What Trump meant to say is that he’d like to become like those other countries that have eliminated birthright citizenship.
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There’s almost no conceivable legal theory under which they could actually do this. And like the Muslim ban if faces the problem that Trump just announced to the world that his intention is to countermand the Constitution. Except he said it himself, and he said it even more explicitly.
There’s very little reason for the SC to even take up a challenge. They’ll just pass and let lower court rulings stand. It isn’t just that Trump needs a legal fiction to float this this. The Supreme court need some sort of Constitutional question to even bother addressing it. There needs to be something for them to decide. It so clearly violates the plain language of the 14th amendment lower courts will in all likelihood toss it out pretty readily. The Supreme Court wouldhave trouble finding an excuse to take it up even if they didn’t want to avoid the controversy.
So frankly I don’t see this making it that far unless a district court rules it valid in whole. And this isn’t like the Muslim ban or gay marriage. It’s not an issue of interpretation or president or legal theory.
It’s plain direct language, with clear meaning and intent.
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Apparently what Trump (aka Stephen Miller) is trying to hinge this whole thing on is the ‘jurisdiction clause’: “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.” What they’re trying to argue is that undocumented immigrants are illegal and thus not subject to the jurisdiction of the state where they live, and therefore jus soli should not apply to them. It’s an old anti-immigrant right wing demand that is 100% bullshit but might actually get this to the Supreme Court.
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The problem is, the Kavanaugh Supreme Court could actually reinterpret the 14th to give Trump what he wants, Dredd Scott style, once this case hits their desk.
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Five years ago, I’d have agreed with you wholeheartedly. But let’s say that RBG doesn’t make it through the next year and Trump gets another pick on the court. Do you have any confidence that Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, and another Justice Trump picks wouldn’t be willing to at least consider “exceptions” to birthright citizenship that take into account national security and give the Executive broad discretion given the threat that illegal immigrants pose to our way of life? And once that door is cracked with qualifiers like requiring at least one parent be a citizen (which Steve King has been proposing in the House for years) and minimum residency requirements, the game is over.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d never argue in a million years that such a move would be anything other than a blatant subversion of the plain text and intent of the Constitution that more than half of the judiciary would be horrified by, but I just don’t know that such a thing is unthinkable in these contexts any longer.
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And in America, who gets to have “American” blood? No, I’m just fine with birthright citizenship, because we all deserve to have protections under the law, not just someone with some nebulous "blood’ connection to a piece of land. We need to move to a model where we all have citizenship rights based on our existence as human beings, not based on something arbitrary as our blood or our place of birth. Our goal should be to grant all people on this planet the rights that people keep fucking harping on, but don’t seem to actually care about in practice - equal protection under the law, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness… it’s not hard to do, but as long as we keep doubling down on whatever stupid form of us-vs-them mentality, we can’t get there.
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Indeed, he already had one case in front of the SC court about stripping citizenship, and Gorsuch voted against. Not even close to passing.
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If Trumpski wants to declare that undocumented immigrants are not subject to the law of the land, he should order cessation of immigration law enforcement on them. We could call it… DACA
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Yet again, Trumplethinskin gives zero shits about the law. He cannot override the Constitution with an executive order. This is as illegal as kidnapping the children of immigrants.
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And this is why you don’t give the office of the President more authority than the Constitution gives it. Yeah, it’s great when the person in that office isn’t a narcissistic fascist windbag, and he or she can accomplish goals with which you agree. But then, the narcissistic fascist windbag shows up.
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Maybe what he wants is some form of “Blood and Soil” sort of thing. Maybe what he needs is folks marching around chanting about that. Maybe throw in a few tiki torches for atmosphere? Just a suggestion… (/s)
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And yet, Scalia claimed that “any person within its jurisdiction” doesn’t apply to women or gays.
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Let me present a chart representing people saying “Fuck that noise!”
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The “blood” for Jus sanguinis is based on citizenship as legally defined. So by definition that would be protection under the law. It isn’t some nebulous 23 and me type thing.
So like in the UK you could have immigrants from India become citizens, and their kids then would have UK citizenship based on their parents being UK citizens. And that kid could get “over seas citizenship” for India. Done right it can be more inclusionary (is that a word?), vs exclusionary.
The US already has Jus sanguinis in certain circumstances. Like if you had a baby while on vacation in Europe and the parents had American citizenship, the child also has US citizenship. I think one would agree that is a good thing.
And again, my speculation on the change COINCIDES with both immigration reform and an increase in social services. Basically adopting the European model. If neither of those two things are done, I see little reason to change Jus Soli.
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I’m missing something.
If someone doesn’t sue over it, it remains an executive order that can be repealed by a future president.
If someone does sue over it, then either:
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it’s overturned by the the courts; or
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it’s upheld by the courts, but surely still remains an executive order that can be repealed by a future president.
I mean, his Muslim ban EO was (IIRC) ultimately upheld by the courts, but that doesn’t stop a future president reversing it.
Where am I going astray?
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Was it though? I can think of millions of people that our country has run roughshod over who would disagree, assuming they could speak up and be heard from their graves.
I’ll grant that it was an interesting experiment, with a lot of potential as long as corrupt hands were kept far from the wheel, but “nice”? I just don’t know about that.
Also, this guy must be fucking stopped. The longer it takes for Mueller to do anything, the more I think he’s never going to do anything.
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I think that era started in 2001, when habeas corpus no longer applied to people detained in a war unlimited in space and indefinite in time, torture was rebranded as enhanced interrogation techniques, and due process was reduced to the President saying “K, sounds like a terrorist” before authorising your execution by drone strike.
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There’s no guarantee jus soli would be replaced with jus sanguine, either.
Since we seem to be hurtling towards Nazi Germany, it seems an apt comparison. They basically had three categories: Citizens, Subjects, and Aliens. Only Citizens had full rights. Birth only made you a Subject who had no voting rights and couldn’t hold office. Aliens from other countries had no rights at all.
Citizenship was only granted to ethnically German males who had competed military service or women who married a citizen or worked independently. And of course, to be granted citizenship, you also had to take a loyalty oath to the State. If you were found to have broken your oath, your citizenship could be revoked at any time.
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It generally refers to people who “belong” to a particular nation- in the case of Germany who had Jus sanguinis laws on the books until pretty recently, it was routinely employed to DENY citizenship rights to the children of Turkish guest workers - people who were born and raised IN germany, spoke German as their native language alongside Turkish, who went to German schools, got a German education, etc. But they weren’t GERMAN because they had the wrong BLOOD. So yes, it’s reguarly employed to keep out people of particular races or nationalities. Same with Japan - people who have lived in Japan for several generations (Koreans, especially) are routinely denied citizenship rights, despite having lived there all their lives.
My info on the German example is here, where she deals with guest workers in both West and (to a lesser extent) East Germany:
She’s pretty clear on how these laws were explicitly deployed as a means of keeping out Turks from citizenship…
So, you still have to deal with WHO is an American and then define that. It might seem clear to you and me, but THIS WOULD BE USED TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST PEOPLE OF COLOR, especially under the current administration. I know you’re aware of this.
Again, it’s been employed as a means of discrimination, so no, let’s NOT do that.
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Expect a big update within a week of the midterm reaults.
It has been said that Mueller is the kind of government servant who would not want to influence election results for any reason. And indeed, his whole team has been very silent for a while.
OTOH tempering your expectations now might be wise.
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