All Rights pertain but rights do not extend beyond the border so your statement about foreign governments is moot.
First of all the ONLY people who have Admendment rights are here in the united States. They have no 2nd rights to infringe in Britian, because there are no gun rights in Britain.
Secondly your highlighted words mentions "the people" not the "People of the united States" If they are here they are protected by the rights of this country. Why? I don't know! I guess it keeps us from murdering foreigners!
Look, I'm not sure I know what the answer is, but consider the following. Many over the years have argued that what is important about the bill of rights is that it didn't GRANT rights, it RECOGNIZED rights, rights that inherently belonged to people, by virtue of their being, well, people. As the Declaration says, "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights". Notice that the common construction of the amendments is "the right of . . . the people to . . . shall not be infringed", not "the right to.. . is granted to"
However, I don't see where it says we can't control who comes into the country, and deport non-citizens as we see fit.
Disclaimer:
I'm not a constitutional lawyer.
I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Harry K.
I would say instead that the US is the only government that RECOGNIZES these rights of all men...
Generally speaking, the Bill of Rights doesn't "apply to" citizens or non-citizens. It applies to government.
It is for the most part a list of things which Congress and/or government is not allowed to do.
The First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law" to do various things. The Second Amendment says a certain right "shall not be infringed" (by government, presumably). Amendment 3 forbids gov't from quartering soldiers. Amendment 8 forbids government from enacting excessive bail and "cruel and unusual" punishments. Amendment 4 effectively forbids government from searching and issuing Warrants without "probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Amendment 5 mentions a grab bag of things government cannot do, too numerous to reiterate here.
These are all instructions to government.
Of course, in the course of these instructions to the government, at several points many (pre-existing) "rights" are mentioned (not "granted"). Often they are described as "the right of the people" to do something.
Amendment 2 mentions "the right of the people to keep and bear arms"; I guess this means the author thought that "the people" possess the right to keep and bear arms. Amendment 4 mentions "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses," etc. I guess this means "the people" possess that right to. Article 1 even mentions "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Others go along these lines: Amendment 7 mentions "the right of trial by jury", without describing who has this right. In the process of forbidding the government from depriving any "person" (it begins with, "No person...") of "life, liberty, or property" except under certain conditions, Amendment 5 seems to be saying that each "person" currently possesses that right by default.
Amendment 6 is the only one which seems to me to actually create or "grant" certain rights: the right of speedy jury trial, the right of Counsel, etc. And in a way, these, too, are instructions to government - namely, government is not allowed to prosecute people except under these conditions.... To whom does Amendment 6 grant these "rights"? To "the accused", whoever that is.
Finally we have the underappreciated 9th and 10th Amendments, which say effectively (1) just because it ain't written here don't mean it ain't a right, and (2) when in doubt, the right belongs to the States or "the people".
So in all these cases, when it actually mentions (again, not "grants") certain "rights", these "rights" appear to belong to each "person", or to "the people". Unless I am mistaken, immigrants too qualify as "people", so the Bill of Rights applies to them too. (And if you are going to say it doesn't, because of Amendments 9 and 10, you really need to justify this somewhere else in the Constitution, or among the several State Constitutions.) This means, in summary, that government cannot violate the rights of immigrants just because they are immigrants.
None of this implies that government cannot kick them out of the country, however. There is no intrinsic "right" to come to this country from another and to stay here, and Congress is specifically granted certain power over immmigration issues, namely "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization ... throughout the United States", in Article 1 section 8. Since Congress is granted that power, and the power to "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers", one can safely conclude that Congress can do things like Kick Immigrants Out For Not Obeying Its Naturalization Policy.
And since this power is specifically "delegated to the United States by the Constitution", this would be also in perfect accord with Amendment 10.
As for Wars and what we can do to people like foreign leaders, I would just say that it is fairly clear that "the people" mentioned in the Constitution were never meant to be overseas people in other countries. That would just be ridiculous. For one thing, Wars (which specifically are mentioned in the Constitution) would be essentially impossible if that were true.
In sum I would say that the Bill of Rights, if it can be said to "apply to" anyone other than government, applies to "the people" within the borders of this country, and no others. Immigrants like all other "people" have pre-existing "rights" which government is forbidden from violating.
However, "the right to stay here" is not among them and Congress has all the power it could ever need to kick them out. Which is the key point.
The only difference between an alien resident and a US citizen is the former cannot vote or become President or Vice-President. You still pay taxes, you are still subject to our draft, etc.
You can be a citizen of a state by reason of residency and it's this usage that is referred to by the US Constitutency.
Protect our borders...remove the illigals
"Section. 1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This section has been the subject of much debate. In the first sentence and the first clause of the second sentence, it's clear that the law applies to citizens.
It is the second and third clauses of the second sentence that are unclear. Does the semicolon mean that the clauses are to infer citizens from the first clause?
Or, does the law apply to anyone within US juristdiction regardless of how they got there?
The courts have ruled both ways. In the most cases anyone in this country is afforded equal protection.
Just because we believe that all people have rights, even if their present government or society denies them these rights, it doesn't mean that the United States has an obligation to secure their rights for them. We should export the concept of individual rights wherever possible, but the United States government is only obligated to it's own citizens.
Amendment XIV
(1868)Section 1. 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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
If that's not enough for you (although I fail to see any way in which one can question the Constitutionality of the Rights of non-citizens (aka: persons) while within the Territory of the United States.),the Constitution makes explicit differentation between laws applying only to citizens and those applying to all persons. Consider these:
No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States,Further, the Declaration of Independence explicitly states the origin and nature of those Rights enumerated in the Constitution and also those "retained by the People"(Amendment IX):
No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States
No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President
XV, XIX, XXIV, XXVI The right of citizens of the United States to vote ..
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights
As for what occurs in on the high seas or the territory of other Nations, those people and events are not subject to the U.S. Constitution. This does not mean that,in the view of the United States Constitution, those people do not have the same Rights, but merely that the U.S. government,which was instituted "to secure these Rights" to those persons within its jurisdiction, has no authority to guarantee their unalienable Rights.
Both of you express a concern about those living outside the jurisdiction of the US government.
You both ask, "How can we protect their rights?"
The US Gov. does not "protect" rights. That wasn't the purpose of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, the Bill of Rights does not require that the Fed. Gov. do anything.
Rather, the Bill of Rights sets forth what the Gov't CANNOT do. It can't search without a warrant. It can't convict without a jury trial (if requested). It can't establish an official religion. etc., etc.
The Federal Government is NOT the protector of the rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights.
Rather, the Bill of Rights is what protects us FROM the Federal Government.
With this in mind, the answer to your question regarding those in other jurisdictions -- "how can we protect the rights of those living under dictatorships?" -- is simply that protecting their rights is not the Federal Governments job.
The Constitution exists to LIMIT what the Government may do to those living within its jurisdiction (i.e., "people of the United States"). We have never given the Fed. Gov. the power, for instance, to establish a religion. Period. It doesn't matter if that religion is established merely for non-citizens living within our borders. It simply isn't a power the Fed. Gov. has. Likewise with searching and siezing without a warrant. Or, restricting freedom of the press. The gov't has no more power to sieze the printing press of a non-citizen than it does a citizen.
In the case of foreigners, my belief is that any rulings by SCOTUS or any other gov't. agency is done under the auspices of those civil rights granted to them by the gov't.