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Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

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Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#31
post #7

You can be pro/fine with legal immigration (and moderate/non-partisan) and still not think birthright citizenship is a good idea (like I do). Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives. Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things. So y…

Why should I give a shit what 95% of other countries do? 99% of other countries are worse in every way that matters

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#32

Thank God. If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked. The constitution is pretty clear. If you don't like it amend it. If anything we need to expand it to include anyone who gives birth in this country. If you're willing to deal with our horrible maternity care system and help keep up our declining population, you deserve a blue passport.

> If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked. No, that's not how laws work Applying laws retroactively is much less common than a "simple" rule change

[deleted]

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#33
post #7

You can be pro/fine with legal immigration (and moderate/non-partisan) and still not think birthright citizenship is a good idea (like I do). Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives. Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things. So y…

Its a terrible idea to give citizenship to the chidlren of birth tourist. It makes no sense that someone defrauds the US government to get their child citizenship then you do nothing about it.

Is it "defrauding" if someone's just following the rules, though? And, at that, is it worth building your citizenship rules around something incredibly rare? (Estimates seem to think it's something like 15k babies a year.)

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#35

[flagged]

Why is it insane?

Some woman who is 8 months pregnant comes to the US on a tourist visa and gives birth, then goes home with the baby. And then somehow that kid gets automatic US citizenship. And it applies even if the mother is not even legally allowed in the country. And you think that is not insane?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#36
post #7

You can be pro/fine with legal immigration (and moderate/non-partisan) and still not think birthright citizenship is a good idea (like I do). Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives. Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things. So y…

The US has always been a country of immigrants; the Constitution recognizes and enshrines this fact. Amending this rule requires a federal supermajority (66% in House and Senate) or a state majority (66% of state legislatures vote in favor of said amendment). Given how difficult it is to find consensus on even the most banal issue, it's unclear whether there would be sufficient support to ever amend.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#37

Thank God. If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked. The constitution is pretty clear. If you don't like it amend it. If anything we need to expand it to include anyone who gives birth in this country. If you're willing to deal with our horrible maternity care system and help keep up our declining population, you deserve a blue passport.

I can believe that there is a lot of variance in maternal care and obstetrics in the US, but my wife and I had a pretty good experience. Documented here in what detail I could muster in those days: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Pregnancy

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#38

Thank God. If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked. The constitution is pretty clear. If you don't like it amend it. If anything we need to expand it to include anyone who gives birth in this country. If you're willing to deal with our horrible maternity care system and help keep up our declining population, you deserve a blue passport.

[deleted]

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#39
post #10
post #7

You can be pro/fine with legal immigration (and moderate/non-partisan) and still not think birthright citizenship is a good idea (like I do). Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives. Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things. So y…

It's not really a question of what's a good idea. It is in the text of the Constitution, about as plain as it can possibly be. If you want to change it, you have to change the Constitition. Ironically, the same Court members who most often claim the plain text of the Constitution to support their ideas are the ones who put the most effort into finding a tortured reading of the 14th Amendment.

SCOTUS has not had anything remotely close to a plain text reading since the 1930s and probably longer. "Shall not be infringed" was changed to "if an infantry rifle was made after 1986 then magically it can be infringed" and (until about a week ago when it was overturned) "if you smoke a left-handed cigarette actually the second amendment doesn't exist." The 1st amendment protects freedom of speech but yet it's legal to ban appeals to "prurient interest" even though no such exemption is mentioned. "Interstate commerce" has been changed to mean basically "commerce" and interstate is now interpreted as if it was put there for funsies since everything can be construed as affecting something else in the universe even though the historical context makes clear that's not how the text was interpreted by the writers.

Every other amendment including the 1st, 2nd, etc even when explicitly spelled out the courts magically pull something out of their ass to "torture it." Yet the 14th amendment birthright citizenship, who's "history and tradition" was to right the wrongs of slavery, somehow has to be read absolutely in black and white.

Personally I am amenable to the plain text interpretation of the 14th, 1st, and 2nd, but lets not pretend that is the game SCOTUS or even most of government and society is playing. The constitution is referenced more as a religious document by all the above to mean whatever it is they say it means.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#40

Thank God. If only because this would open up people born here to having their citizenship retroactively revoked. The constitution is pretty clear. If you don't like it amend it. If anything we need to expand it to include anyone who gives birth in this country. If you're willing to deal with our horrible maternity care system and help keep up our declining population, you deserve a blue passport.

> our declining population Our what?

The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960624 - February 2026 (1008 comments)

The nuance is ~71% of the world’s population now lives in countries with birth rates below the replacement level needed to maintain population size. US working age population cohort has likely peaked. The future of the developed world is fighting over global skilled workers and young potential immigrants who would settle and start families in your jurisdiction.

Is the U.S. Labor Force Nearing Its Peak? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48726615 - June 2026

The Fertility Rate of Every Country in the World - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/fertility-rate-of-world-pop... - May 17th, 2026

U.S. Total Fertility Rate by State 2007 vs 2025 - https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1qt22ka/oc... - February 2026

The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)

Our World In Data: Population tool: How will populations across the world change in the 21st century? - https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool

("demography is destiny")

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