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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 will come down to whether or not the judges put their finger over AND or not.
#conjunctionlivesmatter
Depends on the crime. We should probably “abolish” most drug offenses. That’s a really bad reason to separate families.
If, theoretically of course, the system itself was cruel, “emotional chits” might be the only way to get through people’s hardheadedness. No one pushes rule of law more than when they like the consequences of a law.
Citation, please. Seriously, I’ve not heard any actual cases of this. “Selling children?” I mean, maybe. If someone is so desperate to do this that would argue even more strongly for the cruelty of the incentives our laws are putting on people. Not the cruelty of the people rationally acting on them.
This is an oft-repeated non-sequitur. The world is currently one way. To say it should be a different way follows perfectly.
People have always acted terribly towards people in the out-group. It shouldn’t confuse you so much that some people see that for what it is instead of defending people acting terribly just because it’s the way it’s always been.
You just implied that Australia ending birthright citizenship wasn’t based on ethnic reasons, I told you that it was and now you stay “so what”? Either make the case why ethnically based immigration restrictions are just or don’t, but please don’t try to have it both ways.
Child Trafficking is rampant along the Southern border.
We are being played for idiots.
Seriously? Race was Australia’s reason for ending birthright citizenship? It wasn’t just incidental to a flood of (illegal) boat people arriving on the shores?
Defenders of birthright citizenship seem to be the ones injecting race into the argument.
I’m not sure how these laws are ethnically based. If I were to try to sneak into Australia, I would be subject to them as well and I’m as white as wonder bread.
Are you saying that disparate impact should be considered a valid argument against policy?
So, a certain ethnic abuses a country’s policies and the country puts a stop to it all together (for everyone, even those not abusing it) and it is based on ethnics?
No, it’s based on abuse. That one ethnic was the predominant abuser doesn’t mean stopping the abuse is racist.
Lay your cards on the table, Mike. You’re an anarchist and are opposed to all borders, so this is all too precious of an argument for you be making. Please, make your genuine argument that nations are illegitimate and borders immoral.
Aside from that, telling people “you can’t come into our nation” isn’t “treating them terribly” unless you know you’re sending them to a charnel house. Unless your argument is that enforcing immigration laws are just like the Holocaust… an argument I’d love to see you try and defend.
Let’s be clear about birth tourism. It is tourism! And there’s a whole industry catering to birth tourists. These mothers have no intention of staying in the US and raising little Americans. They take their babies home to China or Russia and raise good little commies who, oh, by the way, have American citizenship. We think this is unimportant?
Vladimir Putin is paying women to have babies, amirite? What’s to stop him from paying them to have them here? Even if it’s a small problem now (7% of the annual birthrate from birth tourism and illegals quoted earlier? That’s significant!), it would seem there’s potential for it to become a much bigger problem.
@asquared is right. It’s a different world with accessible and cheap travel. At the going rate, American citizenship is a ridiculous bargain!
And nothing Shawn is proposing would prevent the children of naturalized citizens from birthright citizenship. Get in line and earn it.
What do you mean, so what? You asked what indicates against it and I gave you a huge thing that indicates against it. Do you know how rude it is to ask for something and then disregard it completely when it’s given to you? It shows you weren’t asking for honest engagement at all, you’ve already made up you mind and nothing will move it.
There’s a big moral difference between acting and not acting. There’s a big moral difference between causing someone’s death and letting someone die. Invading North Korea would be an act. Immigration restrictions is an act. You are personally doing something (because if you don’t actively keep people out they can come in) that is contributing to the bad consequences.
No, see above.
In the future, just ignore a comment you don’t have a constructive response to. Don’t double down on being flippant.
The limiting principle is the same limiting principle that prevent everyone from living in New York and LA even though the opportunities and wealth are so much higher there than the rest of the country even though there’s nothing physically stopping them. You don’t actively move half the world here. Individuals will respond to incentives, and as more people move here there will be less and less incentive for the next person to move here. The lives of Americans obviously “count,” but the benefits to non-Americans would be so vast that any fair accounting doesn’t change the conclution. If you are not convinced, there are less damaging ways to compensate Americans than by keeping out the vast majority of potential immigrants by force.
Doing something that is causing horrible consequences doesn’t become less horrible by creating an entity with the purpose of doing those horrible things for you, even if everyone else is doing it, even if it’s always been accepted.
Well, again, it’s our laws that are causing these incentives. Let the parents bring their kids in themselves. Let would be “smugglers” come in on their own, and the problem goes away.
This is why I was pointing out the fact that a) nations exist and b) nations have the right to control who comes into them irrespective of the conditions which exist outside of that nation. These are fundamental characteristics of nations.
I find your objection to be irrelevant. It can be bad in other nations. So what? That fact alone doesn’t motivate me to allow such people to come into our country – even if it means they would improve their lives by one iota. It doesn’t change the underlying principle that we as a nation have the right to decide whom we invite in. The reason why it is frequently bad in those nations has a great deal to do with those people in the first place.
I also know you disagree with that – that’s fine too. Your arguments about the good which could accrue to such people aren’t persuasive to me, because there are such things as diminishing returns and tradeoffs to be considered. You don’t care about the costs and you’re far too concerned about the abstract wellbeing of people whom you’ll never meet and don’t share similar concern for you. Bleating about how “mean” that is doesn’t really sway me either. It just means that you don’t have much of an argument aside from appeals to your own sense of fairness which isn’t universal.
How will things ever get better in their home nation if all the people who want a better life just… leave? Don’t you care about the suffering of those left behind equally?
There’s a reason why Libertarianism has never caught on anywhere: It is self-negating and suicidal.
Why not just remove the incentive in the first place? If there is no prospect of being able to gain permanent residency here, they won’t come in.
Bingo.
Enforcing immigration laws is not “just like the Holocaust.” That’s ridiculous. But it is holding people’s economic output at several times below where it would be in the absence of restrictions, and it’s wrong to use force to intentionally impoverish someone and prevent them from competing and living near you, for the same reasons as it would be wrong to do to your citizen neighbor.
Regarding anarchism. I find it much more constructive to lay out the facts and the logic and letting people come to their own conclusions. It doesn’t matter what my own conclusions are. Though I can see how it would be helpful for you to point out when you want to use that to let you and others disregard my points. It’s not a traditional one, but it’s the definition of an ad hominem. You’re bringing my identity into a discussion about policy. It is irrelevant to the correctness in my claims, it’s used to derail the conversation, and it’s lazy.
That’s progress, at least.
You can’t take things from people they never had in the first place. The differences between my citizen neighbor and a Guatemalan peasant are far greater than their immigration status. But you seem insistent upon treating people as “economic units” rather than holistic beings that bring baggage with them.
The truth is a defense. Your advocacy for birthright citizenship is mendacious because in any other context you’re opposed to the notion of citizenship. Please. I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.
This kind of statement doesn’t help and isn’t germane to the discussion. I expect better from you.
Do you seriously believe this?
Was there more or less illegal immigration after Simpson-Mazzoli, Jamie? I’m entirely certain there has been more. When you create incentives like that – lax enforcement, high likelihood of legalization – it seems unlikely that people won’t take advantage of it.
It was helpful and germane in context. And in my view, all too true.
If your goal is to antagonize rather than discuss then I guess you can derive some value, otherwise it just serves to annoy people that are participating in a rather good discussion.
Fine, I’m being bellicose.
However, the Platonic ideal of an anarcho-capitalist society is essentially impossible because it is outclassed at the society level by the nation-state. Not that the nation-state is all bad either.
Immigration: legal and illegal will continue to happen as long as America is a better place to live and succeed that elsewhere. Since America is the greatest nation on earth I doubt that ending birthright citizenship will have anything other than a marginal impact on immigration. The costs, however, could be immense in terms of a destruction of a shared national identity in favor of ghettoized identitarian groups with competing interests.
To call that “overdramatic” really doesn’t do your statement justice. You don’t get to have it both ways here: ending birthright citizenship (for foreigners…) will have a “marginal impact on immigration” or it will “destroy our national identity”?
There’s no doubt that America is and remains the greatest nation on Earth. But it was only made that way because of what amounts to a phenomenon of self-selection of exceptional minds and people. It’s continuation as the greatest implies that we ought to attempt to locate and invite the best and most exceptional… not just people who can somehow find their way in.
No. You can continue to take from people what has always been taken from them, or you could finally start to let them have what is rightfully there’s.
No, I treat them with basic human decency. Meaning I want them to make whatever decisions they deem best based on their own preferences, including economic considerations. Just because I don’t disregard economic incentives as valid reasons to act, doesn’t mean I’m only taking those incentives into account. But there’s this strange thing about most people. We usually ascribe it to leftists and socialist, but it really seems to be a deep human bias across the political spectrum. That is, that there’s something inherently unethical or just plain “icky” about the largest contribution to a decision being an economic one. Apparently, the only authentic choices we make are ones we make exclusively for “holistic” reasons, if there happens to be an economic benefit, then great! But the more economics comes into play the more “impure” the choice becomes. Disregarding people’s economic incentives as morally irrelevant is more dehumanizing than the erroneous claim that I am talking about people as if they are only “economic units.”
Your argument style can be so grating sometimes. The truth is not a defense of a logical fallacy, full stop. Please internalize that.
I’m not even sure I’ve advocated birthright citizenship on this thread. I’m advocating for letting people live here, irrespective of their status. If birthright citizenship lets more people do that, then fine. But the citizenship is much less valuable than permanent residency.
It is quite possible for the intended effects to be inconsequential but the unintended consequences to quite worse – this is one of the chief insights of most right of center politics.
How?
Your scenario seems to imply that ending birthright citizenship for non-residents will somehow devalue the citizenship that people already have, and which no one in this thread has advocated taking away. American citizenship is a valuable commodity; it should mean something. In any other situation we would all agree that valuable commodities should not be handed out freely to anyone who happens to show up. There is no scenario where the children of citizens will be denied citizenship, and the overwhelming majority appear to be in favor of expanding that list to include the children of legal permanent residents, so I can’t see any way in which your nightmare scenario occurs. If anything making American citizenship meaningful could strengthen our national identity.
Ad homimen is only a logical fallacy when the point being raised is irrelevant to the discussion. Your overall views on the nature of nationality and citizenship are not irrelevant.
Yeah, I wanted to find something to agree with you on Maj, but those two quoted statements are in no way mutually exclusive.
I didn’t ad hom you because I didn’t insult you. Are you or are you not an anarchist, Mike? I think it’s important to know where people sit before they tell me where they stand, because the correlation between those positions is typically pretty close to “1.”
You’re just making assertions without any backing. The traditions of nation-states which have endured for centuries are so unjust and evil in your Solomon-like wisdom? You, of all the people in the history of the world and lawmaking are the one we’ve been waiting for, apparently. Thank goodness.
There’s one of the assertions now. What is being taken from them which is rightfully their’s? Citizenship in our nation? Residency? They have neither of those things and they aren’t their right, legally, morally or historically. Their nations did not conquer ours and establish that border. Your assertion is rebuffed.
If the Israelis can (morally) build a barrier to keep out the Palestinians, we too can build a wall and have immigration laws which are far more lax and still be well within defensible moral grounds.
Completely true. I’m going to turn that around on you and say that the intended consequences of the Simpson-Mazzoli act were to legalize people who had come here to work, and that it’s unintended but entirely predictable consequence has been the incentivization of millions of people to come to our nation in anticipation of another round of amnesty.
Should we reward those people for being scofflaws?