Free Republic

Imagine if a state didn’t let someone vote in an election because their grandfather wasn’t the correct race. Surely lawyers in Eric Holder’s Justice Department would be typing up a lawsuit as fast as fingers could fly across the keyboard. After all, Obama is the president who boasted he was a champion for voting rights, falsely we’d later learn. Eric Holder compared voter ID to a modern version of Jim Crow. But a recent federal court opinion shows Jim Crow is alive and well, and living in paradise. This week, the United States District Court in the Commonwealth of the...

Ukrainian Commander Defects To Russia In Kherson Region Ukraine

TEL AVIV - Russian-Israeli oligarch Leonid Nevzlin announced on Tuesday that he planned to give up his Russian passport in protest of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Everything that Putin touches dies," Nevzlin wrote in a Facebook post. "I am against the war. I am against the occupation. I am against the genocide of the Ukrainian people." Nevzlin was among the first prominent Russian oligarchs to establish self-imposed exile in Israel, fleeing what he has described as a campaign of politically-motivated persecution by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2003, Nevzlin fled Russia for Israel amid a Kremlin-backed investigation into his Yukos...

Who would have thought that, just mere days later, a beautiful gold medal–winning 18-year-old elite Olympian would exhibit the exact disdain and arrogance highlighted in the article? Eileen Gu was born in California to a Chinese mother and an American father. While domiciled, educated, and trained in the United States, Gu visited China annually to visit her mother's family who resided there. In 2019, Gu suddenly decided to represent China instead of the United States. When pressed, Gu loftily explained that it was not fame and riches that inspired her switched allegiance, but that she wanted to use sports as...

It's no secret that the Biden administration has failed to address the illegal immigration crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border, and at every turn has taken what seems to be the worst action available to them. Rather than addressing the border crisis, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) changed their mission statement on Wednesday to seemingly institutionalize Joe Biden's open-borders agenda by removing mention of "lawful immigration," "protecting Americans," or "securing the homeland." As of today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has a new mission statement. Under Biden, USCIS removed mention of "lawful immigration," "protecting Americans," or "securing the homeland" and...

Gu wins Gold Big Air free ski, representing China.

Current American policy grants automatic birthright citizenship to babies born to illegal alien mothers. It’s been the practice for decades. A female illegal alien can cross the border, give birth five minutes later, and her child is an American citizen for life. The term “anchor baby” refers to the fact that such babies are “anchored” into the United States, can’t be deported, and their status makes it harder to deport their illegal alien parents. What if a state made a law prohibiting the anchor baby policy? There’s a proposal to do just that in the state of Oklahoma.

There are two main paths to acquiring citizenship in the United States and a few minor ones. The first is to be born here. The others are via legal immigration, birth abroad to a U.S. citizen, and certain adoptions. Then there’s birthright citizenship, which is recognized in only 25 countries, 13% of the nations on earth, and all but three of them are in the Americas. In recent years, France, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland have abolished birthright citizenship. The US-born children of foreign diplomatic officers are not eligible to be citizens. Citizenship is currently granted, however, to all other...

Noncitizens in New York City would gain the right to vote in municipal elections under a measure approved Thursday by the City Council that would give access to the ballot box to 800,000 green card holders and so-called Dreamers. More than a dozen communities across the United States already allow noncitizens to cast ballots in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont. But New York City is the largest place by far to give voting rights to noncitizens. Noncitizens still wouldn’t be able to vote for president or members of Congress in federal races, or in...

Hundreds of children have been born to newly-arrived Afghans who were brought to the United States as part of President Joe Biden’s massive resettlement operation since mid-August, securing birthright citizenship in the process. Biden started the operation in the midst of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — bringing at least 70,000 Afghans to the country for resettlement with minimal standard vetting procedures. Since then, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have bankrolled the operation to the sum of more than $13.3 billion in American taxpayer money. According to data from the U.S. Army, more than 250 U.S.-born children have been delivered...

Defining terms is always a good place to begin a conversation and Victor Davis Hanson’s The Dying Citizen. How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America (Basic Books) weaves a rich definition of citizenship into his discussion of the current threats to this profoundly Western idea. The idea of citizenship originated in the 5th-century B.C. Greek city states, the concept being nourished by the likes of one Alkidamas, who wrote, “Nature has made no man a slave.” This was in profound contrast to the rigid stratification that most all societies then and most non-western societies still...

More than 20 Democrats voted down an amendment to the $3.5 trillion spending bill that would prohibit giving amnesty to illegal immigrants with 10 or more DUI convictions. "I do not wish to belabor this point, but I do find it truly incredible. Since 23 of my Democrat colleagues just voted to affirm that they do not believe that two or more convictions for DUI should prohibit an illegal alien from being granted amnesty and welcomed into America, I will try this one more time, and see if 10 or more convictions for will compel them to change their minds,"...

In obtaining a real ID and reviewing the list of valid documents to prove citizenry and place of residence, I found it rather telling that a ballot is not considered proof of anything. It is also interesting that my selective service papers are not considered proof of citizenship. Who else would be registered for the draft other than a citizen?

On Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion allowing the county, with a few exceptions, to hire noncitizens to lead county agencies — excluding the chief probation officer — and for any other county jobs where state or federal law doesn’t mandate citizenship. Immigrants who lack legal status remain ineligible to work for the county. Tuesday’s motion, by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl, extends eligibility for county jobs to lawful permanent residents and those with work permits. Immigrants make up 35% of the population in L.A. County. With about 110,000 employees, the county government is...

A former professional baseball player teared up on the Fourth of July, passionately describing what his U.S. citizenship means to him. “It’s special,” said retired Major League Baseball All-Star Ozzie Guillen during an interview on Pre Game Live with host Chuck Garfien. “People, they don’t know how hard that is. How many people die … How many people want to be American. It's [an] honor for me,” the teary-eyed Guillen continued. As the retired star was speaking, a video of him becoming a citizen in 2006 played in the background. Garfien pointed out how emotional his guest had become from...

The ins and outs of Chinese citizenship are outlined in China’s Nationality Law, which was adopted by the National People’s Congress and becoming effective on September 10, 1980. The law includes 18 articles that broadly explain China’s citizenship policies. Here is a quick breakdown of these articles. General Facts According to Article 2, China is a unitary multinational state. This means that all nationalities, or ethnic minorities, that exist within China have Chinese citizenship. China does not allow dual citizenship, as stated in Article 3. Who Qualifies For Chinese Citizenship? Article 4 states that a person born in China...

n a victory for same-sex couples, the State Department on Tuesday said it would grant U.S. citizenship to babies born abroad to married couples with at least one American parent — no matter which parent was biologically related to the child. The new policy effectively guarantees that American and binational couples who use assisted reproductive technology to give birth overseas — such as surrogates or sperm donations — can pass along citizenship to their children...... Previously, the State Department, based on an interpretation of 1950s immigration law, required a child born abroad to have a biological connection to an American...

Biden’s amnesty agenda will likely not pass Congress, but orders halting enforcement are creating a new border surge and humanitarian crisis that will come back to haunt him.Democrats went big last week when they unveiled a new immigration “reform” bill. The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, introduced by 12 Democrat lawmakers in the House and Senate, made it clear that President Joe Biden’s party is not interested in compromise. But it won’t be the details of a bill that is unlikely to pass that most affect the problem of illegal immigration or debates about the issue.The wholesale amnesty congressional Democrats...

The proposal is expected to include an earned pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants and expand the refugee resettlement program. The Biden administration and Hill Democrats are expected later this week to release an immigration reform bill, multiple sources familiar with the planning tell NBC News. The legislative text of the “U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021” will reflect the immigration priorities that President Joe Biden unveiled on his first day in office. His proposal includes an earned pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, expands the refugee resettlement program and deploys more technology to the Southern border....

Americans urgently rushed to their embassies to renounce their citizenship last year amid the virus pandemic, social unrest, economic crash, and political firestorms.Americans Overseas said a record 6,705 Americans gave up their citizenship in 2020, a 260% increase from 2019 when 2,577 renounced their citizenship. Even with consulates closed in the early part of the year because of the virus pandemic, renunciations still managed to nearly triple over the prior year. Before 2020, the highest year on record was 5,411 cases in 2016, ahead of former President Trump winning the 2016 presidential elections. Americans Overseas estimates some 9 million Americans...