3.5% of the US population (1.11 million) in 1860. While they were one of the largest groups, many states/territories had large percentages of other non-British people like California, where 9% of the population was born in China. Then you have territories like New Mexico where most of the population had been born in Mexico.
Regardless, the debates for the 14th Amendment make it absolutely clear they understood they understood a child born to, say, Chinese parents in the US would get citizenship.
Well then it's a good thing historical context matters more than numerical consensus when analyzing why the majority of two continents settled by Europeans in the last 500 years nearly all opted for one broad form of conferring citizenship over another. If you were to redact the name of all 195 countries, but list ten facts about them and draw random names, you could accurately predict which ones will have birthright citizenship just by looking at other properties.
I don't think the lack of documentation is a barrier to deportation. All that matters is that the country they are being deported to agrees to take them. But this has been rather routinely violated by ICE in the past--they are a totally criminal organization. (They would deport people by shoving them into Mexico--never mind if they are actually Mexican or not.)
