4 ms·
> This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. There are already some li
by koolba 2y ago
> This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles.
There are already some limitations on birthright citizenship, for example we do not grant it to children born to diplomats visiting the USA. It's not an unreasonable position to limit it to legal immigrants.
Foreign embassies are considered US soil for jurisdictional purposes. If an army forced their way in to an embassy so that their pregnant battalion could deliver their babies within the embassy, should they get citizenship? If it doesn't apply to the embassy, how about if they do the same thing to a small island controlled by the USA or even the southern USA border?
- worstspotgain 2y agoYou're right, I can picture this. A pregnant battalion of the Mexican army breaches the border and invades the US to give birth, 18 years later the kids are employed cleaning American bathrooms. Mexico wins and America is not great once again.
- pkaye 2y ago> There are already some limitations on birthright citizenship, for example we do not grant it to children born to diplomats visiting the USA. That's largely because the US is a signatory of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. Children of foreign diplomats born in the United States are not automatically granted citizenship because they are not considered subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
- pkaye 2y ago> ...repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. Australia did the exact thing. Switch from Jus Soli to Jus Sanguinis. Some Jus Sanguinis countries have switched to some hybrid system that allows legal immigrants to get citizenship at birth.
- worstspotgain 2y agoAustralia also has Vegemite and the Sydney funnel web spider. No desire to imitate those either. There's no reason to punish US-born babies just because their parents committed a misdemeanor jumping the border fence. If they're born here and grow up here they're as American as anybody else, descendants of the Mayflower border-jumpers included. To undertake the process of a constitutional amendment just to deny them that is one of the most racist policies being debated in this country since Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.
- Vecr 2y agoMake jumping the fence a felony then?
- bennifer2 2y agoDeport the children of felons? Ok but the only country willing to take Eric has frigid winters. He might not make it.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoYes, this and also just prevent the fence jumping in the first place. It's not an intractable problem, we do have the means to secure our borders.
- panick21_ 2y agoLegal immigration has already been reduced to almost nothing anyway. > If an army forced their way in to an embassy so that their pregnant battalion Most people prefer to live in the real world rather then in absurdist fantasy land.
- koolba 2y agoAbsurdist fantasies are to prove a point that some limits exist. The question then becomes what said limits are.
- panick21_ 2y agoThat limits exist is usually not that interesting to point out. Nothing is unlimited. It doesn't usually matter that much for practical policy. But it doesn't matter anyway because heat death of the universe.