Posted on 02/03/2025 5:12:40 PM PST by george76
America is an outlier among developed nations in offering unrestricted birthright citizenship. Not a single European country does..
By any reasonable measure, unrestricted birthright citizenship, the practice of giving citizenship to almost anyone born in America, is an irrational policy. It abdicates the composition of the nation’s citizenry to chance, instead of bringing it within our control. It communicates a deep unseriousness about our sovereignty and national security to the rest of the world. Without it, we can continue to open our country to foreign talent and victims of genocide or state violence. Together, the president and Congress can choose to narrow or widen the pipeline of legal immigrants.
In 2025, America is an outlier among developed nations in offering unrestricted birthright citizenship. Corporate media outlets will remind you that we aren’t alone, that around 30 other countries do the same. But what they usually don’t report is that those countries are the likes of Grenada, Nicaragua, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados. Not a single European country follows our lead. Nor do Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and the list goes on. Only one country in the world with a per-capita GDP anywhere near the United States’ matches our policy — Canada. And Canada historically hasn’t had much to worry about on the illegal immigration front, because their only land border is shared with us.
More than that, the global trend is consonant with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order ending unrestricted birthright citizenship. The United Kingdom, which had birthright citizenship dating back to the “ancient common law,” did away with it in the 1980s. Ireland got rid of it in 2005. New Zealand a year later. Germany, which tried to grab the mantle of “leader of the free world” during President Trump’s first term, doesn’t grant citizenship to a child of foreign parents unless one parent possesses a permanent right of residence and has legally resided in the country for at least eight years.
But somehow President Trump is “cruel” for calling for the end of unrestricted birthright citizenship in our own nation? Why would a nation affirmatively choose to create an incentive for illegal immigration and prioritize illegal immigrants’ children over law-abiding immigrants who apply for citizenship and follow the legal process? If it were a one-for-one trade, would you rather bestow citizenship on someone we as a nation and a people deem worthy of it, or on the basis of their parents’ success in entering the U.S. illegally?
Naturalization..
To be a citizen of the United States is an enormous privilege. It grants entry to the polity of the greatest government that the world has ever known. In our republic, the people are sovereign and citizens shape the course of the nation’s future. Critically, they may vote. They have access to a powerful passport and are entitled to the rights protected by our Constitution, including the right to bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment.
Naturalized citizens generally must be able to read, write, and speak English; be of “good moral character;” pass a civics exam; have been a permanent resident for a duration of years; and swear an oath of allegiance that they “will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Those who become citizens after this process have embedded themselves in American society and in our ways of life; the hope is that along the way they have acquired the habits of liberty.
Why go to such lengths to ensure naturalized citizens adhere to our laws and respect our constitutional ideals, if we then freely dole out citizenship to the children of those who have thumbed their noses at our immigration laws and at the ideals of democratic self-governance that brought them about? What message does that send to those who completed the heavy lift of securing legal citizenship by naturalization?
Historical Context of 14th Amendment..
Opponents of President Trump’s order point to the 14th Amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War, that guarantees citizenship to those “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” But even they concede that the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause was intended to overrule the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott opinion and extend citizenship to newly freed slaves. At the time the amendment was ratified in 1868, there was no clear federal law defining who could and couldn’t enter the United States — and so no equivalent of the modern-era notion of an “illegal immigrant.” Simply put, the aims of the era’s constitutional amendments were far removed from the ideas that today’s liberals read into the text.
The figures at stake are vast. In 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that in the last decade or so, somewhere between 6 and 9 percent of babies born in this country were to illegal immigrant parents — meaning at times the figure was close to one out of every ten births. Even at the low end, the number of those births — around 250,000 in 2016 — was larger than the total number of births in any state other than California or Texas.
Others have detailed the practical benefits of ending birthright citizenship, including the grave national security risks of the practice as well as the enormous fiscal burden attending it. But more important still is that our nation’s survival depends on having a citizenry that understands its precious inheritance. We are a nation bound together by a common commitment to the rule of law and to a republic founded on enlightenment ideals. To sustain our nation, we must take basic minimum steps to guard the privilege of entry into our polity.
Every developed country other than Canada has gotten rid of birthright citizenship — if they ever had it in the first place. It’s long past time we joined their ranks.
Anchor babies are useless welfare eaters.
Trump will get a win on this, because for the past 50 years, democrats have turned it into an absurd situation
even the oft-cited SCOTUS case of “Wong Kim Ark” in 1898 specifically noted that his parents were legal resident aliens who had obtained legal resident status before he was born.
Its simply absurd that a child of tourists, much less illegals, should be granted citizenship simply because they were born in the USA.
Canada may have a land border only with the US, but it does have sea borders with France (St. Pierre and Miquelon Islands near Newfoundland) and Denmark (Greenland). But probably they don’t have many Frenchmen or Danes trying to sneak into Canada illegally.
Capture of Saint Pierre and Miquelon (WWII)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon
Capture
On 23 December 1941, a French flotilla consisting of the submarine Surcouf and three corvettes, Mimosa, Aconit and Alysse, carrying 230 men sailed from Halifax under the pretext of a training mission. Acting against the orders of Royal Canadian Navy Rear Admiral Leonard W. Murray, at 3 am on 24 December 1941, the flotilla arrived off the port of Saint-Pierre and disembarked 230 armed sailors. After meeting no resistance, Free French forces captured the islands in only 20 minutes.[2]
Aftermath
After the arrest of Governor de Bournat, the Free French authorities organized a plebiscite on 25 December 1941. Males of 18 years and over were given a choice of “rallying to Free France or collaborating with Axis powers”. Close to 98 per cent of the male population voted in favour of Free French administration. News of the capture reached the United States with Secretary of State Cordell Hull calling the capture a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. He compared the capture of the islands by the Free French to Nazi and Japanese aggression.
This is the only way to reverse the demographic destruction that has taken place.
This was more than two weeks after Pearl Harbor and after Germany declared war on the United States. What was in the pipe that Hull was smoking?
Opponents of President Trump’s order point to the 14th Amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War, that guarantees citizenship to those “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” But even they concede that the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause was intended to overrule the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott opinion and extend citizenship to newly freed slaves. At the time the amendment was ratified in 1868, there was no clear federal law defining who could and couldn’t enter the United States — and so no equivalent of the modern-era notion of an “illegal immigrant.” Simply put, the aims of the era’s constitutional amendments were far removed from the ideas that today’s liberals read into the text.
All true and all irrelevant to the absolute fact that jus soli was the law of the land since there were British colonies, that law was continued in the states upon independence, and 14A was explicitly offered up to put birthright citizenship beyond the power of the congress to change. 14A effected no change to the law that existed, they just made it more difficult to get rid of it.
What jus soli entails is not very debatable. It has not seen change since the case of Elyas de Rababyn II Rotuli Parliamentorum 139 (1290) where it was assumed that all persons born on English soil were subjects of the King.
It is far better known in common law from Calvin v. Smith, 77 Eng. Rep. 377 (K.B. 1608).
It is time to get rid of it. Article V tells us how to do it. It is time to stop making believe we can make an exception for one provision of the constitution and remove or change it with an executive order, and not expect that every provision of the Constitution will be subject to the will of some future executive, perhaps one who chooses to strike down the 1st Amendment with an executive order.
Wong Kim Ark at the District Court:
The doctrine of the law of nations, that the child follows the nationality of the parents, and that citizenship does not depend upon mere accidental place of birth, is undoubtedly more logical, reasonable, and satisfactory, but this consideration will not justify this court in declaring it to be the law against controlling judicial authority.
The courts have been consistent for centuries. The Constitution was written in the language of the English common law.
Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 693-694 (1898)
The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 6a, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;" and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, "if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle." It can hardly be denied that an alien is completely subject to the political jurisdiction of the country in which he resides — seeing that, as said by Mr. Webster, when Secretary of State, in his Report to the President on Thrasher's Case in 1851, and since repeated by this court,"independently of a residence with intention to continue such residence; independently of any domiciliation; independently of the taking of any oath of allegiance or of renouncing any former allegiance, it is well known that, by the public law, an alien, or a stranger born, for so long a time as he continues within the dominions of a foreign government, owes obedience to the laws of that government, and may be punished for treason, or other crimes, as a native-born subject might be, unless his case is varied by some treaty stipulations."
Ex.Doc. H.R. No. 10, 1st sess. 32d Congress, p. 4; 6 Webster's Works, 56; United States v. Carlisle, 16 Wall. 147, 83 U. S. 155; Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 6a; Ellesmere on Postnati 63; 1 Hale P.C. 62; 4 Bl.Com. 92.
To hold that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution excludes from citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or subjects of other countries would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.
Congressional Debate commentary by Senator Jacob Howard, author of the 14A citizenship clause.
Mr. HOWARD. I now move to take up House joint resolution No. 127. The motion was agreed to; and the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the joint resolution (H. R. No. 127) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on the amendments proposed by the Senator from Michigan, [Mr. HOWARD.]
Mr. HOWARD. The first amendment is to section one, declaring that "all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside." I do not propose to say anything on that subject except that the question of citizenship has been so fully discussed in this body as not to need any further elucidation, in my opinion. This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.
[...]
Mr. HOWARD. I was a member of the same committee, and the Senator's observations apply to me equally with the Senator from Maine. We desired to put this question of citizenship and the rights of citizens and freedmen under the civil rights bill beyond the legislative power of such gentlemen as the Senator from Wisconsin, who would pull the whole system up by the roots and destroy it, and expose the freedmen again to the oppressions of their old masters.
The "persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States," are the CHILDREN born to ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States. Those accredited diplomats enjoy immunity from our laws, as does their immediate family members. Those are the only one's not subject to our jurisdiction.
It would be nice if the Federalist would stop with its wordsmithing bullcrap. It would be even nicer if a constitutional amendment were proposed and adopted.
If they don’t cover the issue they're not covering the issue.
Birthright Citizenship: A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the 14th Amendment
Read
Thanks for sending this. I’ve read and bookmarked. Very interesting. So why did they pass the American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 if the 14th Amendment already made them American citizens when they were born.
I think Americans are changing the way they think about the 14th Amendment. The liberals’ interpretation is a joke.
Bookmarking…thanks.
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