Free Republic

Why are we seeing in every State and Primary a Crisis of Competency concerning the voting primary season… and the previous presidential elections? There is a growing concern throughout the Nation that we are lapsing into an irreversible third world status of competency.

I’m an unabashed American. That’s an American without hyphens. Snowflake objections to our past don’t concern me. I’m proud of it all. All men are born equal, but not all nations. America is #1, every other nation is not, and that is that. I look down my nose just a little at foreigners, not as 1930s Untermensch, but more in pity along the lines of our homegrown 1980s P.J. O’Rourke.1 Americans are simply unequally better than the rest of the world. Thanks to extra-ordinary good luck, I hold a jewel that much of the rest of humanity wants and I...

The Trump administration is coming out with new visa restrictions aimed at restricting “birth tourism," in which women travel to the U.S. to give birth so their children can have a coveted U.S. passport. The State Department planned to publicize the rules Thursday, according to two officials with knowledge of the plans who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The rules would make it more difficult for pregnant women to travel on a tourist visa. In one draft of the regulations, they would have to clear an additional hurdle before obtaining the visa — convincing a consular...

This is the first BJS report that comprehensively describes the citizenship of suspects arrested and prosecuted for federal offenses. The report highlights trends from 1998 through 2018, providing statistics on immigration and non-immigration offenses, U.S.-Mexico border and non-U.S.-Mexico-border districts, and country of citizenship. The findings are based on data collected by BJS's Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP), which receives administrative data from six federal justice agencies: the U.S. Marshals Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, U.S. Sentencing Commission, and Federal Bureau of Prisons. The FJSP links and standardizes this information, enabling...

Japanese citizen Midori Nishida was checking in to a flight in Hong Kong in November to visit her parents on Saipan, a U.S. island in the Pacific, when airline staff made an unusual demand. She had to take a pregnancy test if she wanted to board. Ms. Nishida, 25 years old, was escorted to a public rest room and handed a strip to urinate on. The test was part of the response of one airline, Hong Kong Express Airways, to immigration concerns in Saipan. The island has become a destination for women intending to give birth on U.S. territory, making their babies eligible for...

Attorneys for the Trump administration say the president has the right to order the U.S. Census Bureau to collect administrative records on citizenship. The U.S. Department of Commerce asked a federal court in Maryland on Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Trump’s order. T he motion filed by administration attorneys was the latest development among several lawsuits around the nation, deriving from the administration’s failed attempt to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census questionnaire. After the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the question from being added last summer, Trump issued the order requiring the U.S. Census Bureau to obtain...

The U.S. owns five territories: Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa. The first four receive U.S. citizenship. American Samoa does not; people born there receive a second-class status known as U.S. nationals. Anchor babies get more rights than Samoans do. Samoans can’t vote in U.S. elections, they can’t run for office and they can’t serve on juries. They are prohibited from holding jobs that require U.S. citizenship, and cannot apply to sponsor their relatives for immigration visas. But they pay U.S. taxes. American Samoa is separate from the independent nation of Samoa. Three...

I explain why the liberal media never misses an opportunity to defend a fundamentally illiberal dogma, and how it coincides with their hatred of national sovereignty.

People born in the U.S. territory of American Samoa should be recognized as U.S. citizens, a federal judge in Utah ruled Thursday, in a hard-fought legal battle spanning decades. U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups also ruled that American Samoans should be issued new passports reflecting his ruling. The disclaimer on their passports currently reads: "The bearer is a United States national and not a United States citizen." "This court is not imposing 'citizenship by judicial fiat,'" Waddoups said in his decision. "The action is required by the mandate of the Fourteenth Amendment as construed and applied by Supreme Court precedent."...

Troops have been deployed to India's ethnically diverse northeastern states of Assam and Tripura, amid violent protests against the passing of a controversial and far-reaching law that offers a path to Indian citizenship for non-Mulism minorities from three neighboring countries. The Citizenship Amendment Bill, which was passed by the country's parliament on Wednesday, has been described by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government as a means of protecting vulnerable groups from persecution. Critics, however, say the bill marginalizes Muslims and undermines the country's secular constitution. Others say it risks bringing an unwanted influx of immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and...

Leaked funding documents reveal an effort by George Soros and his foundations to manipulate election laws and process rules ahead of the federal election far more expansively than has been previously reported. The billionaire and convicted felon moved hundreds of millions of dollars into often-secret efforts to change election laws, fuel litigation to attack election integrity measures, push public narratives about voter fraud, and to integrate the political ground game of the left with efforts to scare racial minority groups about voting rights threats. These Soros-funded efforts moved through dozens of 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) charities and involved the active compliance with civil rights groups, government...

The sanctuary state is at it again. California Governor Gavin Newsom has been burning through pens signing a raft of new bills into law at the close of his first legislative session. In addition to dozens of new gun laws, he also signed a bill further undermining federal immigration laws. This took the form of a bill that will allow illegal aliens to serve on government boards and commissions. A second measure claims to ban federal immigration officers from making arrests in courthouses. They seem to have missed the one where each illegal alien gets a free house and...

Hispanic workers, families and neighbors held a press conference, to call attention to what they feel is the continued harassment of Hispanics in Painesville by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Veronica Dahlberg of HOLA says early this morning, ICE agents in plain clothes and unmarked cars staked out the Perry Trailer Park, where 95% of the homes are Mexican American families. Upon leaving the trailer park to go to work, Vicente Hernandez, a married father of three US citizen children, was arrested as he left for work. At least two other parents were taken as well. Dahlberg says Vicente is...

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d — allegedly — joined with the conservatives in a case boiling with political repercussions only to think better of it and swing around to the liberal position. Everyone’s heard the stories by now about Roberts supposedly wimping out in the ObamaCare ruling seven years ago, initially agreeing with Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito that the individual mandate was unconstitutional and then getting cold feet. Result: A tortured and dubious majority opinion upholding the constitutionality of the mandate as a tax. Rumors swirled within days of the decision that Roberts had switched his...

Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote against President Donald Trump's attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, but only after changing his position behind the scenes, sources familiar with the private Supreme Court deliberations tell CNN. The case was fraught with political consequences. Democrats and civil rights advocates claimed the query would discourage responses to the decennial questionnaire from new immigrants and minorities and affect the balance of power nationwide. Roberts' action recalled his dramatic switch in the 2012 case that saved President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. Once again, the chief, an appointee of President...

After its failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, the Trump administration has forged ahead with ordering the Census Bureau to use government records to produce data about the U.S. citizenship status of every person living in the country. In July, the bureau quietly filed a regulatory document confirming that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — who oversees the federal government's largest statistical agency — had directed it "to produce Citizenship Voting Age Population" information "that states may use in redistricting."Last December, the bureau announced it was formally collecting feedback from state redistricting officials on the type of...

"I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time. You know, they ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English, and that they feel comfortable in the communities. And that’s going to take outreach on both sides, frankly." Thus opined Tom Brokaw, NBC’s veteran news reporter and former anchorman, on “Meet the Press,” January 27, 2019. Brokaw’s tone wasn’t hostile when he said this; he spoke as if he were giving...

The Trump administration said Wednesday that the children of some U.S. military members and government employees working overseas will no longer automatically be considered United States citizens. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a policy rescinding previous guidance stating that children of U.S. service members and other government officials abroad are considered “residing in the United States” and automatically given citizenship under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). USCIS issued a clarification to the rule later Wednesday, explaining that the new rule would only affect three categories of people: Children of non-U.S. citizens adopted by U.S....

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issues policy guidance on “residence” requirements for acquiring citizenship Introduction Our latest update to the USCIS Policy Manual defines “residence” as it relates to citizenship for children of certain U.S. government employees and members of the U.S. armed forces who are employed or stationed outside the United States, to conform with the definition of residence in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). This guidance rescinds previously established USCIS policy, which stated that certain children who were living outside the United States were considered “residing in” the United States. As a result, it changes the...

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was what we call an “originalist” when it came to interpreting the U.S. Constitution. He believed the only way to read the Constitution was in the context of the times when its provisions were written which formed the intent of those who wrote and later amended it. We could only interpret what they meant by reading what they wrote through the filter of the events of their day, not our day. The issue of the 14th Amendment and whether it conveys birthright citizenship just from being born on American soil has resurfaced in...