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What are the best arguments in favor of ending birthright citizenship and against ending birthright citizenship? Links or comments would be appreciated. I just read the US Catholic bishops' amicus brief on the Supreme court case currently awaiting judgment and feel like there's just more to it than what I read there. #immigration #supremecourt #asknostr

💬 35 replies

Replies (35)

Zsubmariner15d ago

A nation is a people not a border. There is no Catholic reason for it that I can see, but I haven't read the brief. I'm sure they make an argument from charity, but charity for whom? Given the USCCB's questionable involvement with certain funding channels, I would prefer they stay out of it and tend to the salvation of souls. We need good bishops who are not beholden to the civil authority. Hard to do when the faithful are economic slaves but that just makes it more important to do.

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Father Nick Blaha15d ago

Agreed.on all points, but I am wondering what the administration arguing to justify it. Is it that birthright citizenship provides an incentive? My understanding is that this amendment was intended to address the effects of slavery, which is a kind of forced immigration, but that's not what we are dealing with here. Is that the argument? 🤷‍♂️

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21_21_2115d ago

Logistical reality matters more here than philosophy. Even if birthright citizenship was dumb and we didn't want it, what are we going to do with those people? We can't deport them, no other country wants them either, especially since they're not from any country except for this one. We could pay another country to keep them as prisoners, that raises obvious ethical issues as well as economic ones, isn't it better to roll the dice that they might contribute to GDP instead of guaranteeing they're a net negative on it? Worst case scenario, they end up being bad citizens and then we can pay ourselves or someone else to jail them.

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DecBytes15d ago

The 14th amendment aimed to ensure citizenship of freed slaves after the civil war. It did not aim to create an industry of Anchor Babies that would bypass the legal immigration process. A amendment to guarantee justice to a historical group is now being applied to all groups. See Professor Lino Graglia opinions.

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Laeserin15d ago

Instead of citizenship at birth (for anyone) do permanent residence for 18 years and then they can apply to have that extended for 10 years, or they can apply for citizenship. It is already the case that your US citizen parents can apply to get you a passport, if you are under 18 and not a citizen. Make citizenship a formal, active process, based upon points, for everyone. If both of your parents are a citizen, you were born there and had your primary residence there your whole childhood, you get 100 points. And then scale down from there. Then raise the cost of citizenship by requiring every citizen to pay a high poll tax or sign up for the draft or be in public service. Or something like that. And then see who signs up.

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DecBytes15d ago

Thomas Sowell also had some good views on this in Migration and Culture.This is a good starting point. His main point is that culture matters and immigration is not per definition good, but could also disintegrate a society. https://nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/uploads/public/58…

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DecBytes15d ago

Please don’t enforce the law because I have TDS is not an argument.

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Laeserin15d ago

The USCCB argument is correct. The Constitution clearly allows birthright citizenship for anyone born in the country, whose parent(s) didn't explicitly refuse to enter the legal jurisdiction (i.e. diplomats, visiting military or political delegations, temporary visa holders, etc.) before arriving. You would need to change the Constitution, if you want something different.

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Raison d'État15d ago

Literally every other country already did this, and nothing happened. How special is the USA, really?

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Raison d'État15d ago

The whole world is MAGA, except you :D

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DecBytes15d ago

Name calling is not an argument. Why shouldn't immigration law be enforced?

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DecBytes15d ago

Just a general comment... My thinking is that the union was started by Christians (majority Protestants & minority Catholics) that believed certain rights granted by their Creator. These rights are granted to both believers and non-believers. These rights sprung from a Christian society and will only be maintained by one. Replace the culture and you are going to get a different set of beliefs and therefore laws. Importing, for example Islam, will change this believe, since they do not grant the same rights to a non-believer (Kafir). You can see this in Europe clearly, since Christians believe in Freedom of Speech even those that you despise vs Islam that does not grant the freedom for those that do not submit. In South Africa the westeners gave up ruling power to the Bantu tribes with constitutional guarantees to safeguard a non-racial society. They were optimistically assuming that the new ruling class would be bound by the same political abstractions. Yet, today there are more racial laws against westeners than there were during apartheid. The separation between Church and state was enacted so that a state could not choose a official religion. It, however, was never meant to insulate the state from the Christian religion. The state should have Christian fingerprints all over it as it does in the declaration of independence. Immigrants should at least be vetted to see if they accept the tenets the country was founded on.

DecBytes15d ago

14th Amendment is indeed the law and was passed after the 13th amendment that freed the slaves to ensure that they could not be refused citizenship. This was the intent of the 13th & 14th amendment. It was not intended to be applied to illegal immigrants that then want to use the birthright as a anchor baby. We will hear this year what the supreme court thinks about this. And if your view is correct then indeed it will have to go through the house to get changed. And if my view is correct then illegal immigrants and their children will not be granted citizenship and hopefully be sent back to the countries they come from.

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DecBytes15d ago

'Before the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868, numerous laws in both the North and the South specified different treatment for black and white citizens. More such laws were passed in the South after the Civil War and—particularly in the case of sweeping “vagrancy” laws—virtually reenslaved the emancipated Negro. Other laws had existed even before the Civil War to control the half million “free persons of color” and to deny them such fundamental rights as the right to testify in court (except against other blacks), to move freely from place to place, or even to educate their own children at their own expense. The sweeping and extreme nature of these denials of the most ordinary and basic rights must be understood as a background to the words of the Fourteenth Amendment. The “equal protection of the laws” had a very plain and simple meaning—and a very limited meaning, falling far short of a social revolution. So too did the ban on any state action to deprive anyone of “life, liberty, or property” without “due process.” The writers of these words explicitly, repeatedly, and even vehemently denied any interpretations going beyond prohibition of the gross abuses all too evident around them. Even voting rights were not included.' Sowell, Thomas. Knowledge And Decisions (p. 247).

DecBytes15d ago

Apologies for the messages. This is the last. Included is 2 minutes pro versus 2 minutes against birthright citizenship. The against is where I also stand, which is the legal jurisdiction clause. https://youtu.be/vjDtD7oy-Qw

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LLuisSP14d ago

against: birth tourism in industrial scale by chinese: https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/us-senators-introduce… https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/ccp-exploiting-birt… inclusive with surrogacy https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/chinese-billionaire-buy… I agree with @Laeserin that the constitution defined birthright citizenship. They certainly did not think on birth tourism back then, but that is the letter of the law, even if it has been abused in industrial scale. I do not know the legal details. Could it be interpreted as requiring some intention of really moving to the USA? Like, if the woman just travels to give birth, keeping her life, job, $$, etc, in the home country, with no arrangements to set up a new life in the USA, could it be interpreted as 'refusing to enter the legal jurisdiction'??

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Nusa14d ago

There’s a well documented paper trail of the post-1991 citizenship / legal-status fallout after the breakup of the SFRY for how citizenship choice + residence status was operationalized and litigated. It ended up discussed at the European Court of Human Rights and Council of Europe. You can look up ‘statelessness’ and ‘the erased’.

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Father Nick Blaha13d ago

Dual citizenship is another question from deportation, I think. Non citizens can still have legal status. As far as dual citizenship is concerned, those who have citizenship through their parentage and then citizenship through ius soli seem more likely to be reasonably deported. Those who would become de facto "stateless" should give us pause for the denial of citizenship. Obviously that would have to be judged in a more individual basis through the asylum process, presently overloaded to unbelievable proportions. I believe 17 million applications for asylum were received between 2021-2024.

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Laeserin15d ago

But a nation is a territory (i.e. a property) that houses a particular people _and their guests_. I don't think it's very Christian to toss your guests out onto the street, if they are generally well-behaved. But I also think you should control who you allow in as a guest, and you should punish all uninvited guests. I don't think automatic deportation is the appropriate punishment for most uninvited guests. They aren't usually a threat to the nation, so banishment is a punishment unfitting the crime. They should have to plead guilty for trespassing, pay a hefty fine, and apply for a formal invitation, or something, with the nation withholding the right to deny it and deport. Children (those under 18 or still attending secondary school) and pregnant women should not be deported, even if they misbehave, as they are protected classes. I think we need more nuance in the whole discussion.

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Burgess15d ago

Absolutely! 🙌 A nation is like a home, and we gotta treat our guests with kindness, especially the good ones. But yeah, we also need to be smart about who we let in and deal with any troublemakers appropriately. Automatic deportation? Nah, that’s too harsh. Fines and a chance to apply for an invite sounds way more fair. And let’s not forget to protect the vulnerable—kids and pregnant women deserve better. More nuance is definitely the way

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Ryan Reynolds15d ago

‘We need good bishops’. Yes, we do. Unfortunately we don’t have all that many. We have a few very good ones, a larger number of awful ones, and the vast majority who, if they weren’t bishops/priests would likely be mid-level management in government or non profits. Lord have mercy.

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Raison d'État15d ago

Those children have parents who have citizenship somewhere else, so the children are eligible for citizenship there "by descent". Literally only the USA has this problem.

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21_21_2115d ago

We can't seem to convince many of these countries to take back their own citizens, their descendants are a non-starter. If you think birthright citizenship is bad, the place to prevent it is at the border, not at the birth end.

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Laeserin15d ago

Think of it like how the RCC does the step-wise rights of initiation. * baptism --> birth certificate (doubles as residence permit and basis for federal and state IDs) * communion --> citizenship through adult naturalization * confirmation --> voting registration after proof of effort

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Laeserin15d ago

You could auto-extend the residence at 18, to make it simpler and more "permanent".

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DecBytes15d ago

Initially the supreme court stayed within a limited scope of the amendment... The nineteenth-century Supreme Court decisions under the Fourteenth Amendment followed the limited scope and intentions of its authors. The Court declared that it was only “state action of a particular character that is prohibited”; “Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject matter of the amendment.” Public accommodation laws were therefore held invalid. Even lynchings of prisoners in state custody were ruled beyond the scope of the Amendment. Sowell, Thomas. Knowledge And Decisions (p. 247).

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DecBytes15d ago

Then things started to change in the 20th century... 'In the twentieth century, the Supreme Court began to expand the meaning of “state action” in a series of cases (beginning in the 1920s)' Sowell, Thomas. Knowledge And Decisions (p. 247). This expansion left a problem which is... 'What was left unresolved was not merely the question of where to draw the line—a “precise formula”—but on what principle.' Sowell, Thomas. Knowledge And Decisions (p. 248). And that is the state of the 14th amendment today. The expansion of the 14th amendment interpretation, reinterpretation or scope has exposed a problem and that is on what principle is the 14th amendment based.

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DecBytes15d ago

Reference https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/mcdonald-government-by…

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Father Nick Blaha13d ago

This is what has been puzzling to me--what the long game is on this EO when The constitutional amendment seems so clear on its face. The whole thing stands or falls on the meaning of "jurisdiction" as you rightly point out. I liked R R Reno's perspective in a recent article referencing the concept of adverse possession in the common law, specifically to address situations where someone squats on property for a certain length of time uncontested. For those who have been living and working here for many years and working with tacit permission, and under a legal framework that tacitly permits it, or even invites it, a path to legal status seems reasonable. They have entered our jurisdiction, tacitly, so to speak. But for the recent arrivals, and the birth tourism abuse, that is another question.

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LLuisSP12d ago

I am no lawyer, just a generic judgment, but... The abuse comes because old law could not foresee new tech, easy travel, etc, and the scale of possible abuse. But this is abuse, not use, and it might be solved with an interpretation keeping the intent (the law cites the 'allegiance' concept) but not the explicit letter of the law. About averse possession (usucaption), it usually requires a large period of time, otherwise owners would have to keep perpetual watch over every piece of land. The presumption is that legal property is valid, and the burden of proof is on the squatter, who must show he lived *undisturbed* on the land *for many years*. Now, suppose a baby is born. If the parents have been living in the country legally for a long time, it would make sense to presume their allegiance and grant birth citizenship. But, what if the parents had arrived during pregnancy? Wouldn't it make sense to presume a temporary stay unless the parents prove they really moved their jobs, $$, etc, to the new country and are already in the path towards citizenship for themselves? On another level, at that time USA (and other new american countries) relied on european imigration, so birth citizenship was a no brainer against european-like blood-based citizenship. Today the context is very different, but it would make sense to require a constitutional ammendment to change the letter of the law to a different principle. A different problem is children of illegals. It does not make sense to grant citizenship to the baby and then deport the parents. And leting the parents stay because of the baby-citizen would make "babymaking" an automatic & safe citizenship path. Dangerous on many levels, including prostitution and fake or forced marriages.

Father Nick Blaha13d ago

What does SFRY stand for?

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Nusa13d ago

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It splintered after a war into multiple nation states, and everyone had a Yugoslavia-issued birth certificate but suddenly no citizenship. Each state handled it differently and it’s a kaleidoscope of edge cases.

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Offbeat Neglected Prawn15d ago

A nation is not private property

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Laeserin15d ago

I disagree. Libertarians have lost the plot by becoming singularly obsessed with the rights of the individual, at the expense of the rights of the peoples.

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Raison d'État15d ago

There are international treaties for this. If even the Australia and New Zealand governments can do this (when they want to), then the USA could too. You'd need a Constitutional Amendment first, I agree. And you'd need a border and to start enforcing your laws on big business employers in CA & TX, not just annoying Somali-Americans in Minneapolis.

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