Living in the Republic of Ireland myself, this country voted to abolish the right of citizenship by being born on Irish soil regardless of the parents immigration status in 2005.
As a foreigner who had some friends that came around the same time as me and had a child that isn’t Irish since they were studying, it saddened me that he would have to take a ‘third world’ citizenship however in a way I saw that it was fair
If the most EU states, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland had birthright citizenship like the United States, an underclass of people would be created. Supporters claim that children can assimilate better and I have no doubts that not everyone who has a baby is a ‘low class scum’ who wants to scrounge off benefits, but it’s inevitable that problems with social welfare, and allocation of resources in education, housing, and employment will arise.
I don’t know whether it’s the same situation in the US. Perhaps it’s a benefit to the economy but I’m waiting to see whether Donald Trump seeks to abolish it.
You’d need a constitutional amendment to change that in the US. The president can lobby for an amendment, but plays absolutely no part in the actual process of amending the constitution. That is up to Congress and the states.
It is very difficult to get an amendment passed to the US constitution.
Although there is a vocal minority for such a thing, they are a minority. Most people either don’t care or favor birthright citizenship. After all, it’s something we’ve had from the beginning of our nation.
No, I don’t that that is going to happen in the US.
Non-citizens born in Ireland will become that “underclass” you fear unless you eject them immediately. Especially if you deny them education, jobs & places to live. Are the “foreigners” you’re discussing visually different from Irish? (“Third world”–I’m guessing yes.)
I’m quite sure some of Trump’s supporters want to get rid of birth-right citizenship; he’s got some real doozies. Even some of his fans regard it as an American tradition, which it is. Ending it would be a fairly radical proposal & would require amending the Constitution.
(I’m descended from numerous Irish scum immigrants. As are many, many Americans.)
Unlikely. The first hurdle would be to get it going in Congress to begin with, and it’s not really something that at the top of many folks’ list of issues. So, not only do I think it wouldn’t pass, I don’t think it will be brought up to a vote in the first place.
An opposition to birthright citizenship, where it existed previously, seems to arise from a fear of being “overrun” and that the social infrastructure will be overtaxed. A place like the US of A is at no risk of being “overrun” but one can see how smaller societies may fear becoming overburdened. But what applies to children of immigrants applies to children of “native” disadvantaged classes, does it not?
Right (but there’s always a “but”, see after*) - birthright citizenship is an implicit incentive for integration of the succeeding generations. That those who immigrated may not assimilate fully is not so much of a problem as is that their children and grandchildren be kept in a state by which expulsion to a place they’ve never seen, whose ways they never learned and whose language they no longer speak hangs over their heads permanently. If the message you want to send is, “come and study/work here, but get the *&^% out as soon as your business is done” then you need is policies that do not encourage or abide people sticking around indefinitely in a conditional status, and make it so longtime productive law-abiding residents can naturalize.
And if part of the notion is that a policy of denying services, rights and benefits to the noncitizen would force them to leave, that does not work, especially if every other country adopts the same policy so they have nowhere to go.
(*)The “but” of course is that being a birthright citizen by itself does not mean you are well taken care of. If the culture allows exclusionism by ethnicity (see: African-Americans) or by class (see: rural whites in Appalachia), “birthright citizenship” does not protect you from becoming underclass (and the underclasses existed BEFORE there were public benefits to be eligible for).
There are two paths to amending to US constitution laid out in Article V of the constitution:
Path One
Both the Senate (67 of 100 Senators) and the US House or Representatives (290 of 435 Representatives) pass an amendment by a two thirds majority. They then send it to the states for ratification by legislatures*. Path Two
The legislatures of two thirds of the states (34 of the 50 state legislatures) apply to Congress for a Constitutional Convention. A Constitutional Convention is then held. As this method of amending the Constitution has never been used it is a bit unclear how the process would play out.
Then at the state level
Whether by Path One or Path Two, the legislatures of three fourths of the states (38 of 50 states) OR a convention in three fourths of the states vote to approve the amendment by a simple majority vote. Where we stand in Congress
The Republicans hold narrow majority in the US Senate (likely to end up 52 to 48). And this is perhaps the major impediment to passing an amendment out of Congress. Flipping 15 Democratic Senators to support any amendment put forth by Republicans seems unlikely.
In the House of Representatives the Republicans are likely to hold a 241 to 242 seat majority (pending runoffs and a couple races not yet called). That would require support from 48 Representatives from the Democratic side of the aisle to pass an amendment out of Congress. Where we stand in state legislatures
After the 2016 elections Republicans hold majority control of both houses** of the legislature in 33 states. And there are two more states where the legislative control is split and Republicans hold majority in one house.
So flipping one Democratic controlled house of one state legislature would give enough votes to potentially call a Constitutional Convention. The 2018 midterm elections may tilt those numbers.
So it would require some cooperation of a few Democratic controlled houses of state legislatures to push through an amendment, but not many.
Note, the executive branch (president or governor of a state) has no formal roll in amending the Constitution.
** Or in the case of Nebraska the unicameral legislature which is in Republican control.
I don’t think the international record on people born in a country not being citizens of that country is very good. Ethnic Turks in Germany come to mind, but that’s still pretty mild compared to the treatment the Rohingya people (ethnic Muslims with historical ties to Bangladesh) get in Burma.
To me, it looks like the state declaring certain ethnicities as undesirable, and when has that ever ended well?
You’re assuming that all Republicans would favor such an amendment, which is not true. Also, there is a uuuuuuuge impediment to calling a Constitutional Convention as it would potentially open up everything for re-writing, not just the area of interest.
I thought the U.S. was in a real “burn the system, try something else” kinda mood. Don’t wimp out, go for broke!
…
ETA: Huh… on serious reflection, isn’t this the kind of thing Jefferson was expecting to happen every few decades?
By my count it is down to 5 legislators in Maine. Yes, it would require flipping those 5 and holding all the Republican houses, but then a Constitutional Convention could be called.
Point is, we have crept far closer to the edge than most might think.
And yes, it would open things up to other topics. Flag burning? Birthright citizenship? School prayer? Overturn Roe v Wade? Anything from the Republican wish list from over the years?
Most wouldn’t stand a chance. But a few might. And it could develop into a wedge to drive Republican turnout int he midterm 2018 elections. And since Democratic turnout is usually down in non-presidential years…
Not necessarily. It’s not at all clear that the 14th amendment is really supposed to mean birthright citizenship as we have it today. Look at the Wikipedia article on the subject. It mentions that in 1873, after the passage of the 14th amendment, the Attorney General of the USA published the following opinion:
It also mentions a few Supreme Court cases, again after the passage of the 14th, that touch on the issue. Apparently there was a case called The Slaughter-House Cases which, though not dealing directly with birthright citizenship, sparked the court ro remark in passing that “the phrase ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” And then there was an Elk v. Wilkins case in which the court ruled that being born in the territory of the United States is not sufficient for citizenship; those who wish to claim citizenship by birth must be born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
True, there was then a case in 1898, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which seemed to solidify the issue more clearly. But this could still be challenged with a law defining “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in a much more narrow sense. Yes, someone would inevitably challenge such a law, and it might reach the Supreme Court. And yes, an SJW-dominated Supreme Court would almost certainly strike it down. But a court with a few Trump appointees on it? Who knows.
How much longer do we suppose that “Citizen of USA” will be a point of pride?
Why, yes, I am very cynical today
But I remember that there are mouth-breathing idiots who want a Constitutional Convention so they can make abortion Unconstitutional. Care to go double or nothing on gay rights? Classes based on race (instead of just wealth)?
My question about replacing birthright citizenship is what happens to people like the OP’s friend’s kids?
There is no guarantee that the country of the parents’ original citizenship will grant any citizenship to kids born elsewhere. It gets doubly messy when you consider the parents themselves may not be from the same country. Dad’s originally from Outer Slobovia and Mom’s from West Evilania. They pop out a kid in the US or Ireland or … Now what’s the kid’s citizenship?
Now fast forward three generations of mixed-mode non-citizens like this. Where do we end up?
If every country on Earth agreed to use the same standard for granting citizenship we could design a variety of systems that ensured we weren’t creating stateless newborns. Until that’s the case birthright citizenship has a large role to play.
One of my college roommates was stateless due to lack of birthright citizenship. She was Finnish-Japanese. Her father made sure she learned English and sent her to college in the US in the hopes she’d qualify for US citizenship and have somewhere to call home by the time she was 30.
I have clients living outside the U.S. in a country that does not grant birthright citizenship to anyone. They hired us precisely because they were about to have a stateless child. Dad was born in the U.S., but didn’t have the legal ability to transmit U.S. citizenship to his child because he hadn’t spent enough time living in the U.S. His parents were part of the Palestinian diaspora in another Middle Eastern country, where they have lived since they fled the West Bank in 1948, but are not eligible for citizenship in the country where they lived after that. They have refugee travel documents issued in the country they first fled to, but no passports. I suppose they could probably apply for Palestinian passports, but they have no intention of returning there, so they don’t se the point. And their U.S. citizen son certainly doesn’t.
Mom is Lebanese. Lebanese citizenship law only allows men to transmit citizenship to their children, not women.
So the kid was going to be born stateless. There are lots of people in situations like that.
There is the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness which posits birthright citizenship (jus soli) if a newborn is not eiligible for citizenship by descent (jus sanguinis). Alternately the stateless person could claim citizenship of the country of his/her parents.
Ostensibly the signatory countries to the Convention agree to afford jus soli citizenship to foundlings and those not eligible for jus sanguinis citizenship. Actually making such a citizenship claim is a much more difficult matter than simply having one’s citizenship recognized by showing a birth certificate. There are time limits by which a person must make such a citizenship claim, generally by age 21.
And, of course, not all countries are signatory nations - including the United States.