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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

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are in the process of building a new country little by little. Eventually they will openly dismiss the US constitution. Things are really, really bad. We are pretty much in US‘s Weimar period. The fact all of that was predictable makes it just so frustrating to see it play out in real time

What does this even mean? The decision came out the “right” way today.

Four of the justices dissented on something that by any reasonable reading should have been a unanimous decision. That is a BIG problem because that means that almost half of the Supreme Court are off their rockers.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#492
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Additional citation:

There's No Mystery To America's Fertility Decline - https://ifstudies.org/blog/theres-no-mystery-to-americas-fer... - June 30th, 2026 (“The U.S. fertility decline is shaped by many forces, but the data point to one primary driver: the collapse of childbearing among women in their 20s.”)

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question. Isn't this statement aimed at citizenship tourism or whatever its called? I used to live in a state where some new friends had told us about places that facilitated pregnant women's trips to the US solely for the purpose of staying and giving birth in the US so the child could become citizens. They then head home. I have no idea how prevalent this is.

If people really want to stop this kind of birth citizenship tourism they must vote for people who will pledge to amend the constitution using the proper democratic process. But today's climate is so hostile to any kind of rational discussion about how to change laws. One faction just wants to deny citizenship right now to any people they seem not "american enough" while the other faction cannot possibly entertain an…

I can imagine a compromise that exchanges a path to citizenship for DACA kids for restrictions on birthright citizenship.

What is missing from this debate is the practical side of things. On the one hand, a permanent underclass of non-voting second class citizens is probably not a stable long term equilibrium.

On the other hand, allowing anyone to visit the US to have their baby and automatically receive all the benefits of US citizenship is also not a stable long term equilibrium.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#494
post #226
post #24

The most obvious read of the constitution in the world still being a 6-3 verdict shows the state of the Supreme Court today.

Don't agree that any of these cases are "most obvious" given that it's gone all the way through various appeals courts to the supreme court - and that's the mission of the Supreme Court, to interpret all the various situations for these cases and how they apply constitutionally.

That's not a good characterization. All of he lower courts basically laughed it out of the court room. The fact that the Supreme Court even took the case on is pretty questionable.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] children of diplomats aren't citizens at birth, but U.S. courts have jurisdiction over diplomats for some activities? AIUI, IANAL, US courts and law do not have jurisdiction over diplomats. When a diplomat the 'hosting' government agrees to immunity, so cannot be prosecuted. E.g.: > The collision caused diplomatic tension between British and US officials. [Anne] Sacoolas fled Britain soon after the incident, an…

Incorrect: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/diplomatic_immunity U.S. courts do have jurisdiction over diplomats for certain things, such as suits related to commercial activities.

Is the child of a diplomat a US citizen if they are born during a diplomat’s commercial activities?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#496
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?

Think two steps ahead, people aren't born right out of the sky. It encourages people to illegally enter for their citizenship baby and the parents remain illegal until ~21 years later when they can have the kid sponsor them. In the meantime the parents get free WIC even if they're illegal.

Is that sufficient reason to overturn a constitutional amendment by executive order?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#497
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't agree that any of these cases are "most obvious" given that it's gone all the way through various appeals courts to the supreme court - and that's the mission of the Supreme Court, to interpret all the various situations for these cases and how they apply constitutionally.

Here is the full text of the relevant section of the 14th: > 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,…

What in the dissenting opinions definition of jurisdiction did you disagree with?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#498
post #390

This particular Supreme Court is out of control. The Roberts court will (IMHO) go down in history in the same cateogry as the Taney court that gave us such decisions as Dred Scott. Supreme Court justices have always been political actors, not some high-minded academics that come down from their ivory tower to hand down missives every now and again (as some imagine). But this is a step beyond anything we've seen in a…

Hard to address everything wrong you wrote, but in particular major questions doctrine protects us from presidential overreach. It has been key in stopping some of Trump’s foolish policies like tariffs. So that is hardly something we should be criticizing. Biden’s student loan forgiveness was similarly illegal executive overreach. These sorts of major things should be passed by congress.

Yes and no. The tariffs decision was fractured. There were really two prats. The first was that a statutory interpretation of IEEPA didn't give the President the power to tax. That authority lies with Congress. The MQD, to me at least, felt shoe-horned in tehre, kind of to justify its existence. But a statutory interpretation was sufficient to rebuke the President's authority so why the rest? It feels like the court is saying "see? we use this on Trump too. We're not biased".

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#499
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…

Imagine being 18 and suddenly discovering you have to prove the citizenship status of a parent you've never met or else you'll be deported to a country you've never been to and who's language you don't speak

Imagine a country extending citizenship to a whole group of people for no reason other than the location of their birth, and then allowing said people to access the benefits of citizenship, including the ability to receive welfare benefits, vote, and run for office.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We weren't, if we were this conversation couldn't get here. If we were you couldn't play the militia fuck fuck game, since the right to keep and bear arms is ascribed to the people and not the militia. The answer is easy in the plain-text case, whether you are associated with the militia is moot, as the plain text unambiguously says the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It's only in the non plaintext case ca…

From Wikipedia: > Until the late 20th century, there was little scholarly commentary of the Second Amendment. In the latter half of the 20th century, there was considerable debate over whether the Second Amendment protected an individual right or a collective right. The debate centered on whether the prefatory clause ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State") declared the amendment's…

Until the 1930s you could mail a machine gun straight to your door with no scrutiny. What point was there in arguing an individual right in the early 20th century when you could mail order a machine gun or TNT with no background check straight to your personal collection and people were literally inventing the precursor to the M1 Carbine in prison with the blessing of the warden. If you want to go back further to the 19th century, privately owned warships with cannons were owned, gattling guns, and everything under the sun by individuals (the main laws, were on storage of explosives/powder -- interestingly even up to this very day it's legal to possess but not freely store high explosives without any license).

You can point out certain collective broad groups like blacks didn't get a collective nor individual legal access to arms, but given how racist the courts and "scholarly" academic institutions were at that time it's no surprise they spent little time covering it and found little representation in the legal system and little scholarly commentary.

It was after the passage of the NFA and the GCA, the main gun control acts of the US, which happened in the mid 20th century, where suddenly all these militia fuck fuck games started to enter the chat (at one point, SCOTUS claiming short-barrel shotguns taxed by the NFA not being protected because the military didn't use them -- they were wrong but the defendant was a dead guy with no representation so it was a poisoned appeal case to set precedent and no one was there to show the light infantry at the time were actively using them).

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