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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 coun

by jjallen 3mo ago

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 yes, let's amend the constitution. It's been a while and we do it on average every ten years or so. I have personally not ever been involved in one.

goatlover 3mo ago
Why do you think it's not a good idea?
jfengel 3mo ago
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.
- nonethewiser 3mo ago
  Please re read his comment. He’s saying the constitution should be amended.
  - danorama 3mo ago
    I think it was edited to add that?
    - jjallen 3mo ago
      No, it wasn't. I had it in there from the get go. I did not edit my comment for any reason, I don't think at least. Like I said in the original comment, you can be moderate/non-partisan and think this is a bad idea. You can think Trump's an idiot and still think birthright citizenship is a bad idea. That's all.
- mothballed 3mo ago
  SCOTUS has not had anything remotely close to a plain text reading since the 1930s and probably longer. "Shall not be infringed" was changed to "if an infantry rifle was made after 1986 then magically it can be infringed" and (until about a week ago when it was overturned) "if you smoke a left-handed cigarette actually the second amendment doesn't exist." The 1st amendment protects freedom of speech but yet it's legal to ban appeals to "prurient interest" even though no such exemption is mentioned. "Interstate commerce" has been changed to mean basically "commerce" and interstate is now interpreted as if it was put there for funsies since everything can be construed as affecting something else in the universe even though the historical context makes clear that's not how the text was interpreted by the writers. Every other amendment including the 1st, 2nd, etc even when explicitly spelled out the courts magically pull something out of their ass to "torture it." Yet the 14th amendment birthright citizenship, who's "history and tradition" was to right the wrongs of slavery, somehow has to be read absolutely in black and white. Personally I am amenable to the plain text interpretation of the 14th, 1st, and 2nd, but lets not pretend that is the game SCOTUS or even most of government and society is playing. The constitution is referenced more as a religious document by all the above to mean whatever it is they say it means.
  - archagon 3mo ago
    An aside, but it’s a bit funny to focus on the plain-text reading of “shall not be infringed” and not “a well-regulated militia.”
    - mothballed 3mo ago
      Give me a plain-text explanation as to why a well-regulated militia can be infringed from having a 1987 select fire infantry rifle but not a 1985 one, both of which are probably the most bread and butter arms you could possibly consider as part of a well-regulated militia. (This despite the plain-text ascribes the right to "people" not the militia, and in any case US code defines virtually every able bodied citizen male as part of the militia). The NFA determinations by SCOTUS don't make sense even if the amendment said it was the militia's right rather than the people's.
- xhkkffbf 3mo ago
  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.
  - wang_li 3mo ago
    It was about slaves. Native Americans didn't get birthright citizenship until the Native American Citizenship Act of 1924.
    - jkachmar 3mo ago
      it was not (solely) about slaves; this was debated in Congress during the process of drafting the amendment and resoundingly put down by contemporary legislators. from Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion: > Senator Edgar Cowan, for example, argued that German immigrants’ children born in Pennsylvania should be citizens, but Chinese immigrants’ children should not—because Germans and Chinese were different. In response, Senator Trumbull emphasized that the law he had drafted drew no such distinctions. Undeterred, Senator Cowan would warn again—this time during debates on the Fourteenth Amendment—that the Citizenship Clause would let Chinese immigrants “overrun” California and “double or treble the population” of that State. Senator John Conness of California, where anti-Chinese sentiment was arguably most pronounced, responded that “the children begotten of Chinese parents in California . . . shall be citizens.” In fact, he said, the Civil Rights Act had already declared “that the children of all parentage whatever . . . should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States.” No Senator rose to agree with Senator Cowan or dispute what Senator Conness had said. And no Senator said what the principal dissent says today: that the text at issue conferred citizenship only on freed Blacks and those in analogous situations. - - - further down, Justice Jackson cites the most forthright example of how blisteringly ahistorical the Republican party’s arguments are on this topic: > During the ratification debates, Senator Cowan took aim at the Roma people too, characterizing them as undeserving of birthright citizenship because they “wander[ed] in gangs,” “infest[ed] society,” and “impos[ed] upon the simple and weak everywhere.” And again, Senator Conness dismissed Senator Cowan’s prejudices: “The only invasion of Pennsylvania within my recollection was an invasion very much worse and more disastrous to the State, and more to be feared and more feared, than that of Gypsies. It was an invasion of rebels [at Gettysburg].”
Supermancho 3mo ago
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.
- consensus1 3mo ago
  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.
  - ryandrake 3mo ago
    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.
    - consensus1 3mo ago
      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.
      - Windchaser 3mo ago
        I'm personally happy to welcome anyone who's willing to come, work hard, pay taxes, and support democratic ideals. This is how most of our ancestors got here, and it seems fair to me that we continue to extend that offer to other would-be immigrants. Worth noting that the economic literature also shows that this is firmly in our best interests, and immigrants and their children more than pay their way in future taxes and future entrepreneurship. The US didn't even have a particularly selective immigration process for the first century. It was only after a big influx of Chinese immigrants (and a corresponding backlash) that we enacted our first immigration controls, limiting how many immigrants could come from a given country each year. The aptly-named "Chinese Exclusion Act" of 1882.
nonethewiser 3mo ago
Its a terrible idea to give citizenship to the chidlren of birth tourist. It makes no sense that someone defrauds the US government to get their child citizenship then you do nothing about it.
- kemayo 3mo ago
  Is it "defrauding" if someone's just following the rules, though? And, at that, is it worth building your citizenship rules around something incredibly rare? (Estimates seem to think it's something like 15k babies a year.)
returningfory2 3mo ago
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?
- qalmakka 3mo ago
  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 woods to find fortune
  - Windchaser 3mo ago
    Not getting wrecked in major land wars during the 1800s and 1900s also helped
    - matthewdgreen 3mo ago
      We got wrecked in a major land war in the 1800s, just to be pedantic.
  - returningfory2 3mo ago
    But the success hasn't ended since the unused land became taken; in fact, the US became a superpower after the westward expansion era. My point is that looking at conditions today, the US still continues to succeed (by some definition of success) and other countries should try to emulate the aspects of the country that leads to that success. IMO one of the big factors is how well immigrants assimilate in the country, and birthright citizenship is a part of that. I do agree with you that US success in the 19th century was due to many factors that are not relevant today.
  - insane_dreamer 3mo ago
    > sheer immense amount of vast, mostly unused ,fertile land available in north America it was not "available", it only became "available" after we killed off nearly all the inhabitants and stole their land
voakbasda 3mo ago
A belief held by the majority does not make it better simply for that fact. Not that long ago, the majority view was that slavery was a great thing, so I think you should see that argument falls fairly flat. Offering birthright citizenship makes the US better than 95% of the other countries. Not worse.
- ImJamal 3mo ago
  > Not that long ago, the majority view was that slavery was a great thing A bit of a tangent, but is that actually the case? The highest estimate I have seen puts slave ownership at 5% of the population while the lowest puts it at 1%. Obviously just because somebody doesn't own slaves doesn't mean they didn't support the system. There could be economic or legal reasons they couldn't own a slave. I am just not sure that it was actually a majority view at any point in time in the US.
  - recursivecaveat 3mo ago
    People are pretty expensive (they're literally worth a lifetime of free labor). 1 slave would've been like 3 complete years income for an average free white southerner to purchase, plus ongoing expenses obviously. So they basically end up in the hands of upper class people who have a steady need for lots of manual labor. Doesn't mean that everyone else around was not benefiting from the economic surplus, or was not supportive of the institution.
- denismenace 3mo ago
  > Offering birthright citizenship makes the US better than 95% of the other countries. Not worse. No arguments why its better, just stating it as if its fact. Most countries do not have it because it creates many preverse incentives (such as anchor babies). This especially in countries which are targets of immigration (such as the US).
jobs_throwaway 3mo ago
Why should I give a shit what 95% of other countries do? 99% of other countries are worse in every way that matters
- stackbutterflow 3mo ago
  There's about 193 countries in the world, your number would mean there's less than two countries that are better in every way that matters. I can name ten countries off the top of my head that are better in every way that matters to me. The USA ranks near the bottom of developed countries in every metric but the metrics related to money.
  - zeroonetwothree 3mo ago
    US is 23rd in happiness globally which is far from the bottom. For example UK, France, and Italy all rank lower. So your claim is wrong.
glitchc 3mo ago
The US has always been a country of immigrants; the Constitution recognizes and enshrines this fact. Amending this rule requires a federal supermajority (66% in House and Senate) or a state majority (66% of state legislatures vote in favor of said amendment). Given how difficult it is to find consensus on even the most banal issue, it's unclear whether there would be sufficient support to ever amend.
- tacticalturtle 3mo ago
  > Amending this rule requires a federal supermajority (66% in House and Senate) or a state majority (66% of state legislatures vote in favor of said amendment). This is actually just the first step - to propose an amendment. To ratify it requires 3/4 of the state legislatures (or state “conventions”) to vote in favor. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution
kdheiwns 3mo ago
Constitutional amendments are generally made with the purpose of granting rights to the people, not taking them away. The US once made the mistake of making an amendment to take away rights (banning alcohol), but then another amendment restored the right to get drunk.
arjie 3mo ago
I, for one, believe in American exceptionalism. This country is different in many ways and its success is due to that difference. I don't think that the US should actively aim to "revert to the mean".
Ar-Curunir 3mo ago
The US is unlike most other countries in that it is built on the recent genocide of the native population, with ~most of the current population being immigrants in the last 400 years. Under what moral rules do genocidaires get citizenship but not, say, refugees?
greggoB 3mo ago
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 for SCOTUS, which has an infinite hard-on for Originalism [0] - I certainly can't imagine the conservative justices are ruling based on humanitarian grounds. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism
- TimorousBestie 3mo ago
  Birthright citizenship is not unique to the United States, it’s common to certain kinds of former colonies.
- graemep 3mo ago
  Most of the Americas for just that reason - and because the countries immigrants came from did not want their kids to have citizen ship and the right to come back.
- Windchaser 3mo ago
  I mean, it tracks with "no taxation without representation". Getting rid of birthright citizenship has the chance to create a separate *multi-generational* class of people that aren't given the same rights in society.
- eesmith 3mo ago
  Most countries in North and South America have unconditional birthright citizenship for persons born in the country. I take it you are not British? The British Empire had birthright citizenship, and up until 1948 (except for Ireland) citizens of all Commonwealth countries were simply British subjects. Afterward it was possible to be, for example, a Canadian citizen, but it was still the case that "Prior to the [the British Nationality Act 1981] coming into force, any person born in the United Kingdom or a colony (with limited exceptions such as children of diplomats and enemy aliens) was entitled to [Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies] status" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_Act_1981 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_Act_1981
jfengel 3mo ago
We don't really amend the Constitution every ten years. We got 10 all at once, immediately after the Constitution was written. They were amendments only because there was debate about whether including them would deprive people of even more rights by omission. Of the remaining ones, two cancel each other out, and several others (including the most recent) are trivial. The Constitution has not been meaningfully amended in half a century, and it seems wildly unlikely that it ever can be.
neuronexmachina 3mo ago
> 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 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. >
5upplied_demand 3mo ago
> 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?
rchaud 3mo ago
95% of countries weren't formed by settling on somebody else's land and excluding the original inhabitants from citizenship for several hundred years. The American project is what it is because of millions of migrants who settled there for the perverse incentives of free land via the Homestead Act.
nikanj 3mo ago
Do you have US citizenship? How did you acquire it? If you inherited it from your parents, how did they acquire it? Usually strong opponents to birthright citizenship are just a few generations removed from someone who got theirs via birthright.
russdill 3mo ago
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
- pixel_popping 3mo ago
  There is no problem having mechanisms in place for edge cases where the child has been abandoned, parents both dead and so-on.
  - russdill 3mo ago
    I appreciate that you can look at the current political climate and imagine that such edge cases would be handled in a compassionate way.
  - throwawalien 3mo ago
    yes because DACA recipients do not live in fear of conservatives trying to remove them from their homes. (this)[https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/during-voting-marathon-to-greenlight-trumps-mass-deportation-campaign-senate-republicans-reject-durbins-amendment-to-protect-daca-recipients https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/during...] was literally 3 weeks ago
- anthonypasq 3mo ago
  i dont agree with the person you are responding to, but theres a difference between not being a citizen and being deported.
  - cosmicgadget 3mo ago
    This sounds dangerously apartheidy.
- MisterMower 3mo ago
  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.
triceratops 3mo ago
> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. Closer to 82% actually, depending on how you count countries. Almost every country in the Western hemisphere has it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
verdverm 3mo ago
> It creates perverse incentives Perhaps advantageous, America has been the product of these incentives and still sits atop the world on most hegemon metrics. It amazes me how many people complain about the post-WW2 world order America built and benefits from more than any other country.
sanderjd 3mo ago
This has nothing to do with whether it is a good idea. The question is whether the 14th amendment plainly says that this is the law of the land in the US, which it plainly does. That three Justices chose to attempt to gaslight us about this is a disgrace. I'll never trust their judgement again.
nojito 3mo ago
>It creates perverse incentives. It also helped vault America into being the wealthiest country in the world.
insane_dreamer 3mo ago
> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. most of the countries in the Americas do > let's amend the constitution go ahead and give it a try. I'd start with getting rid of the 2nd Amendment, then we can talk about the 14th.
danny_codes 3mo ago
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.
- remarkEon 3mo ago
  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 your ideas are good for me and my kin.
  - SpicyLemonZest 3mo ago
    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".
    - remarkEon 3mo ago
      You are wrong. My ideas aren't "nativist", they are the mean feeling on this subject for 250 years in this country. It has taken a tremendous amount of effort to convince people that things like "borders", "state sovereignty", and "being discerning about who you let into the country" is bad, evil even. That's why you think you can throw around the word "nativist" as a pejorative. I don't like Ronald Reagan for many reasons, and I don't know which quote you are referring to (though I can venture a guess), so I'm not sure what the point of that appeal is. Like I said, if you think that it's good to dilute the voice of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations by pretending that people who got here 15 minutes ago have the same values that's fine. But you won't get me to agree with you. If you want the country to be more left wing and increasing immigration gets you closer to that goal, just say that, it's cleaner.
Breza 3mo ago
The United States is different from 95% of countries. We're the place you are supposed to flee to when those other countries oppress you. That's just not the history of a place like Italy or Japan. My great great grandparents left Quebec in search of a place where they could earn enough money to make it. They immigrated to America. They lived in communities of other Quebec emigrants and spoke French their whole lives. They never pursued American citizenship. Without birthright citizenship, would my great grandma have been American? OK then what about my grandpa? What about me? I'm not sure if any of my immigrant ancestors formally pursued American citizenship.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]

by jjallen 3mo ago

goatlover 3mo ago

Why do you think it's not a good idea?

jfengel 3mo ago

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.

nonethewiser 3mo ago
Please re read his comment. He’s saying the constitution should be amended.
- danorama 3mo ago
  I think it was edited to add that?
  - jjallen 3mo ago
    No, it wasn't. I had it in there from the get go. I did not edit my comment for any reason, I don't think at least. Like I said in the original comment, you can be moderate/non-partisan and think this is a bad idea. You can think Trump's an idiot and still think birthright citizenship is a bad idea. That's all.
mothballed 3mo ago
SCOTUS has not had anything remotely close to a plain text reading since the 1930s and probably longer. "Shall not be infringed" was changed to "if an infantry rifle was made after 1986 then magically it can be infringed" and (until about a week ago when it was overturned) "if you smoke a left-handed cigarette actually the second amendment doesn't exist." The 1st amendment protects freedom of speech but yet it's legal to ban appeals to "prurient interest" even though no such exemption is mentioned. "Interstate commerce" has been changed to mean basically "commerce" and interstate is now interpreted as if it was put there for funsies since everything can be construed as affecting something else in the universe even though the historical context makes clear that's not how the text was interpreted by the writers. Every other amendment including the 1st, 2nd, etc even when explicitly spelled out the courts magically pull something out of their ass to "torture it." Yet the 14th amendment birthright citizenship, who's "history and tradition" was to right the wrongs of slavery, somehow has to be read absolutely in black and white. Personally I am amenable to the plain text interpretation of the 14th, 1st, and 2nd, but lets not pretend that is the game SCOTUS or even most of government and society is playing. The constitution is referenced more as a religious document by all the above to mean whatever it is they say it means.
- archagon 3mo ago
  An aside, but it’s a bit funny to focus on the plain-text reading of “shall not be infringed” and not “a well-regulated militia.”
  - mothballed 3mo ago
    Give me a plain-text explanation as to why a well-regulated militia can be infringed from having a 1987 select fire infantry rifle but not a 1985 one, both of which are probably the most bread and butter arms you could possibly consider as part of a well-regulated militia. (This despite the plain-text ascribes the right to "people" not the militia, and in any case US code defines virtually every able bodied citizen male as part of the militia). The NFA determinations by SCOTUS don't make sense even if the amendment said it was the militia's right rather than the people's.
xhkkffbf 3mo ago
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.
- wang_li 3mo ago
  It was about slaves. Native Americans didn't get birthright citizenship until the Native American Citizenship Act of 1924.
  - jkachmar 3mo ago
    it was not (solely) about slaves; this was debated in Congress during the process of drafting the amendment and resoundingly put down by contemporary legislators. from Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion: > Senator Edgar Cowan, for example, argued that German immigrants’ children born in Pennsylvania should be citizens, but Chinese immigrants’ children should not—because Germans and Chinese were different. In response, Senator Trumbull emphasized that the law he had drafted drew no such distinctions. Undeterred, Senator Cowan would warn again—this time during debates on the Fourteenth Amendment—that the Citizenship Clause would let Chinese immigrants “overrun” California and “double or treble the population” of that State. Senator John Conness of California, where anti-Chinese sentiment was arguably most pronounced, responded that “the children begotten of Chinese parents in California . . . shall be citizens.” In fact, he said, the Civil Rights Act had already declared “that the children of all parentage whatever . . . should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States.” No Senator rose to agree with Senator Cowan or dispute what Senator Conness had said. And no Senator said what the principal dissent says today: that the text at issue conferred citizenship only on freed Blacks and those in analogous situations. - - - further down, Justice Jackson cites the most forthright example of how blisteringly ahistorical the Republican party’s arguments are on this topic: > During the ratification debates, Senator Cowan took aim at the Roma people too, characterizing them as undeserving of birthright citizenship because they “wander[ed] in gangs,” “infest[ed] society,” and “impos[ed] upon the simple and weak everywhere.” And again, Senator Conness dismissed Senator Cowan’s prejudices: “The only invasion of Pennsylvania within my recollection was an invasion very much worse and more disastrous to the State, and more to be feared and more feared, than that of Gypsies. It was an invasion of rebels [at Gettysburg].”

Supermancho 3mo ago

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.

consensus1 3mo ago
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.
- ryandrake 3mo ago
  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.
  - consensus1 3mo ago
    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.
    - Windchaser 3mo ago
      I'm personally happy to welcome anyone who's willing to come, work hard, pay taxes, and support democratic ideals. This is how most of our ancestors got here, and it seems fair to me that we continue to extend that offer to other would-be immigrants. Worth noting that the economic literature also shows that this is firmly in our best interests, and immigrants and their children more than pay their way in future taxes and future entrepreneurship. The US didn't even have a particularly selective immigration process for the first century. It was only after a big influx of Chinese immigrants (and a corresponding backlash) that we enacted our first immigration controls, limiting how many immigrants could come from a given country each year. The aptly-named "Chinese Exclusion Act" of 1882.

nonethewiser 3mo ago

Its a terrible idea to give citizenship to the chidlren of birth tourist. It makes no sense that someone defrauds the US government to get their child citizenship then you do nothing about it.

kemayo 3mo ago
Is it "defrauding" if someone's just following the rules, though? And, at that, is it worth building your citizenship rules around something incredibly rare? (Estimates seem to think it's something like 15k babies a year.)

returningfory2 3mo ago

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?

qalmakka 3mo ago
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 woods to find fortune
- Windchaser 3mo ago
  Not getting wrecked in major land wars during the 1800s and 1900s also helped
  - matthewdgreen 3mo ago
    We got wrecked in a major land war in the 1800s, just to be pedantic.
- returningfory2 3mo ago
  But the success hasn't ended since the unused land became taken; in fact, the US became a superpower after the westward expansion era. My point is that looking at conditions today, the US still continues to succeed (by some definition of success) and other countries should try to emulate the aspects of the country that leads to that success. IMO one of the big factors is how well immigrants assimilate in the country, and birthright citizenship is a part of that. I do agree with you that US success in the 19th century was due to many factors that are not relevant today.
- insane_dreamer 3mo ago
  > sheer immense amount of vast, mostly unused ,fertile land available in north America it was not "available", it only became "available" after we killed off nearly all the inhabitants and stole their land

voakbasda 3mo ago

A belief held by the majority does not make it better simply for that fact. Not that long ago, the majority view was that slavery was a great thing, so I think you should see that argument falls fairly flat. Offering birthright citizenship makes the US better than 95% of the other countries. Not worse.

ImJamal 3mo ago
> Not that long ago, the majority view was that slavery was a great thing A bit of a tangent, but is that actually the case? The highest estimate I have seen puts slave ownership at 5% of the population while the lowest puts it at 1%. Obviously just because somebody doesn't own slaves doesn't mean they didn't support the system. There could be economic or legal reasons they couldn't own a slave. I am just not sure that it was actually a majority view at any point in time in the US.
- recursivecaveat 3mo ago
  People are pretty expensive (they're literally worth a lifetime of free labor). 1 slave would've been like 3 complete years income for an average free white southerner to purchase, plus ongoing expenses obviously. So they basically end up in the hands of upper class people who have a steady need for lots of manual labor. Doesn't mean that everyone else around was not benefiting from the economic surplus, or was not supportive of the institution.
denismenace 3mo ago
> Offering birthright citizenship makes the US better than 95% of the other countries. Not worse. No arguments why its better, just stating it as if its fact. Most countries do not have it because it creates many preverse incentives (such as anchor babies). This especially in countries which are targets of immigration (such as the US).

jobs_throwaway 3mo ago

Why should I give a shit what 95% of other countries do? 99% of other countries are worse in every way that matters

stackbutterflow 3mo ago
There's about 193 countries in the world, your number would mean there's less than two countries that are better in every way that matters. I can name ten countries off the top of my head that are better in every way that matters to me. The USA ranks near the bottom of developed countries in every metric but the metrics related to money.
- zeroonetwothree 3mo ago
  US is 23rd in happiness globally which is far from the bottom. For example UK, France, and Italy all rank lower. So your claim is wrong.

glitchc 3mo ago

The US has always been a country of immigrants; the Constitution recognizes and enshrines this fact. Amending this rule requires a federal supermajority (66% in House and Senate) or a state majority (66% of state legislatures vote in favor of said amendment). Given how difficult it is to find consensus on even the most banal issue, it's unclear whether there would be sufficient support to ever amend.

tacticalturtle 3mo ago
> Amending this rule requires a federal supermajority (66% in House and Senate) or a state majority (66% of state legislatures vote in favor of said amendment). This is actually just the first step - to propose an amendment. To ratify it requires 3/4 of the state legislatures (or state “conventions”) to vote in favor. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution

kdheiwns 3mo ago

Constitutional amendments are generally made with the purpose of granting rights to the people, not taking them away. The US once made the mistake of making an amendment to take away rights (banning alcohol), but then another amendment restored the right to get drunk.

arjie 3mo ago

I, for one, believe in American exceptionalism. This country is different in many ways and its success is due to that difference. I don't think that the US should actively aim to "revert to the mean".

Ar-Curunir 3mo ago

The US is unlike most other countries in that it is built on the recent genocide of the native population, with ~most of the current population being immigrants in the last 400 years. Under what moral rules do genocidaires get citizenship but not, say, refugees?

greggoB 3mo ago

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 for SCOTUS, which has an infinite hard-on for Originalism [0] - I certainly can't imagine the conservative justices are ruling based on humanitarian grounds. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism

TimorousBestie 3mo ago
Birthright citizenship is not unique to the United States, it’s common to certain kinds of former colonies.
graemep 3mo ago
Most of the Americas for just that reason - and because the countries immigrants came from did not want their kids to have citizen ship and the right to come back.
Windchaser 3mo ago
I mean, it tracks with "no taxation without representation". Getting rid of birthright citizenship has the chance to create a separate *multi-generational* class of people that aren't given the same rights in society.
eesmith 3mo ago
Most countries in North and South America have unconditional birthright citizenship for persons born in the country. I take it you are not British? The British Empire had birthright citizenship, and up until 1948 (except for Ireland) citizens of all Commonwealth countries were simply British subjects. Afterward it was possible to be, for example, a Canadian citizen, but it was still the case that "Prior to the [the British Nationality Act 1981] coming into force, any person born in the United Kingdom or a colony (with limited exceptions such as children of diplomats and enemy aliens) was entitled to [Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies] status" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_Act_1981 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_Act_1981

jfengel 3mo ago

We don't really amend the Constitution every ten years. We got 10 all at once, immediately after the Constitution was written. They were amendments only because there was debate about whether including them would deprive people of even more rights by omission. Of the remaining ones, two cancel each other out, and several others (including the most recent) are trivial. The Constitution has not been meaningfully amended in half a century, and it seems wildly unlikely that it ever can be.

neuronexmachina 3mo ago

> 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 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. >

5upplied_demand 3mo ago

> 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?

rchaud 3mo ago

95% of countries weren't formed by settling on somebody else's land and excluding the original inhabitants from citizenship for several hundred years. The American project is what it is because of millions of migrants who settled there for the perverse incentives of free land via the Homestead Act.

nikanj 3mo ago

Do you have US citizenship? How did you acquire it? If you inherited it from your parents, how did they acquire it? Usually strong opponents to birthright citizenship are just a few generations removed from someone who got theirs via birthright.

russdill 3mo ago

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

pixel_popping 3mo ago
There is no problem having mechanisms in place for edge cases where the child has been abandoned, parents both dead and so-on.
- russdill 3mo ago
  I appreciate that you can look at the current political climate and imagine that such edge cases would be handled in a compassionate way.
- throwawalien 3mo ago
  yes because DACA recipients do not live in fear of conservatives trying to remove them from their homes. (this)[https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/during-voting-marathon-to-greenlight-trumps-mass-deportation-campaign-senate-republicans-reject-durbins-amendment-to-protect-daca-recipients https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/during...] was literally 3 weeks ago
anthonypasq 3mo ago
i dont agree with the person you are responding to, but theres a difference between not being a citizen and being deported.
- cosmicgadget 3mo ago
  This sounds dangerously apartheidy.
MisterMower 3mo ago
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.

triceratops 3mo ago

> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. Closer to 82% actually, depending on how you count countries. Almost every country in the Western hemisphere has it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

verdverm 3mo ago

> It creates perverse incentives Perhaps advantageous, America has been the product of these incentives and still sits atop the world on most hegemon metrics. It amazes me how many people complain about the post-WW2 world order America built and benefits from more than any other country.

sanderjd 3mo ago

This has nothing to do with whether it is a good idea. The question is whether the 14th amendment plainly says that this is the law of the land in the US, which it plainly does. That three Justices chose to attempt to gaslight us about this is a disgrace. I'll never trust their judgement again.

nojito 3mo ago

>It creates perverse incentives. It also helped vault America into being the wealthiest country in the world.

insane_dreamer 3mo ago

> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. most of the countries in the Americas do > let's amend the constitution go ahead and give it a try. I'd start with getting rid of the 2nd Amendment, then we can talk about the 14th.

danny_codes 3mo ago

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.

remarkEon 3mo ago
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 your ideas are good for me and my kin.
- SpicyLemonZest 3mo ago
  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".
  - remarkEon 3mo ago
    You are wrong. My ideas aren't "nativist", they are the mean feeling on this subject for 250 years in this country. It has taken a tremendous amount of effort to convince people that things like "borders", "state sovereignty", and "being discerning about who you let into the country" is bad, evil even. That's why you think you can throw around the word "nativist" as a pejorative. I don't like Ronald Reagan for many reasons, and I don't know which quote you are referring to (though I can venture a guess), so I'm not sure what the point of that appeal is. Like I said, if you think that it's good to dilute the voice of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations by pretending that people who got here 15 minutes ago have the same values that's fine. But you won't get me to agree with you. If you want the country to be more left wing and increasing immigration gets you closer to that goal, just say that, it's cleaner.

Breza 3mo ago

The United States is different from 95% of countries. We're the place you are supposed to flee to when those other countries oppress you. That's just not the history of a place like Italy or Japan. My great great grandparents left Quebec in search of a place where they could earn enough money to make it. They immigrated to America. They lived in communities of other Quebec emigrants and spoke French their whole lives. They never pursued American citizenship. Without birthright citizenship, would my great grandma have been American? OK then what about my grandpa? What about me? I'm not sure if any of my immigrant ancestors formally pursued American citizenship.

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