Another bad decision that won't stand the test of time. The decision says more about the justices themselves than it does the decision. Voting the "right way" gets positive press attention, invites to the DC social circle, etc. Kavanaugh and Barrett are both attention seeking, weak willed individuals that Roberts plays like puppets. Personally, Trump should not have nominated either of them. And W's nomination and selection of Roberts over Scalia was appalling. Neither a textualist or an originalist could have ruled that way. And using the 14th Amendment as justification is historically disingenuous, as Clarence Thomas pointed out. Birth tourism will thrive.
Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
571–580 of 681 posts
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
Birthright citizenship is one of the best things we have going for us. I see no reason why we should treat people differently depending on whether or not they have an imaginary stamp labeling them as special (IE, as citizens). Birthright citizenship ensures the problem of unequal representation is fixed over time. A self-fixing function, if you will.
I think what you mean to say is that as a result of this ruling the voice of Americans can be diluted over time so that your preferred political outcomes can happen. Not everyone in my country believes that the concept of the nation state is stupid and should be done away with. I understand that there are many who do think this, and I have to live amicably among them, but it doesn't mean that I need to pretend that y…
It does mean you need to pretend that. Reagan has a famous quote about it.
I mean, it's a free country, nobody can make you accept an idea you don't want to. But the nativist ideas you've adopted are not considered by most Americans to be acceptable. If you go around telling people that immigrants aren't real Americans, you will not be accepted even in many conservative circles. Even much of the Trump movement views nativists as useful dupes; the Vice President and Secretary of State, for example, clearly would not welcome your theories that their kin are diluting "the voice of Americans".
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#573Earlier 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
I agree. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the US balkanizes. That might not be a bad thing if it can happen peacefully.
The problem with the US balkanizing is that there's not really any such thing as a 'red state' or a 'blue state'. Every 'red state' has some blue cities, and every 'blue state' has some red rural areas. Pretty sure California has more Republican voters than any state except Texas. So partitioning on state lines doesn't really work. Maybe over time people could migrate, but using South Carolina as an example, the two largest cities in the state would largely have to empty out. The state would cease to function.
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
Members of American Indian tribes were born in the United States after the 14th amendment was passed but it took an act of Congress to make them citizens. The question of jurisdiction is a very real one that isn’t nearly as cut and dry as you’re implying it to be.
You're trying to impute complexity to a thing in order to achieve a goal that is not achievable. The 1866 Congress that debated the amendment understood and intended that Indian tribal nations would not be covered by the clause because they were separate nations not under the jurisdiction of US law. Here's an example of the debate [1] where they discuss it. Far from making your point, examples like this make it obvious that everyone involved in framing the amendment thought deeply about what "jurisdiction" meant, which is why you can't just assign new meaning like "yeah it means parents have to be citizens."
I really urge you to read the original debate. It isn't like the handwritten notes we get from the 1700s; it's typewritten and the Senators are so thoughtful and utterly precise about what they meant. It's ELI12.
[1] https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30867/m1/12...
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
Following the implications of this argument leads to some pretty hairy places. If a person is incapable of reasoning outside of their class/race/gender/etc position, then how is a fair law even possible? Or perhaps the argument implies that people like that constitutional scholar have reached a state of purely detached enlightenment, and thus are exempt from this logic?
> If a person is incapable of reasoning outside of their class/race/gender/etc position, then how is a fair law even possible? An entirely fair law might not be possible, at least as long as people with specific class/race/gender interests overwhelmingly influence it. But a somewhat fair law or a law fairer than another, is. And, at least as I understand it, the scholar doesn't say that nobody is ever "capable of rea…
Also there’s the difference between intention and interpretation. The authors may have been extremely well-intentioned with regards to the fairness of their laws by writing broadly, but interpreting their writing narrowly robs the authors of their intentions. Ironically, originalists may be less fair than the original authors.
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still "subject to the jurisdiction of". US law doesn't currently have a law allowing them to be conscripted, and it would be very ill-advised to do so and it would cause a lot of diplomatic backlash, but it certainly could pass such a law if it chose to.
So people on a work visa are "subject to", specifically because of two criteria (income tax and conscription) which must both hold, at least hypothetically? What if the US passes a constitutional amendment explicitly saying that foreigners on work visas cannot be conscripted, would that, by removing the hypothetical, have the implicit effect of making such people no longer "subject to" its jurisdiction? I think your…
I think this take is overly complex and silly. If you're subject to the laws, that's that. As an exercise, go read the Federal code and put each law that might potentially be applicable to people on a work visa into a pile. I guarantee that pile will be taller than you are by the time you're done. It will certainly be larger than two random examples.
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't have to imagine it. I live there. It's the richest and most powerful country on the planet. I hope you get a chance to live here someday!
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#578Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
We got wrecked in a major land war in the 1800s, just to be pedantic.
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
And some other country might be liking those Founding Fathers concepts' even more. So? Doesn't change the fact that they weren't very good with not letting class/race/gender/etc position influence their policy making. And that's the claim we're discussing whether they've been good at, not whether they came up with some good new concepts like "due process" and "the right to free speech". They had "due process" but the…
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What’s the endgame of your argument here? It reeks of American exceptionalism of the type where its citizenry is not allowed to critically assess the effectiveness of its systems because other systems are somehow worse in some facets. This entire response is whataboutism.
Should disenfranchised Americans simply roll over because there are people more disenfranchised in other places in the world? Are some forms of disenfranchisement more acceptable than others? E.g. as long as we can narrowly interpret the words of the founding fathers (originalism) to be in favor of it?
Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
The jurisdiction clause is there because of diplomats. It's a common thing in other Jus Solis countries, for good reason.
And so we have the whole bench of 9 people guessing and discussing the intention of the lawmakers. Did they indeed mean diplomats when they wrote "subject of the jurisdiction thereof"? If a Martian lands on the US soil and gives birth, will the offspring immediately be "subject of the jurisdiction thereof"? What was the common meaning of the word "jurisdiction" in 1868? This kind of stuff.
Here's part of the Senate debate where they discuss it. It turns out that they were extremely precise about what it meant, and they described the exceptions in great detail. It's even typewritten. The downside: you can't come away from reading this stuff and pretend like there's some legal flexibility in the term. If that's important to you, you probably shouldn't click the link.
[1] https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30867/m1/12...