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End Birthright Citizenship
Last week, Michael Anton (of “The Flight 93 Election” fame) wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Citizenship Shouldn’t be a Birthright,” which has caused paroxysms of huffing outrage from all of the predictable quarters of the left. A worse messenger for a perfectly sensible message would be hard to locate, but it isn’t merely the identity of the author that has people up in arms.
Monday, even the otherwise calm and reasoned Robert Tracinski wrote quite a doozy at The Federalist. Titled “Ending birthright citizenship will make the Republican Party look like the party of Dred Scott,” Robert responds to Anton’s op-ed with several hyperbolic claims that give undue credence to the left’s continuous charge that anything a Republican ever does (including breathe) is racist:
Anton’s proposal will be overwhelmingly interpreted as a declaration to black Americans that the Republican Party—the party that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment in the first place—now does not see them as equal citizens.
Excuse me, but this argument is so poor that it must be considered the leader in the clubhouse for non sequitur of the year. Not for nothing, when did Democrats start countenancing Republican policy proposals as anything other than racism? Welfare reform? That’s racist. Voter ID? Also racist. Border enforcement? Totally racist. Prisons and law enforcement? Super-duper racist. Even tax reform was pilloried as racist because it would disproportionately benefit whites according to its critics.
It’s true that the Democrats’ penchant for shouting “racist!” isn’t enough to dispel the possibility that this policy proposal didn’t stem from some wellspring of latent pro-white sentiment, however. So, what precisely is anti-black about the prospect of denying foreigners the right to have their children receive citizenship just for being born on our dirt? Nothing that I can see.
It’s an argument that doesn’t doesn’t even make sense, and no answer as to why is in the offing. Clearly, all African Americans who are currently citizens (and their children, by extension) are citizens. Anton’s proposal wouldn’t affect that one whit.
So, what exactly is the contemplated change? To understand this, you have to understand the history of Birthright Citizenship, which goes back (as most people will recall from history class) to the 14th Amendment. It states:
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, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The reasoning behind this is pretty straightforward. The 14th Amendment was necessary to annul the horrific Dred Scott decision, and was worded as it was to nullify the idea that black slaves and their children couldn’t even be citizens of the United States by dint of some spurious claims of “inferiority.” This, of course, was back when people had the will to do the hard work required to amend the Constitution if legislation or Court decisions went against them, rather than trying to enforce their will through judicial fiat — but that’s another story.
The trouble here arises from the term “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which under modern understanding includes people whose parents were neither born here or naturalized; i.e., people who are not citizens or legal residents of this nation. This understanding, however, is merely an extension of the Wong Kim Ark case in which the Court held that the children of legal immigrants were granted citizenship. Congress could clarify that definition with a simple statutory modification.
But this is all dancing around the central issue: Why should we do away with birthright citizenship? First and foremost because there’s no reason for us to give something away to foreigners for nothing which is so intrinsically valuable. Citizenship is literally for sale in many nations of the world for a variety of prices. American citizenship (it should come as no shock) is worth a boatload to its possessor. A person with birthright citizenship can essentially never be deported, and thanks to the various and sundry welfare laws in our country, the nation is statutorily obligated to care for him in the event of his incapacity. This is a massive windfall for merely having had the good fortune to have been birthed within the confines of our nation.
The current policy also leads to absurdities, such as Birth Tourism, whereby foreigners (like from the left’s favorite country, Russia!) travel to the United States for the sole purpose of having their baby so that it will gain US citizenship … and thereby have a bolthole in the event things go sideways in their home country. To wit:
Why do they come? “American passport is a big plus for the baby. Why not?” Olesia Reshetova, 31, told NBC News.
Indeed. Why are we so stupid as to give something away which is obviously worth so much?
Reciprocity is another reason why this policy needs to be modified. If you’re a pregnant Spanish tourist and deliver your child here in the US, citizenship is automatic. If you’re an American in Spain? Buena suerte, chica. There’s simply no reason for us to have such an expansive policy when other nations don’t.
I can hear some people saying, “but American citizenship is a windfall that you were an unjust recipient of!” That is completely accurate. But I would point such people to other things such as “inheritance” or “having caring, intelligent parents” that are similarly “unjust” but about which conservatives are rightly nonplussed by comparison. Citizenship is a thing that we will to our children merely by having them.
What was the Founders’ opinion about this windfall? Well, we could also look at the Preamble of the Constitution for some guidance:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. [emphasis mine]
To whom were the blessings of liberty to be secured by the formation of this nation? Ourselves and our posterity … our children. Explicitly not the children of foreigners who sneaked into the nation. Worth noting is that the notions of “Justice” and “Domestic Tranquility” surely must include fair and even enforcement of the law and an expectation of peace which comes from knowing that the people who surround you are also citizens or legal immigrants to the nation.
How many other nations in the world have birthright citizenship? Many, mostly in the Western Hemisphere, but not all. Is there precedent for revoking birthright citizenship? Yes. In 1986, Australia imposed restrictions upon birthright citizenship, holding that at least one parent of a child must have legal, permanent residency in Australia in order to gain citizenship there. It’s possible the deliberations of the Australian Parliament in Canberra centered solely upon the need to deprive non-whites of Australian citizenship, but somehow I doubt it. India (curiously, another Anglosphere nation) abolished it utterly in 2004. Worth noting: neither of these countries were subducted by vengeful flames into the Earth’s molten core for daring to remove birthright citizenship either.
Given my druthers, citizenship and residency would work on a sliding scale, whereby people gain full citizenship in our nation via a demonstration of merit. That isn’t the world we live in, and I am utterly resigned to that fact. But I’m also not the sort of person who will allow a presumed image of perfection to be the enemy of the good. Therefore, down with birthright citizenship. It is both a travesty and a con played upon our children and the future of our nation.
Published in Immigration
It removes ethnicity from the equation. And allows for a society where neighbors can equally lay claim to the nation. Look at the ethnic state of Europe. How long can a Jew live in Germany before he is German? History would teach us that not even 10 generation is sufficient given the mood. But no matter the circumstance with in one generation he will be fully American even if he is a Hasidic recluse who only marries other Jews. America is not an ethnic state it can not be an ethnic state and hold to its founding and principles. Thus it can not employ an ethnic doctrine for determining its citizenship. Attempts in the past to create an American ethnicity have resulted in nothing but shame and misery for our nation.
You are describing my wife’s childhood.
I think what bothers me about some of this is the intention of birthplace, not the accident. If you want to become an American citizen I am amenable to that. I understand the process is difficult and we can all argue how to make it better. To be born here because your mother booked a plane ticket seems like cheating, I imagine especially to those who work for years and go through the official channels.
This is both true and false. I do not think occupying the same physical location transfers the same values. You can be an American by law and not in spirit. Ideas, identities, and individuals carry consequences.
It’s true, growing up American doesn’t guarantee you’ll gain the right set of values. But that applies to the children of American citizens as well. It’s our job to assimilate them. No citizenship is a sure way to push their (and their parents’) loyalty away from the US and toward a foreign country.
This avoidance of government judgement is quite hilarious. I am skeptical of the government, but even the government can tell the difference between a criminal and a non-criminal, someone with an income and someone without means of support.
Do you honestly refuse to judge the worth of any human being? There is no difference between your worth and that of a ISIS decapitator? That’s moral blindness, an utter terror of passing judgement.
Well – isn’t the majority of people in the world non white? So by definition, any immigration reform would effect non- whites more than whites?
my neighboring town in majority Asian. If they enact a new parking law, does that law become racist because it effects more Asians than whites?
…and never has.
How people can argue for birthright citizenship is beyond my intellectual capabilities to comprehend.
We really need to fix this. Children should automatically be the same nationality as their parents or guardians. The original birthright citizenship law was passed to help the newly freed slaves right after the Civil War. That was a good thing to do at the time, and expedient. Now it is causing problems for people.
You’ll notice that the only people to even mention ethnicity are the ones opposing the OP’s proposal (and those responding to them.)
The baby born here to illegals is a citizen according to the plain reading of the 14th Amendment. But his parents can still be deported. The kid is free to stay/come back anytime if (a) suitable arrangements can be made such an American family chooses to adopt him/her or (b) she/he reaches the age of 18.
So long as coming across the border while pregnant is not a ticket to stay, so long as failure to comply with deportation orders is deemed (an aggressively enforced) criminal act, so long as there is no eligibility for any social welfare programs except what Congress may provide for illegals temporarily here under process, so long as employers are made to check citizen status in a meaningful way, so long as state and local entities that abet unlawful behavior are cut off from federal funds and so long as the border is continually made more secure, I welcome the arrival of these infant citizens.
FWIW, we DO understand why birthright citizenship is included in the 14th Amendment. We just think the problem it was trying to solve is no longer a problem and created unintended consequences when travel became cheap enough that birth tourism became a thing.
@fredhadra: Tracinski is way out over his skis with that assertion, as I pointed out above. Anton has broached the subject, but even a correct message can be carried by a flawed messenger.
However, I must ask then: Were India and Australia attempting to “keep out the brown people” when they changed their laws WRT Birthright Citizenship? Will you call them racists as well for having done this?
Or is it just remotely possible that those nations were expressing their sovereignty and tired of being played for chumps by border-jumpers, no matter their point of origin? I would tend to lean towards the latter, and not assume the worst possible motives behind every conceivable change we might make in this arena.
It sets us apart from the ethnostates of Europe that spent most of their history at war with one another or oppressing and killing those within their borders not sufficiently pure. Something like the holocaust or A Hand Maidens Tale could never happen here because our shared national identity trumps any ethnic or religious identity our citizens lay claim to.
We are all Americans first and birthright citizenship is a key component of why that value system exists. Why the right would want to play into the hands of the identitarian left by undermining that cornerstone of American life is beyond my intellectual capacity to comprehend.
Not all of us.
It seems clear that this is a policy that we must express going forward and not retroactively.
However, where I take strong exception is that there are potentially hundreds of thousands of foreigners with American citizenship who have lived all but the first few days of their lives in a foreign country, probably don’t speak English and have no loyalty to this nation, our institutions or our creeds. Those people aren’t (by your definition) Americans.
My proposal would be that in such cases where you have “infant expatriates,” that unless they can demonstrate residency and basic English proficiency then their citizenship ought to be revoked.
Moderator Note:
Please do not put words into the mouths of other members.Open borders, of course. Nothing must impede the “natural flow”….Do those problems overwhelm the benefits that we gain? The shared loyalty and identity that being an American by birth, something no man can take away from you, is a key component of what makes America exceptional.
While it’s certainly true that children are “blameless” for the actions of their parents, that doesn’t mean that they don’t suffer the consequences.
Blameless child citizens of this nation suffer such consequences all the time when their parents go to prison. By your logic, should we abolish prisons because it damages blameless children when their parents are locked up? That of course is nonsense.
Enforcing our laws isn’t cruel; what is cruel is using your children as an emotional chit and a lever against the system, which is (for instance) exactly what border-jumpers have been doing and has led to the lamentable (but necessary) policy of child separation. “Cruel” would be locking children up in a prison with their parents in order to avoid separating them. “Cruel” is “selling your children to a coyote in order to smuggle them into this country.”
The moral landscape is weirdly inverted for some people when it comes to this situation, which is precisely why this perverse incentive needs to be ended.
In Australia’s case: yes, actually. It had a lot to do with the boat people fleeing to Australia from SE Asia.
Surely, you recognize the reality that going forward, the most important class of workers is going to be those with credentials in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, correct? The days when we needed to import millions of stoop laborers is and has been over for some time.
Based upon our labor force participation rate and looking at which segments of the underutilized workforce have the greatest levels of job displacement, what makes you think that adding millions of uneducated people to that workforce will be productive or wise thing to do.
We want people who are closer to Nobel Laureates in Physics and Mathematics than not, and Nobel Laureates arrive on planes. They don’t sneak across borders like thieves.
You should talk to Bret Weinstein about that.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/nonplussed
tr.v. non·plussed, non·plus·sing, non·plus·ses also non·plused or non·plus·ing or non·plus·es
We have a family friend who is an OB-GYN in Manhattan. She doesn’t take insurance and requires payment in cash.
Most of her clients are rich foreigners giving birth here so their children will get US citizenship. I think it is safe to say she is quite happy with the current system.
How, precisely, is a Russian or Chinese woman who comes to this nation pregnant for the sole purpose of having a baby so that it can gain US citizenship “melting into our nation”?
It’s a stupid policy from that perspective and one that needs to be stopped.
As I pointed out in the OP, the Wong Kim Ark case decided this long ago, and that seems unlikely to be changed short of Constitutional amendment.
From what I see, most people here want to take away birthright citizenship from illegal immigrants and birth tourists. I think that only enhances the loyalty and shared identity of being American.
My son was born in Prague. He has no shared loyalty or identity as a Czech citizen.
@jamielockett brought up the question of “undeserving Americans.” He’s totally right about that. I’m also totally flummoxed as to what can be done about it. However: merely because we observe the problem of ungrateful or undeserving Americans, that doesn’t mean that we must cast the gates open in order to avoid some charge of hypocrisy.
Our principles aren’t a suicide pact, and a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
It’s about the kid not the parents.
To which my response is: Okay… So what?
Australia has the right to deny people entry for any or no reason whatsoever. The libertarian notion that people have unlimited settlement rights upon demand has always confused me.