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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

#61

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

Either laws work the way they're written and 4 members of the court disagree or they work the way the Supreme Court says they work and a worse ruling could threaten those citizens.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: There are ~30ish countries that provide citizenship to anyone born within their national borders (many with restrictions, for whatever that may mean). Largely, this covers a spotting of countries across the globe, but is almost universally true within the Americas.

And how many of those countries have an illegal immigration problem? I bet that most of them would quickly remove that loophole if people actually started to exploit it.

Root cause it. The USA does not have an illegal immigration problem. It has a "huge, slow immigration bureaucracy" problem that makes the legal path so slow and difficult that people are incentivized to gamble on illegal paths.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: There are ~30ish countries that provide citizenship to anyone born within their national borders (many with restrictions, for whatever that may mean). Largely, this covers a spotting of countries across the globe, but is almost universally true within the Americas.

And how many of those countries have an illegal immigration problem? I bet that most of them would quickly remove that loophole if people actually started to exploit it.

Most countries with a standard of living that even barely better than their neighbors have an immigration problem. There is a whole continent call Europe that is fighting off migrates and last I checked, birthright citizenship is not a thing there.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#64
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…

Given the US is one of the most (the most?) successful countries in recent human history, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the 95% be looking at the US and seeing what to copy?

Define successful?

(You'll probably want to avoid metrics like happiness indices and life expectancy though)

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says. If you don't like it you need to go through the amendment process.

>I should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says Thats a tautology. “What the constitution says” is the thing in question.

The language couldn't be any clearer. The fact that it was questioned by people with a stated motive doesn't prove otherwise.

"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."

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it insane?

I'm not him, but it creates some perverse incentives (like chinese billionaires who pay american surrogates to get implanted with dozens of their kids who get american citizenship). https://fortune.com/article/chinese-billionaire-xu-bo-father... might be an outlier, but it's still weird, especially since the US is the only country that has this.

> especially since the US is the only country that has this.

Except it's not.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/31/us-style-...

It's a minority of countries that have rules like the US, but the US is not unique in this regard and there's no reason to keep repeating that lie.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#67
post #55
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…

As a non-US citizen, birthright citizenship has always struck me as strangely unique to America - in my mind it comes from a time when it was actively trying to populate the continent (something not a lot of countries have wanted to do, I guess). Roll forward a few hundred years and the context has changed, so it seems reasonable that the law should too? But I guess it shouldn't be surprising that this is no bueno fo…

Birthright citizenship is not unique to the United States, it’s common to certain kinds of former colonies.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: There are ~30ish countries that provide citizenship to anyone born within their national borders (many with restrictions, for whatever that may mean). Largely, this covers a spotting of countries across the globe, but is almost universally true within the Americas.

And how many of those countries have an illegal immigration problem? I bet that most of them would quickly remove that loophole if people actually started to exploit it.

People who abuse birthright citizenships are, by definitions, not illegal immigrants. But even if you count all of them as 'unwanted' immigrants - how many % of total immigration to the US is result of those birthright laws?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#70

5-4 though, yikes! This shouldn't have even been close. With an impassioned 91 page dissent by Thomas. What a chode.

I should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says. If you don't like it you need to go through the amendment process.

> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ...

It's the second part that is in dispute and is not clear from the constitution's text what exactly it means and who it excludes. And yes, it has always excluded some people born within the borders, it is not a meaningless statement.

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