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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

#91

Post by Windchaser »

arpinum wrote: post #70
blktiger wrote: post #13

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.

> 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.

Well, no, but almost everyone inside US borders is subject to US laws. The exceptions are rare: people in foreign embassies (which is "foreign soil"), invading armies, and indigenous tribes on tribal land.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#92

Post by neuronexmachina »

jjallen wrote: 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…

> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship

The map of which countries have jus soli is pretty interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

>Jus soli is the predominant rule in the Americas; explanations for this geographical phenomenon include the establishment of lenient laws by past European colonial powers to entice immigrants from the Old World and displace native populations in the New World, along with the emergence of successful wars of independence movements that widened the definition and granting of citizenship, as a prerequisite to the abolishment of slavery since the 19th century.[5]

>There are 35 countries that provide citizenship unconditionally to anyone born within their national borders.

>

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#93

Post by toomuchtodo »

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.

A material component of reduction in the US fertility rate has been avoided teen (15-19 cohort) pregnancies. ~40% of pregnancies both in the US and internationally, annually, are unintended (per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN, respectively).

Teen birth rates hit another historical low in 2025, CDC says - https://www.npr.org/2026/04/09/nx-s1-5777587/teen-birth-rate... - April 9th, 2026

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#94

Post by qalmakka »

arpinum wrote: post #75
qalmakka wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of crazy. The text of the amendment is as literal as it gets. If this had failed it would have basically meant emptying Congress of all of its powers, because now the executive can just pick whatever interpretation they deem fit to their goals and run with it. The rule of courts of law is to interpret the law, not to pick new creative meanings out of them. That's the role of the legislative power - other…

"subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is not a clear statement.

It has been clear to every single human being reading it for hundreds of years. It was never up to debate until some person of this administration decided to go and question the meaning of "jurisdiction thereof". Also saying that a foreign-born person isn't subject to the jurisdiction of the country they find themselves in opens a massive can of worms - like, if the State doesn't have jurisdiction over foreign nationals, does it imply it's not legally allowed to arrest them for instance? Two can play the same game and find infinite loopholes even in the clearest of texts.

This goes beyond the value of citizenship by birth, which I'm neither in favour nor against (personally I think that just sanguinis is nonsensical, but so is to automatically give citizenship even to accidental passer-bys), it's all about whether the law still carries any "evident" meaning or whether it can be spun around depending on political necessity, which is bad

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#95

Post by 5upplied_demand »

jjallen wrote: 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…

> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives.

I typically find that the people using this logic don't seem to apply it to laws like universal healthcare, parental leave, or paid-time off. The lack of those benefits creates perverse incentives to already living citizens, not hypothetical future citizens. Why not focus on them?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#96

Post by readthenotes1 »

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.

The supreme Court ruled that South Carolina could not secede from the Union because the Constitution was merely a continuation of the agreements under the articles of confederation even though all states had to withdraw from the confederation to get into the union.

After that bit of logic, nothing the supreme Court decides would surprise me

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#97

Post by wang_li »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #76
jfengel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought so too. Then I read the arguments about the passage of the amendment. The people passing clearly stated that, say, the children of ambassadors wouldn't be eligible. It was mainly aimed at clearing up the questions about the various Native Americans who may have considered themselves independent. It wasn't about opening the doors to anyone.

It was about slaves. Native Americans didn't get birthright citizenship until the Native American Citizenship Act of 1924.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#98

Post by mothballed »

ventana wrote: post #83
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 regul…

This is why American Samoans aren't citizens. They aren't subject to the full jurisdiction of the USA even though they are born in the United States.

Yet you rarely find anyone giving a shit about the American Samoans, you never hear about it.

----- re: below due to throttling---------

>American Samoans aren't citizens because American Samoa is a territory, not a state. Puerto Rico has a special status that was extended to it to grant its residents citizenship – this isn't a status that's automatically granted to all territories, it requires Federal approval which AS has never formally pushed for.

Unless you falsely believe PR or AS are not part of the United States, you are just agreeing with me with extra words regarding the jurisdictional differences. The only option for denying birthright citizenship would be not born in United States, or not subject to jurisdiction thereof.

See this excellent prior comment[] on why the difference between PR and AS is jurisdiction and not whether it is part of the US.

>This seems entirely subjective.

I'm not going to do a formal academic study with you, it's plainly obvious as of late you see far more headlines on hackernews (a search shows a single HN topic on AS citizenship in the history of HN, but full page+ of search results on the birthright citizenship issue at hand) and elsewhere regarding the birthright citizenship issue at hand and far more rarely the fact American Samoans don't get it.

[] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16700413

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#99

Post by Windchaser »

qalmakka wrote: post #42
returningfory2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To be fair a lot of it had also to do with the sheer immense amount of vast, mostly unused ,fertile land available in north America. I sincerely doubt the American experiment would have worked this well if they had rowdy neighbours and infighting due to resource constraints. For almost 200 years the solution to most things in the USA was to get a chunk of either their people or immigrant to move to the neck of the wo…

Not getting wrecked in major land wars during the 1800s and 1900s also helped

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#100

Post by sheept »

crote wrote: post #73
nonethewiser wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, but it leads to allowing for the possibility of interpreting "..the right to bear arms.." as "you are allowed to own the limbs of an Ursus arctos ". There's plenty in the US constitution which is vaguely worded, but you have to twist its words an awful lot to deny birthright citizenship.

Yes, and they can do that if they wanted to. The Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution.
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