[jjallen]

You can be pro/fine with legal immigration (and moderate/non-partisan) and still not think birthright citizenship is a good idea (like I do).

Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives.

Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things.

So yes, let's amend the constitution. It's been a while and we do it on average every ten years or so. I have personally not ever been involved in one.

[jfengel]

It's not really a question of what's a good idea. It is in the text of the Constitution, about as plain as it can possibly be. If you want to change it, you have to change the Constitition.

Ironically, the same Court members who most often claim the plain text of the Constitution to support their ideas are the ones who put the most effort into finding a tortured reading of the 14th Amendment.

[xhkkffbf]

I thought so too. Then I read the arguments about the passage of the amendment. The people passing clearly stated that, say, the children of ambassadors wouldn't be eligible. It was mainly aimed at clearing up the questions about the various Native Americans who may have considered themselves independent. It wasn't about opening the doors to anyone.

[wang_li]

It was about slaves. Native Americans didn't get birthright citizenship until the Native American Citizenship Act of 1924.

[jkachmar]

it was not (solely) about slaves; this was debated in Congress during the process of drafting the amendment and resoundingly put down by contemporary legislators.

from Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion:

> Senator Edgar Cowan, for example, argued that German immigrants’ children born in Pennsylvania should be citizens, but Chinese immigrants’ children should not—because Germans and Chinese were different. In response, Senator Trumbull emphasized that the law he had drafted drew no such distinctions. Undeterred, Senator Cowan would warn again—this time during debates on the Fourteenth Amendment—that the Citizenship Clause would let Chinese immigrants “overrun” California and “double or treble the population” of that State. Senator John Conness of California, where anti-Chinese sentiment was arguably most pronounced, responded that “the children begotten of Chinese parents in California . . . shall be citizens.” In fact, he said, the Civil Rights Act had already declared “that the children of all parentage whatever . . . should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States.” No Senator rose to agree with Senator Cowan or dispute what Senator Conness had said. And no Senator said what the principal dissent says today: that the text at issue conferred citizenship only on freed Blacks and those in analogous situations.

- - -

further down, Justice Jackson cites the most forthright example of how blisteringly ahistorical the Republican party’s arguments are on this topic:

> During the ratification debates, Senator Cowan took aim at the Roma people too, characterizing them as undeserving of birthright citizenship because they “wander[ed] in gangs,” “infest[ed] society,” and “impos[ed] upon the simple and weak everywhere.” And again, Senator Conness dismissed Senator Cowan’s prejudices: “The only invasion of Pennsylvania within my recollection was an invasion very much worse and more disastrous to the State, and more to be feared and more feared, than that of Gypsies. It was an invasion of rebels [at Gettysburg].”

[nonethewiser]

Please re read his comment. He’s saying the constitution should be amended.

[danorama]

I think it was edited to add that?

[jjallen]

No, it wasn't. I had it in there from the get go. I did not edit my comment for any reason, I don't think at least. Like I said in the original comment, you can be moderate/non-partisan and think this is a bad idea. You can think Trump's an idiot and still think birthright citizenship is a bad idea. That's all.

[mothballed]

SCOTUS has not had anything remotely close to a plain text reading since the 1930s and probably longer. "Shall not be infringed" was changed to "if an infantry rifle was made after 1986 then magically it can be infringed" and (until about a week ago when it was overturned) "if you smoke a left-handed cigarette actually the second amendment doesn't exist." The 1st amendment protects freedom of speech but yet it's legal to ban appeals to "prurient interest" even though no such exemption is mentioned. "Interstate commerce" has been changed to mean basically "commerce" and interstate is now interpreted as if it was put there for funsies since everything can be construed as affecting something else in the universe even though the historical context makes clear that's not how the text was interpreted by the writers.

Every other amendment including the 1st, 2nd, etc even when explicitly spelled out the courts magically pull something out of their ass to "torture it." Yet the 14th amendment birthright citizenship, who's "history and tradition" was to right the wrongs of slavery, somehow has to be read absolutely in black and white.

Personally I am amenable to the plain text interpretation of the 14th, 1st, and 2nd, but lets not pretend that is the game SCOTUS or even most of government and society is playing. The constitution is referenced more as a religious document by all the above to mean whatever it is they say it means.

[archagon]

An aside, but it’s a bit funny to focus on the plain-text reading of “shall not be infringed” and not “a well-regulated militia.”

[mothballed]

Give me a plain-text explanation as to why a well-regulated militia can be infringed from having a 1987 select fire infantry rifle but not a 1985 one, both of which are probably the most bread and butter arms you could possibly consider as part of a well-regulated militia. (This despite the plain-text ascribes the right to "people" not the militia, and in any case US code defines virtually every able bodied citizen male as part of the militia). The NFA determinations by SCOTUS don't make sense even if the amendment said it was the militia's right rather than the people's.

[FireBeyond]

So biological weapons are back on the cards then? As armaments doesn't mean "firearms" but "weapons of war".

[archagon]

Sure, one could make the argument that "shall not be infringed" is pretty cut-and-dry. I'm just not sure how one could make that argument while at the same time yadda-yaddaing the militia part, which is often what actually happens.

Anyway, I'm not sure I have a disagreement with your original point. It just seemed a bit funny to use the second amendment as an example of a thing that (supposedly) has unambiguous meaning, but gets interpreted politically by the courts. I'd argue that the ambiguity of that amendment is one of the most notorious things about it!

[mothballed]

Congress defines most every able body male as part of the unorganized militia and there is no public armory for them to store their arms (this only available to organized militia) at or use leaving only a private armory (consistent with historical at time of founding where private persons stored their militia weapon at home), so I'm not sure it makes much difference in practice whether the right ascribed to the people be connected to being a militia servicemember or not for the purposes of the example of owning a select fire infantry weapon.

Probably the main effect is to grant women and the more elderly the right to bear arms as well.

===== re: below due to throttling =======

>Congress defines… historical precedent… but we were talking about a plain-text reading of the Constitution.

That makes it easy then.

The plain text ascribes the right to the people not the militia so it's moot whether they're in the militia or not in such case to have the right to keep and bear arms.

[Supermancho]

Note: There are ~30ish countries that provide citizenship to anyone born within their national borders (many with restrictions, for whatever that may mean). Largely, this covers a spotting of countries across the globe, but is almost universally true within the Americas.

[graemep]

As far as I can see it is almost entirely countries in the Americas plus Pakistan that have real birthright citizenship. Everywhere else has some restriction such as stateless parents, or multiple generations born in the country, or a minimum period of residence or similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

[fmobus]

Hate to be that guy, but this a pet peeve of mine that pisses me of...

The term "birthright" means "a right that is derived from the circumstances of your birth". Virtually ALL countries grant citizenship by consequence of the circumstances of birth, but what circumstances they consider vary. For some countries, the circumstance is "birth happened in the soil of the country" (jus soli), for others, it's "birth was to parents who are citizens of our country".

I said "virtually", because there is one SINGLE exception. The Vatican. Ok, there's the SMOM, but do they even count?

[graemep]

In this context it is a synonym for jus soli - birth happened on the soil of the country.~

Birthright has a few other meanings in wider contexts: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/birthri...

Does it really matter if we add one more, especially as it is now a well established usage?

[cmbuck]

Yes it matters, because jus sanguinis is also a birthright and therefore "birthright citizenship" despite having no relevance to where you were born (jus soli)

[fmobus]

It matters. Because if the proposed executive order were to prevail, the US would effectively drastically change its citizenship assignment system, but it would still hinge on a right derived from a circumstance of your birth - a birthright. Essentially, it would move from "you are a citizen if you were _born_ in the country" to "you are a citizen if you were _born_ to a citizen".

[consensus1]

And how many of those countries have an illegal immigration problem? I bet that most of them would quickly remove that loophole if people actually started to exploit it.

[ryandrake]

Root cause it. The USA does not have an illegal immigration problem. It has a "huge, slow immigration bureaucracy" problem that makes the legal path so slow and difficult that people are incentivized to gamble on illegal paths.

[skulk]

Not even this. The USA has a labor shortage that is filled by workers who used to migrate seasonally until it was no longer allowed, thus creating a perverse system that encouraged business owners to look the other way and immigrants to stay instead of leave.

A long time ago, the southwestern part of the USA was Mexico, but a certain destiny manifested itself and changed that. It seems like this didn't affect day-to-day life due to a generous treaty for a while until some Americans decided they deserved the land there more than the people who were there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation#Cession_o... -- see the part about 1930 removals.

Obviously, the people who were kicked out were performing some useful economic function, so the USA decided to have it both ways: The Bracero program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program

This program of importing cheap labor had an expiration date, and it was allowed to expire in the 60s. Guess what happened then?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9017686/

> Despite the forced removal of Mexicans during the 1930s, as soon as the United States entered the Second World War, authorities approached Mexico to negotiate a binational treaty that arranged for the annual entry of legal workers for seasonal labor in U.S. agriculture (Galarza 1964; Calavita 1992). The resulting Bracero Program lasted from 1942 through 1964, and its effect on the likelihood of migration is readily apparent in Figure 3. Between 1940 and 1945 the probability of U.S. migration rose nearly seven times, going from 0.003 to 0.020 before leveling off briefly and then rising to new plateau of 0.029 from 1956 to 1959. In 1960 Congress began to phase out the Bracero Program, finally letting it expire at the end of 1964, bringing the probability of migration down to 0.017.

Why did they let it expire? presumably to increase demand for American labor. A laudable goal to be sure, but is that really what happened? Surely people stopped crossing the border to do labor here and Americans started getting hired more.

This whole thing is beyond messed up and the fact that this history is essentially erased (I wasn't taught this in school) absolutely boils my blood.

[SpicyLemonZest]

There exist a large number of legal pathways to permanent residency in the US, some of which do take unreasonably long; employment-based green card applications for Indian nationals famously have a decade-long waiting period. They should be reformed and improved.

But a big part of the problem is that many people do not have a legal pathway available to them, and either don't believe that or don't wish to accept it. So they spend years carefully pursuing every bit of due process they're entitled to, and those stories become part of the "slow immigration bureaucracy", regardless of whether the result was ever really in question. This is where immigration reform proposals have generally gotten bogged down; some people strongly feel we should resolve this by creating a general legal pathway, others feel we should resolve it by expediting removals, and both groups are very hesitant to agree to a proposal that doesn't resolve it at all.

[FireBeyond]

> There exist a large number of legal pathways to permanent residency in the US, some of which do take unreasonably long; employment-based green card applications for Indian nationals famously have a decade-long waiting period. They should be reformed and improved.

> But a big part of the problem is that many people do not have a legal pathway available to them, and either don't believe that or don't wish to accept it.

Even worse, there exist illegal to legal pathways, that come with risk but appeal: I came here on a K-1 fiance visa. A few years later, with my immigration attorney, as we compiled some documentation, I lamented the amount of money it had taken and she noted that it would have been both quicker, and cheaper, for me to come here on the VWP (Visa Waiver Program), which requires you to attest that you will not get married, get married anyway, and then work with an attorney to say "Oops, my bad, can I stay anyway".

That's just one example, just for my visa class. But there are absolutely many perverse incentives throughout the INS/USCIS/DHS quagmire.

[dmitrygr]

> a big part of the problem is that many people do not have a legal pathway available to them

I have no legal pathway to own the moon. That does not mean I get to just take it. Just cause you want something does not mean there must exist a way for you to get it...

[consensus1]

Having a difficult and selective immigration process that rejects the vast majority of applicants is not a problem. It is exactly how an immigration system should work. We want the best.

[Windchaser]

I'm personally happy to welcome anyone who's willing to come, work hard, pay taxes, and support democratic ideals. This is how most of our ancestors got here, and it seems fair to me that we continue to extend that offer to other would-be immigrants.

Worth noting that the economic literature also shows that this is firmly in our best interests, and immigrants and their children more than pay their way in future taxes and future entrepreneurship.

The US didn't even have a particularly selective immigration process for the first century. It was only after a big influx of Chinese immigrants (and a corresponding backlash) that we enacted our first immigration controls, limiting how many immigrants could come from a given country each year. The aptly-named "Chinese Exclusion Act" of 1882.

[treis]

The US today has the highest percentage of foreign born population since 1850 (I can't find numbers before that). If the US had truly open immigration we'd probably see several hundred million migrate and probably in the billions. What laws do today practicality did before.

[stackskipton]

Sure, let's have that debate then. I think what frustrates many US citizens is immigration is clearly broken but for various political reasons, Congress won't touch it. It's clear the system is at the breaking point.

>and immigrants and their children more than pay their way in future taxes and future entrepreneurship.

As someone who is involved in local politics, and encourages more people to be, this is true in long run BUT not in short term. This causes a ton of friction since localities which don't have unlimited debt power ends up eating the cost of this immigration.

Here is CBO source on this: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61464

[CGMthrowaway]

"Broken borders" is an oxymoron. Something we cannot tolerate. Borders, by their nature, are our definition as a nation and our protection as a country. Broken borders do not exist. We cannot tolerate them. Strong border control must be part and the first part of any comprehensive immigration reform. It's the obligation of our elected officials to keep the American people safe, and our borders are one of our early lines of defense to do that. It used to be our first and only line of defense, but in this age of technology, more is possible.

[consensus1]

The system that we had up until the late 1800s had a natural rate limiter in that the technology of the time made international travel so time consuming and expensive that immigration was simply an impossible pipe dream for the vast majority. It was also limited in impact on the native population because there were no welfare programs of any kind at the time, so an immigrant was never an expense item on the budget.

It may be your personal opinion that we should have the open borders policy you describe, and you are perfectly entitled to that, but here is mine. Your idea is borderline insane. Putting bleeding hearts in charge, who will allow things like this out of some compulsion that fairness demands we have the same immigration policy now as we did in the 1800s, is national suicide. I will continue to vote for anyone besides your side, even right wingers that I find repulsive, because I fear that someone on the left who lacks fundamental self preservation instincts will put in place policies like the ones you support.

[asdff]

To do what, pick strawberries and nail shingles?

[fckgw]

A right enshrined in the Constitution is not a "loophole".

[rilindo]

Most countries with a standard of living that even barely better than their neighbors have an immigration problem. There is a whole continent call Europe that is fighting off migrates and last I checked, birthright citizenship is not a thing there.

[Xeamek]

People who abuse birthright citizenships are, by definitions, not illegal immigrants. But even if you count all of them as 'unwanted' immigrants - how many % of total immigration to the US is result of those birthright laws?

[consensus1]

You are wrong about that. If an illegal crosses while pregnant, gets detained, and then gives birth the day after while in detention, that baby is 100% a US citizen.

[Xeamek]

if baby is 100% US citizen then how is that an 'illegal immigrant'? Again, you may call them 'unwanted', and you have right to such opinion. But law is what is written, if they got citizenship then they aren't illegal

[mothballed]

Think two steps ahead, people aren't born right out of the sky. It encourages people to illegally enter for their citizenship baby and the parents remain illegal until ~21 years later when they can have the kid sponsor them. In the meantime the parents get free WIC even if they're illegal.

[cosmicgadget]

Is that sufficient reason to overturn a constitutional amendment by executive order?

[mothballed]

No, the EO is dogshit malpractice of executive power. And the amendment is effectively impossible to amend in this day and age. We are stuck with birthright citizenship.

Realistically the only option we have that might work is shit-canning most welfare and incentives for non-productive immigrants to enter and make it pointless to pop out the kid unless you have a plan to make both them and yourselves productive members of society. Illegals showing up and popping out a kid and getting free WIC, claiming (stealing) the newborn citizen's welfare benefits, public schooling, chain migration via anchor baby etc are all going to have to be fixed through congress during some fluke period when the filabuster can be overcome.

[russdill]

Imagine being 18 and suddenly discovering you have to prove the citizenship status of a parent you've never met or else you'll be deported to a country you've never been to and who's language you don't speak

[MisterMower]

Imagine a country extending citizenship to a whole group of people for no reason other than the location of their birth, and then allowing said people to access the benefits of citizenship, including the ability to receive welfare benefits, vote, and run for office.

[danny_codes]

That sounds like a great idea. The more citizens of your country the better. Note that US citizens pay taxes no matter where they live. So it's not a free ride by any means.

[matthewdgreen]

I don't have to imagine it. I live there. It's the richest and most powerful country on the planet. I hope you get a chance to live here someday!

[cosmicgadget]

I live in that country which happens to be the global hegemon.

[wat10000]

Seems to work fine. Dozens of countries do this. It's not some weird hypothetical nor is the US some bizarre outlier.

[MisterMower]

The fact that a guy like Trump was ever elected in the first place would imply it is not working fine. Half of the electorate supports his anti-immigration policies. In an alternate universe where immigration laws were properly enforced he may never have been elected.

Further, just because something has never been an issue in the past doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future. The US is an outlier in being the only large and wealthy country that does this. Not many people are flying to Pakistan to give birth to secure Pakistani citizenship for their children.

[wat10000]

Are you saying birthright citizenship played a significant factor in getting Trump elected? Illegal immigration certainly did, but birthright citizenship played roughly no role from what I saw.

I'm not sure what you consider to qualify as large and wealthy, but most Western Hemisphere countries do it this way, including places like Canada, Argentina, and Brazil. If none of those qualify then you're getting awfully close to saying that the US is the only large and wealthy country, period.

You're right that it could have worked fine in the past but then become a problem. But if that's your argument, I'm going to need something a little more comprehensive than "imagine if things worked the way they actually do work in dozens of countries and have worked for longer than any of us have been alive."

[danny_codes]

But his base is largely not people benefiting from birthright citizenship (at least, not recently).. so if anything Trump would be an indicator that we need more immigration to counter the homegrown, um, MAGAts

[denismenace]

So you want to diminish the voting power of the native population through mass immigration?

Tell me how this rhetoric would not radicalize any normal citizen.

[pixel_popping]

There is no problem having mechanisms in place for edge cases where the child has been abandoned, parents both dead and so-on.

[russdill]

I appreciate that you can look at the current political climate and imagine that such edge cases would be handled in a compassionate way.

[throwawalien]

yes because DACA recipients do not live in fear of conservatives trying to remove them from their homes. (this)[https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/during...] was literally 3 weeks ago

[anthonypasq]

i dont agree with the person you are responding to, but theres a difference between not being a citizen and being deported.

[cosmicgadget]

This sounds dangerously apartheidy.

[voakbasda]

A belief held by the majority does not make it better simply for that fact. Not that long ago, the majority view was that slavery was a great thing, so I think you should see that argument falls fairly flat.

Offering birthright citizenship makes the US better than 95% of the other countries. Not worse.

[denismenace]

> Offering birthright citizenship makes the US better than 95% of the other countries. Not worse.

No arguments why its better, just stating it as if its fact.

Most countries do not have it because it creates many preverse incentives (such as anchor babies). This especially in countries which are targets of immigration (such as the US).

[ImJamal]

> Not that long ago, the majority view was that slavery was a great thing

A bit of a tangent, but is that actually the case? The highest estimate I have seen puts slave ownership at 5% of the population while the lowest puts it at 1%.

Obviously just because somebody doesn't own slaves doesn't mean they didn't support the system. There could be economic or legal reasons they couldn't own a slave.

I am just not sure that it was actually a majority view at any point in time in the US.

[recursivecaveat]

People are pretty expensive (they're literally worth a lifetime of free labor). 1 slave would've been like 3 complete years income for an average free white southerner to purchase, plus ongoing expenses obviously. So they basically end up in the hands of upper class people who have a steady need for lots of manual labor. Doesn't mean that everyone else around was not benefiting from the economic surplus, or was not supportive of the institution.

[glitchc]

The US has always been a country of immigrants; the Constitution recognizes and enshrines this fact. Amending this rule requires a federal supermajority (66% in House and Senate) or a state majority (66% of state legislatures vote in favor of said amendment). Given how difficult it is to find consensus on even the most banal issue, it's unclear whether there would be sufficient support to ever amend.

[tacticalturtle]

> Amending this rule requires a federal supermajority (66% in House and Senate) or a state majority (66% of state legislatures vote in favor of said amendment).

This is actually just the first step - to propose an amendment.

To ratify it requires 3/4 of the state legislatures (or state “conventions”) to vote in favor.

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution

[greggoB]

As a non-US citizen, birthright citizenship has always struck me as strangely unique to America - in my mind it comes from a time when it was actively trying to populate the continent (something not a lot of countries have wanted to do, I guess).

Roll forward a few hundred years and the context has changed, so it seems reasonable that the law should too? But I guess it shouldn't be surprising that this is no bueno for SCOTUS, which has an infinite hard-on for Originalism [0] - I certainly can't imagine the conservative justices are ruling based on humanitarian grounds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism

[eesmith]

Most countries in North and South America have unconditional birthright citizenship for persons born in the country.

I take it you are not British? The British Empire had birthright citizenship, and up until 1948 (except for Ireland) citizens of all Commonwealth countries were simply British subjects.

Afterward it was possible to be, for example, a Canadian citizen, but it was still the case that "Prior to the [the British Nationality Act 1981] coming into force, any person born in the United Kingdom or a colony (with limited exceptions such as children of diplomats and enemy aliens) was entitled to [Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies] status" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_Act_1981

[TimorousBestie]

Birthright citizenship is not unique to the United States, it’s common to certain kinds of former colonies.

[Windchaser]

I mean, it tracks with "no taxation without representation". Getting rid of birthright citizenship has the chance to create a separate *multi-generational* class of people that aren't given the same rights in society.

[graemep]

Most of the Americas for just that reason - and because the countries immigrants came from did not want their kids to have citizen ship and the right to come back.

[returningfory2]

Given the US is one of the most (the most?) successful countries in recent human history, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the 95% be looking at the US and seeing what to copy?

[qalmakka]

To be fair a lot of it had also to do with the sheer immense amount of vast, mostly unused ,fertile land available in north America. I sincerely doubt the American experiment would have worked this well if they had rowdy neighbours and infighting due to resource constraints. For almost 200 years the solution to most things in the USA was to get a chunk of either their people or immigrant to move to the neck of the woods to find fortune

[returningfory2]

But the success hasn't ended since the unused land became taken; in fact, the US became a superpower after the westward expansion era. My point is that looking at conditions today, the US still continues to succeed (by some definition of success) and other countries should try to emulate the aspects of the country that leads to that success. IMO one of the big factors is how well immigrants assimilate in the country, and birthright citizenship is a part of that.

I do agree with you that US success in the 19th century was due to many factors that are not relevant today.

[Windchaser]

Not getting wrecked in major land wars during the 1800s and 1900s also helped

[matthewdgreen]

We got wrecked in a major land war in the 1800s, just to be pedantic.

[insane_dreamer]

> sheer immense amount of vast, mostly unused ,fertile land available in north America

it was not "available", it only became "available" after we killed off nearly all the inhabitants and stole their land

[factcheckr]

This exaggerated lie always gets posted, but it's entirely inaccurate.

The Indians were nomadic hunter-gatherers who were sparsely distributed around the US and moved seasonally. Diseases killed the majority. Inter-tribal warfare was the second leading cause of death (tribes that had been fighting for generations with rocks and sticks got access to horses, steel blades and guns and became much more lethal) and deaths attributable to European settlers were negligible compared to the first two causes.

[insane_dreamer]

stop whitewashing it

yes, diseases killed the majority, but the diseases didn't come out of nowhere, they came from the European occupiers. and inter-tribal warfare killed plenty. but we're talking about theft of "available" land: the Europeans took the land from the remaining inhabitants, killing those who resisted, and deceiving those who submitted through treaties which they repeatedly broke, leaving the natives, by design, with the worst, most infertile land in the country

don't try to gloss it over and hand-wave it away -- yes, the natives were greatly diminished through the causes you mentioned, I never said the European occupiers killed them all, but it was genocide to finish them off and take all the land from anyone who resisted, effectively destroying their civilization

and stop calling them "settlers", they did not "settle" the land, they took it by force and deception

[greggoB]

Define successful?

(You'll probably want to avoid metrics like happiness indices and life expectancy though)

[AnimalMuppet]

At a minimum, it's been a place that people wanted to come to, more than they wanted to come to anywhere else in the world. That's successful as measured by people.

(Or at least, people wanted to come until the last couple of years...)

[pixel_popping]

I'm not sure it's true, that seems to be mostly for economic reasons (which might define success, arguably), but I bet a lot more people would dream about living let say in Thailand than in the US, they just can't because they don't have the means.

[returningfory2]

Fair point. Mainly I agree with the sibling comment: the revealed preference of many people around the world, including many people from the richest countries in Europe, is to move the United States and then settle permanently. I think that means a lot.

Obviously you can also say that the US is geopolitically successful because of its global military and diplomatic dominance, but I account zero value to this.

[dmitrygr]

Nobel prizes? Manned moon landings? Reserve currencies? AC units per capita?

[greggoB]

Are any of these stipulated as criteria anywhere?

There's also proportion of adult in prisons, people who believe in angels, and the mass-shooting high score

> AC units per capita

This gave me a laugh

[MisterMower]

Despite all of those things people still travel across the world to give birth in US just so their posterity can become a part of our country. What other metric do you need?

[greggoB]

Not everybody across the world is doing that in equal measure (I've not heard of a concerted effort by Europeans travelling to the US to give birth in contemporary times).

People migrate for economic opportunity. South Africa is not a rich country, but sees millions come in from the SADC for this reason, despite some pretty big social problems.

The US is nothing special, it's just a particularly large market of economic opportunity with a history of allowing in migrants. If China was significantly more migrant friendly, we'd see the same happen there. None of this specifies that the US has some secret recipe for success that papers over some of its obvious and glaring deficits.

[jfengel]

We don't really amend the Constitution every ten years. We got 10 all at once, immediately after the Constitution was written. They were amendments only because there was debate about whether including them would deprive people of even more rights by omission.

Of the remaining ones, two cancel each other out, and several others (including the most recent) are trivial. The Constitution has not been meaningfully amended in half a century, and it seems wildly unlikely that it ever can be.

[rchaud]

95% of countries weren't formed by settling on somebody else's land and excluding the original inhabitants from citizenship for several hundred years. The American project is what it is because of millions of migrants who settled there for the perverse incentives of free land via the Homestead Act.

[kdheiwns]

Constitutional amendments are generally made with the purpose of granting rights to the people, not taking them away. The US once made the mistake of making an amendment to take away rights (banning alcohol), but then another amendment restored the right to get drunk.

[5upplied_demand]

> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives.

I typically find that the people using this logic don't seem to apply it to laws like universal healthcare, parental leave, or paid-time off. The lack of those benefits creates perverse incentives to already living citizens, not hypothetical future citizens. Why not focus on them?

[danny_codes]

Birthright citizenship is one of the best things we have going for us. I see no reason why we should treat people differently depending on whether or not they have an imaginary stamp labeling them as special (IE, as citizens). Birthright citizenship ensures the problem of unequal representation is fixed over time. A self-fixing function, if you will.

[remarkEon]

I think what you mean to say is that as a result of this ruling the voice of Americans can be diluted over time so that your preferred political outcomes can happen. Not everyone in my country believes that the concept of the nation state is stupid and should be done away with. I understand that there are many who do think this, and I have to live amicably among them, but it doesn't mean that I need to pretend that your ideas are good for me and my kin.

[danny_codes]

Sounds like you want to have unequal representation. Or rather, you want to keep your privilege by preventing other people from gaining equal footing. You are right that this is a pretty central element of American society. However, I think we're at our best when we concede that this sort of thinking is counter-productive in the end. Cooperation is really the core mechanism for societal growth, so any efforts to prevent cooperation (in this case, by creating a subclass) is eventually self-defeating

[remarkEon]

So, again, America seems to be the only country where everyone else claims a positive right to enter and dictate what we do. You do not have this right. It never existed. You were convinced that it existed by a combination of overly generous federal spending and the center-left boomer generation winning a few elections here.

>Cooperation is really the core mechanism for societal growth

This is an interesting claim to make when almost all of the leaps forward in technology advancement came either during a war, as part of the lead up to one, or within the context of a cold war. Similar to the entryist problem, everyone demands cooperation from the United States, no one asks for partnership.

>in this case, by creating a subclass

This is literally the point of the concept of the Citizen. A Citizen is prioritized in their own country. A non-Citizen is not. Something happened with education because it feels like we have to go back to deriving the point of the nation-state from first principles.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It does mean you need to pretend that. Reagan has a famous quote about it.

I mean, it's a free country, nobody can make you accept an idea you don't want to. But the nativist ideas you've adopted are not considered by most Americans to be acceptable. If you go around telling people that immigrants aren't real Americans, you will not be accepted even in many conservative circles. Even much of the Trump movement views nativists as useful dupes; the Vice President and Secretary of State, for example, clearly would not welcome your theories that their kin are diluting "the voice of Americans".

[remarkEon]

You are wrong. My ideas aren't "nativist", they are the mean feeling on this subject for 250 years in this country. It has taken a tremendous amount of effort to convince people that things like "borders", "state sovereignty", and "being discerning about who you let into the country" is bad, evil even. That's why you think you can throw around the word "nativist" as a pejorative. I don't like Ronald Reagan for many reasons, and I don't know which quote you are referring to (though I can venture a guess), so I'm not sure what the point of that appeal is. Like I said, if you think that it's good to dilute the voice of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations by pretending that people who got here 15 minutes ago have the same values that's fine. But you won't get me to agree with you. If you want the country to be more left wing and increasing immigration gets you closer to that goal, just say that, it's cleaner.

[SpicyLemonZest]

There simply does not exist a substantial political movement of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations. It can't, because the vast majority of Americans do not satisfy this criterion. My own family is homegrown by any conceivable standard, but we've "only" been here for six generations, although perhaps we might go around telling people it's twelve if we didn't have the records.

And again, I'd really like you to consider the honesty of the people who've told you this is a thing. In your readings about this movement to protect the voices of people who've been here for a dozen generations, did they ever mention to you that the current President is a third-generation immigrant and the Secretary of State is second-generation? If not, why do you think they didn't?

[remarkEon]

I don’t understand your point. Is it that because Marco Rubio is Cuban I need to accept unlimited immigration, forever? This isn’t a position held by anyone in this administration, recent immigration history or not. My point is actually really narrow. The actual political movement with power and influence wishes to increase immigration to dilute the voice of the people already here, because the people already here do not vote in the way that the movement prefers and the immigrants do. Your condescending tone aside, I think it’s very easy to observe that my observation is correct because I can do things like “drive around my hometown” or “visit a major city” and the difference between today and, say, 1999 would make the conclusion obvious.

[busyant]

> if you think that it's good to dilute the voice of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations by pretending that people who got here 15 minutes ago have the same values that's fine.

That smacks of entitlement. Yes. I know that the other side of the argument also smacks of entitlement. But I believe I have the 14th amendment on my side.

Also, there are a lot of assumptions baked into your statement. If you think that everyone here who can trace their roots back "a dozen generations" has your ideals, well, I've got $24 worth of trinkets to sell you.

Conversely, if you think that everyone here who is newly immigrated does not share your ideals, well, I have more trinkets.

The Mythology of America that I bought into was that it was a welcoming place where you could re-invent yourself in a way that was rarely possible in the country your were leaving.

And yes. I know it's a mythology--with kernels of truth to it.

But you have your own Mythology--and I find it unpalatable, both to me and my immigrant parents.

[remarkEon]

Nothing I am saying conflicts with this mythology of yours. I think the part of mythology that does not get told often enough is that every instance of large scale immigration into this country has resulted in strife and violence. The Ellis island stories, for example, were largely embellished and were done so after the fact, and it took the Second World War to finally integrate the different groups that came here over the preceding decades. The problem I have with the immigration of today is that the levels of cultural distance are much, much higher than Ellis island. America is the only country in the world where people who do not live here and have no connection to it claim a positive right to enter. I don’t blame them for wanting to enter, and you should not blame me for having the disciple to say no.

[triceratops]

> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship.

Closer to 82% actually, depending on how you count countries. Almost every country in the Western hemisphere has it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

[neuronexmachina]

> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship

The map of which countries have jus soli is pretty interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

>Jus soli is the predominant rule in the Americas; explanations for this geographical phenomenon include the establishment of lenient laws by past European colonial powers to entice immigrants from the Old World and displace native populations in the New World, along with the emergence of successful wars of independence movements that widened the definition and granting of citizenship, as a prerequisite to the abolishment of slavery since the 19th century.[5]

>There are 35 countries that provide citizenship unconditionally to anyone born within their national borders.

>

[Breza]

The United States is different from 95% of countries. We're the place you are supposed to flee to when those other countries oppress you. That's just not the history of a place like Italy or Japan.

My great great grandparents left Quebec in search of a place where they could earn enough money to make it. They immigrated to America. They lived in communities of other Quebec emigrants and spoke French their whole lives. They never pursued American citizenship. Without birthright citizenship, would my great grandma have been American? OK then what about my grandpa? What about me? I'm not sure if any of my immigrant ancestors formally pursued American citizenship.

[nojito]

>It creates perverse incentives.

It also helped vault America into being the wealthiest country in the world.

[verdverm]

> It creates perverse incentives

Perhaps advantageous, America has been the product of these incentives and still sits atop the world on most hegemon metrics. It amazes me how many people complain about the post-WW2 world order America built and benefits from more than any other country.

[Ar-Curunir]

The US is unlike most other countries in that it is built on the recent genocide of the native population, with ~most of the current population being immigrants in the last 400 years.

Under what moral rules do genocidaires get citizenship but not, say, refugees?

[insane_dreamer]

> Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship.

most of the countries in the Americas do

> let's amend the constitution

go ahead and give it a try. I'd start with getting rid of the 2nd Amendment, then we can talk about the 14th.

[nikanj]

Do you have US citizenship? How did you acquire it?

If you inherited it from your parents, how did they acquire it?

Usually strong opponents to birthright citizenship are just a few generations removed from someone who got theirs via birthright.

[arjie]

I, for one, believe in American exceptionalism. This country is different in many ways and its success is due to that difference. I don't think that the US should actively aim to "revert to the mean".

[goatlover]

Why do you think it's not a good idea?

[jobs_throwaway]

Why should I give a shit what 95% of other countries do? 99% of other countries are worse in every way that matters

[stackbutterflow]

There's about 193 countries in the world, your number would mean there's less than two countries that are better in every way that matters.

I can name ten countries off the top of my head that are better in every way that matters to me.

The USA ranks near the bottom of developed countries in every metric but the metrics related to money.

[zeroonetwothree]

US is 23rd in happiness globally which is far from the bottom. For example UK, France, and Italy all rank lower.

So your claim is wrong.

[sanderjd]

This has nothing to do with whether it is a good idea. The question is whether the 14th amendment plainly says that this is the law of the land in the US, which it plainly does.

That three Justices chose to attempt to gaslight us about this is a disgrace. I'll never trust their judgement again.

[nonethewiser]

Its a terrible idea to give citizenship to the chidlren of birth tourist. It makes no sense that someone defrauds the US government to get their child citizenship then you do nothing about it.

[kemayo]

Is it "defrauding" if someone's just following the rules, though? And, at that, is it worth building your citizenship rules around something incredibly rare? (Estimates seem to think it's something like 15k babies a year.)