Yes, it would be a catastrophe and result in any number of unforeseen consequences. As you point out above, however, Trump is not concerned with such things, and there are plenty of people who would likely be lined up to try and give it a go.
For example, I think Peter Thiel and any number of tech bros would be eager to lend a hand in tracking the preferred jus sanguinis.
I don’t think it’s likely that the Supreme Court would go along with it, but I think it is a real possibility, and that isn’t something you could have seriously thought ten years ago,
You can’t rewrite holy texts but you can reinterpret them to mean what you want. While many other countries have no problem with rewriting their constitutions, USians treat theirs as a holy text and reinterpret it in the same way.
I’m not sure rewriting the constitution is better idea either. Article V Convention is such a serious threat with how much dark money in politic right now. The moment it happens, all bets are off. Corporations will rewrite it to make US literal serf country, even more than it’s already, and they will put the Facists in charge to suppress opposition to maintain their serfdom.
The US must be one of the few democratic countries where rewriting the constitution would be likely to result in weaker rather than stronger protections for fundamental rights. It is surely the only country whose written constitution is so old that interpreting it involves arguing about the intent of men who lived over two hundred years ago and owned enslaved people.
Actually it doesn’t. That’s just a lie told by fascist scumbags who want to pretend various civil liberties don’t exist. It never involves that. It is never done. All what happens is conservatives come to a given conclusion and then look for excuses to justify it.
This neatly summarizes why I left the US. I used to think the US Constitution was one of the better ones around and genuinely believed in it. Eventually I learned that the document is irrelevant. All that matters is the people who interpret it and whether they have evil intent or not. The epiphany for me on this point was Citizens United. The fact that five seemingly objective, educated justices could look at the First Amendment and decide it means corporations can spend infinitely to corrupt elections floored me. That was when I said to myself, “oh…it’s all lies. The whole US system is lies. None of it means anything”. Plans to leave began forming slowly after that.
Yeah the same people who say they can tell how old the earth is, how many races of people exist in it, and which ones are ok to enslave, all just from reading the Bible, are the ones reading the constitution.
I realized at a young age that since colonial times the US has propelled itself to the forefront of the world purely though propaganda. The idea of the American dream is a smoke screen that allows those that don’t know any better to buy into it, and while the country does give people genuine opportunities it’s really not the intellectual and social utopia it says it is. In a way i see it almost as some sort of sociopolitial pyramid scheme.
It’s easy to see it’s all a lie seeing how minorities and immigrants are treated, how the US deals with territories, and the US’ meddling in the middle east and latin america.
That’s a good way to put it. The thing is, also, that so many other countries are way better at “the American dream” than America is. More open immigration, stronger middle classes, just as many opportunities for self-made people to succeed, etc. In fact it’s easier in places like Canada because I can be a self-employed entrepreneur and still get healthcare. That was part of why I left too- I wanted to start this small business (which is supposed to be America’s whole thing) but there was no way for me to get decent healthcare, and a woman my age can’t go without. All the businesses in America are started by rich people or by 25yo old men who don’t need healthcare. I don’t understand why nobody in America ever frames private healthcare as a disaster for entrepreneurship, because that’s what it is.
While America closes its borders ever tighter, Canada has set a minimum target of 500,000 immigrants per year from now on. America talks a good game, but that’s all it is.
Anyways, I guess we’re drifting off topic here so I’ll leave it there.
Yes, but that’s also where my husband would like to live (like seriously, any time some remote island pops up online or in a TV show or something in either Scotland or Ireland, even some rocky outcrop, he’s like - “our new home!”)… I’d hate to have a Trump nearby!
As I think has been said before, for citizens born in the US there is no single such system. Birthright citizenship means that a birth certificate is sufficient proof of citizenship*, and those aren’t issued by the Federal government but by local (not necessarily even State) governments.
They also have no record of the parents’ immigration status at the time of birth. Mine does give my parents’ places of birth, but there is no indication of whether my foreign-born parent was a naturalized citizen, a lawful permanent resident, a visitor/temporary resident, or undocumented.
Possibly in the event of an executive order some jurisdictions might voluntarily start demanding proof of legal presence from a parent in order to issue a birth certificate, but by no means all would.
There is a weird edge case exception for a child of parents who are both accredited foreign diplomats, but in practice a lot of those children apparently obtain (PDF warning) US citizenship anyway as there’s no system in place to stop them.
