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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

#81

Post by Windchaser »

ihsw wrote: post #20
999900000999 wrote: post #4

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.

The birth rate correlates inversely with female earnings growth and correspondingly with male earnings growth; or, more to the point, declining birth rates correlates with the advancement of feminism (including birth rates approaching and then reaching zero.) This is an observation and not a judgement. Take what you will with this information.

It makes sense to me. When women have more choices, they tend to put off having kids or they raise their standards - for their economic situation before kids, for partners, etc.

I think this is good; insofar as women have children, it should be because they want to, not because they're pushed into it.

I'll say - it also wouldn't kill us to have slightly fewer people on the planet. We're already taxing much of our systems/ecosystems past their breaking points. Smarter people than me, entire groups of scientists, are saying that what we're doing now is badly unsustainable and we're heading for trouble.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#82

Post by root_axis »

Chu4eeno wrote: post #27
root_axis wrote: post #12

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.

This doesn't seem like a major problem. Immigration officials are already sensitive to birth-tourism and have had discretion to deny entry to obviously pregnant tourists even long before Trump.

Beyond that, if you're a billionaire you can just fast track a path to citizenship with a gold card.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#83

Post by ventana »

999900000999 wrote: post #4

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.

The U.S. Constitution is very far from being clear. The whole purpose of the Supreme Court is to explain the meaning of what is written in the Constitution; there are 9 justices in the court and they often disagree on that.

Just look at the second amendment:

  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
  the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The "well regulated militia" phrase caused at least two very different opinions: United States v. Miller [1] in 1939 and District of Columbia v. Heller [2] in 2008, with very different results.

Just as the second amendment has this "militia" phrase that provokes arguments, the fourteenth amendment starts with

  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.
and the phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is vague enough to trigger discussions about whether it applies to illegal immigrants or not.

Natural language is just bad in expressing rules.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller#Decisi...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller...

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#84

Post by wang_li »

blktiger wrote: post #13
ryandrake wrote: post #6

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.

This trivial reading of the constitution doesn't align with the reality. Two simple exceptions and a third not so simple are children of diplomats, children of invading armies, and native americans, who required an act of congress to give citizenship at birth.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#85

Post by consensus1 »

ryandrake wrote: post #62
consensus1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having a difficult and selective immigration process that rejects the vast majority of applicants is not a problem. It is exactly how an immigration system should work. We want the best.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#86

Post by Xeamek »

consensus1 wrote: post #77
Xeamek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You are wrong about that. If an illegal crosses while pregnant, gets detained, and then gives birth the day after while in detention, that baby is 100% a US citizen.

if baby is 100% US citizen then how is that an 'illegal immigrant'? Again, you may call them 'unwanted', and you have right to such opinion. But law is what is written, if they got citizenship then they aren't illegal

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#87

Post by TimorousBestie »

newaccount670 wrote: post #9

[flagged]

I’m curious why you believe an amendment will help your situation.

This case (placed alongside many others in recent memory) demonstrates that no matter how clear and unequivocal a legal text you write, the textualists can find a way to overturn it.

So what specific legal text for this amendment of yours do you believe is immune from that degree of sophistry?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#88

Post by root_axis »

consensus1 wrote: post #35
root_axis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

An 8 months pregnant woman would typically be denied entry during immigration processing. It doesn't seem like a big deal.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#89

Post by sheept »

mritterhoff wrote: post #43
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our declining population Our what?

I suspect OP mean declining fertility rate. USA population is still increasing, but is slowing down, and will sharply drop if the fertility rate remains below replacement of ~2 children per woman.

I believe OP is referring to how immigration is the only known working solution to a decreasing population.

The US fertility rate is already 1.6 births per woman[0], and the population is only not decreasing because it still receives far more immigration than, say, Japan or South Korea.

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr038.pdf

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