The pasport is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement. You have to have it to get in, but it doesn’t guarantee getting in.
I don’t think he’ll be able to apply this to anyone who is ALREADY a recognized citizen. And probably not even to anyone who isn’t, but has already been born. This because as has been pointed out before, a hurdle here is that the birth certifications in the US are not centralized but are issued by the states and even in some by the counties, with their own respective standards, and virtually all those issued to this day do NOT register citizenship or migratory status of the parents. ANY parents.
In the regular course of life in the US, citizenship status is presumed until and unless there is a requirement to show proof, and up to now under the 14th Amendment, the certified evidence of birth within the boundaries of the state or territory had been good enough for those born in the land.
ISTM if this were to change in an effective manner, it would entail an enormous unfunded mandate to states and counties to start gathering that information and placing them in certificates from now on and will likely force them to create the birth certificate equivalent of the non-Real-ID license.
For a start, they could demand whatever it is that jus sanguinis countries do, such as proof that your parents were citizens at the time of your birth (and maybe also even more remote ancestors, depending on how far back the current administration wants to go). If you don’t have your parents’ birth or naturalization certificates, that’s almost certainly your problem and not the passport office’s. (Can’t you just request copies from the registrar? I had to do this to prove my own citizenship when applying for a passport from a jus sanguinis country.)
Wong Kim Ark is one of our most settled precedents. Bills to reverse it have been introduced in Congress a half-dozen times, and none has ever made it beyond committee. Trump promised to reverse it executive order in 2018 and never bothered. Even Clarence Thomas, who never met a liberal interpretation of a law that he wasn’t prepared to excoriate in a dissent that had nothing to do with the issues before the Court, has never publicly criticized Wong Kim Ark.
I am not sure that birthright citizenship is a good policy, but it would be nearly impossible to get rid of it without a major shift in public opinion.
I’m pretty sure, however, you have the right as a citizen to return to the country. So it must have happened at some point that a person who does not have a passport got out, and then got back in.
That is, if a passportless US citizen shows up at a border crossing, there’s got to be a way (likely a painful one) that they can get back in.
If my birth certificate is not proof of my citizenship, why would my parents’ birth certificates be proof that they were citizens?
But it’s not just about passports, based on what Trump is saying. He’s talking about deporting non-citizens. How does a person prove citizenship to prevent deportation if a birth certificate is not valid proof?
In this age where identity theft is such an issue, many registries have tightened up their rules so that only the person whose name is on the birth certificate, or an executor, can request the copy. So I can easily get my birth certificate. I may be able to get my Dad’s, since I was co-executor. May be difficult to get my Mom’s, since Dad was her executor.
But again, what good is that, if birth certificates are no longer valid proof of citizenship?
In Canada, Canadian citizens have a right under the Charter to re-enter. Absence of a passport can’t defeat a constitutional right. There would have to be alternative ways to get back in, as OldOlds suggests for the US.
This is one of the few broad rights (e.g. not a minority language right) I can think of that is specifically spelled out in the Charter than the US does not have in the Bill of Rights. It’s VERY clear, and is not even subject to the notwithstanding clause; a Canadian can leave or enter the country.
It strikes me as being an obviously fundamental right.
If they’re not subject to the jurisdiction of US law, then they can’t be deported, now can they?
That would be up to whoever writes (or interprets) the law. I can envisage them deciding that, at least for now, citizenship can be presumed for anyone holding a birth certificate issued at least n years ago, for some conveniently large n.
There are, in fact, countries that have already done almost exactly this. For example, when Latvia declared its independence from the USSR, it recognized as its citizens only those who had been, or were descended from, those who held Latvian citizenship in 1940. A million or so residents, perhaps the majority of whom had actually been born in Latvia, suddenly found themselves potentially or actually without Latvian citizenship. If you were born in or moved to Latvia after 1940, the onus was on you to prove that your parents (and possibly also grandparents, etc.) were citizens. A lot of people in this situation couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and so either left the country, or else stayed put as politically disadvantaged non-citizen residents while pursuing various legal remedies that to this day have not been fully resolved.
In this age where identity theft is such an issue, many registries have tightened up their rules so that only the person whose name is on the birth certificate, or an executor, can request the copy.
If it suddenly becomes a legal requirement for “legitimate” citizens to produce birth certificates for their immediate ancestors, I’m sure the registries will change their rules, almost certainly voluntarily but if necessary by court order. It’s not like this sort of thing is unheard of in other jurisdictions—I was able to order a copy of my mother’s birth certificate without her participation, and yet her country of birth doesn’t seem to have any more of an identity theft problem than the US does.
By that logic, neither can the soldiers of an invading army. Fortunately, that’s not what “subject to the jurisdiction” actually means.
Skin color. This is about race war, not immigration. No amount of documentation will help if you have the wrong skin color, nobody will bother looking at it.
The Supreme Court will say they can.
If the Supreme Court is able to say they can be deported, they must be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, therefore they’re citizens and can’t be deported.
That isn’t even logical based on CURRENT law, which you know, as you know full well that, say, the family of a diplomat can be turfed out of a country even though they’re literally the ones that section of the 14th Amendment was written about.
But you’re missing the point anyway; what YOU think isn’t relevant. What the Supreme Court says is relevant. And they will agree with Trump.
So you’re saying the children of undocumented immigrants have diplomatic immunity?
trump just ended birthright citizenship by executive order.
No, he didn’t.
No, you need to pay closer attention.
Diplomats’ children re not subject to US jurisdiction in the sense the 14th amendment means that term. So they don’t get birthright citizenship.
The Trumpist lawyers will simply say that this is also true of the children of illegal immigrants.
The Supreme Court will agree.
So the Supreme Court will grant the citizen children of immigrants diplomatic immunity.