Yes, birthright citizenship is simple, elegant, and effective.
Why this is suddenly an issue— after so many decades!-- can be attributed only to the desire of the GOP to trash everything, if only in rhetoric. They really hate America, don’t they?
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And Lincoln wept.
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Complete and utter sash! The granting of blanket citizenship by giving birth on the magic soil of the 14th Amendment is completely unconstitutional. Even Justice Grey, in the infamous Wong Kim Ark decision, said so. Just as in the case of children born here of foreign diplomats, children born here of illegal aliens are subject to their parent’s nationality.
Did you really just say, " the 14th Amendment is completely unconstitutional?"
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Even worse, the first wife was born in Czechoslovakia, a country that no longer exists. In fact, there are millions upon millions of people who have no where to go back to. What exactly are we to do with them? Force them to walk into the Atlantic?
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Uh, how can a constitutional amendment be unconstitutional? Once it’s in the constitution (and it’s right there), it’s constitutional. You can repeal it if you want to spend a few million bucks and the next 20 years of your life-- have at it. It requires 2/3rds of Congress to get it started (good luck with that) and then ratification by 3/4 of the states. There’s no wonder only 1 amendment (Prohibition) has ever been repealed. But go ahead and try! I don’t know that Donald Trump will care in a week or so, so you might look for funding elsewhere.
And it’s inaccurate to suggest that someone who is born in the United States and lives right here is “subject” to any other country’s laws. How? Explain to me how. You are subject to the laws of the country you are currently in. If I’m in the UK, no matter for what reason, no matter what my citizenship, I have to follow their laws. As soon as I leave the UK and come to the US, I’m subject to US law. You just try to tell the judge that, “In the UK, the law is to drive on the left side of the road. So that’s what I did here in the US! I’m a UK citizen, so I’m only subject to THOSE laws, even here in the US! You can’t arrest me for driving on the wrong side of the road, because it’s the right-- I mean, correct-- side where I’m from!”
The only people in the US who are not subject to its laws are diplomats and their families and staff, and that’s a very specific rule because no one would send diplomats here if we were going to arrest them (and it’s reciprocal-- other countries have the same rule). But everyone else is subject to US law and/or the laws of the state they are in that very moment. You know that, don’t you? That if you’re in California, you can’t break those laws just because you’re really from Nevada?
Let’s be honest here. This is only an issue because Donald Trump had a momentary bliff that made him think he should say something provocative. He forgot that his own mother, himself, and his children might be affected by any change in this constitutional rule. Mostly, though, he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t care about the consequences, even to his own children, of what he says. It’s not like it matters to him, after all. And it won’t matter to anyone else in a few weeks-- nothing sticks in the American mind anymore.
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Well, first, changing this tradition goes against everything that the United States stands for: Liberty and self-definition and new beginnings. We are not about who our ancestors were. America is where we start. And you need only look at the enormous amount of innovation, energy, and new cuisine that immigrants bring with them to realize that part of what makes America great is that we don’t bind people to their parents’ citizenship.
If you want to trash all that, well, then you should consider the consequences, part of which will be the unworkability of making everyone-- yes, even you and your children-- prove that they are citizens or permanent residents when a child is born.
It’s not the 'unworkability" that is the problem, rather that’s a symptom that there’s something really wrong about this-- It’s not America. Europe actually is having massive problems with just this issue, so it’s not like it’s working for them. They have 40 year olds who were born in their country, who lived there all their lives, and yet are not “citizens”… and this works not at all, but is sustainable because they can be “EU residents” so at least they have some status. We don’t have an “EU” umbrella. What exactly would you do with those people born in the US – not born anywhere else, so citizens nowhere else-- when you decide they aren’t citizens? Kick them out? Well, kick me out then. Forget that I have lived all my life here. My grandfather was an “anchor baby” (in that stupid term – in that he was born a year after his mother emigrated here in 1909), lived here all his life, voted (Republican, as it happens) in every election, and paid a whole boatload of taxes. Disefranchise him, and there goes my father, and there goes me. (And my kids.) The country my grandfather came from no longer exists, and anyway, I have no claim on it. Where you going to send me? You wanna buy my house and take over my job while you’re at it?
And just keep in mind, several of the GOP candidates would NOT pass this dumb rule. They wouldn’t be allowed to run for president-- (including perhaps Trump), and they could be deported right away. They need to think through if they really want to give up their own citizenship and thus that of their children.
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I’m glad TPM is beginning to struggle with the consequences. Hopefully others will, as well. But the article misses the most important point. If the Constitution’s clear language doesn’t mean what it says – that everyone born in the US is an American citizen – then what it does mean is that some people born in the US are not US citizens. It is then – and this is the critical point – up to Congress to determine which people born in the US are not US citizens. Today’s debate is over the children of illegal immigrants. But the issue goes much further than that, because if Congress can decide that this class of people are not US citizens, even though they were born here, then Congress can define any class of persons born here who are not to be deemed American citizens. Since the United States is a Christian Nation, in the view of millions of Americans, Congress would be Constitutionally permitted to deny birthright citizenship to non-Christains. Sound crazy to you? Well, I defy you to find the Constitutional flaw. And if that sounds politically unlikely, how about denying birthright citizenship to Muslims, because “everyone knows” that their true allegiance is to Islamic fundamentalism. If birthright citizenship goes away, the real problem isn’t the inconvenience of carrying your birth certificate around, it is the very real new Constitutional authority for Congress to “define classes” of people who “don’t deserve” citizenship and exclude them from their homeland at any time.
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I think that one would count a citizen if either of your parents was a citizen. The ridiculous part comes in when you have to prove that one parent was a citizen. My father, grandfather, great grandfather, great great etc. back to when guys had funny names were all born in the U.S. I thought that the one born before the Revolutions might count but I do not see how. Now if you have an ancestor who was naturalized before they had children then there would be a paper trail but the Mayflower descendants are in trouble.
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Well darn it, aren’t republicans all in favor of lotsa new laws an regulations and such? …Oh wait…
Congress cannot, thankfully alter the language of the Constitution by a bill. The document says what it says. The Supreme Court supposedly decides what the words mean, not Congress.
The unspoken plan is to make only Republican children eligible to vote 
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Thanks. I know that, although I wouldn’t be shocked to see this Supreme Court reason it’s way around the words; there are some law professors who have created arguments to do so. Trump picked up the idea from these law professors and others in the right wing political world. But beyond the question of whether the legislation would be constitutional, I was trying to show that the reasoning supporting the idea would support stripping citizenship from any “undesirable” group as determined by Congress at any time. If it was constitutional to strip citizenship from someone because his parents were illegal immigrants, it would be constitutional to strip citizenship from any other “undesirable” group as well. There would be no constitutional principle to prevent it.
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Have you been talking to Ted Cruz again? And I note you use an ‘or’ not an 'and.i Using an ‘and’ might end any population problems in a hurry.
It wouldn’t be just a paperwork problem. Everyone knows that infidelity occurs. You’d have to prove your DNA status.
I don’t think even a tenth of the Fox News audience would be able to produce even their own birth certificates, let alone their parents’ birth certificates or baptismal records or whatever the heck even conservative people used to be half-sensible enough to call it good enough.
So obviously the plan was never to end everyone’s birthright citizenship, just a select few, and Fox viewers will know then when we see them, I guess.
Litmus tests, loyalty oaths & allegiance to an array of ever shifting right-wing policies (except for white supremacy) is what this effort to end birthright citizenship is all about. Yet another attempt to shrink and gerrymander the voting population to retain power in a changing demographic.
Is not that exactly what the Voter ID thing is, a solution looking for a problem.
Yep, I’m good it’s all the others that are the problem…hmmmmmmmmmmmmm is that the brown others?
Citizenship should be reserved for spoiled rich kids, overachieving suck ups and kids who join the military. The rest don’t need the vote. All that equality and democracy crap that came out of the enlightenment has to be replaced with good ol’ Murkan oligarchic dystopia. Remember Starship Troopers and 1984 weren’t cautionary tails, they were Republican action plans.