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If not "birthright" citizenship, what?

Z said:
Great - a future America with officers on every corner, asking everyone for their papers.

Why does that scenario sound familiar???
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While that theoretically COULD come to pass, that has not been my experience of countries that don't tolerate illegal immigration. I see no reason why that would have to be the case in the United States, either.
 
Doghouse Reilly said:
While that theoretically COULD come to pass, that has not been my experience of countries that don't tolerate illegal immigration. I see no reason why that would have to be the case in the United States, either.
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If I were a multi-millionaire, I would commission a poll of Trump supporters to see how many would favor giving LEOs the right to stop anyone who appeared to be illegal and ask for papers.
 
Ladewig said:
If I were a multi-millionaire, I would commission a poll of Trump supporters to see how many would favor giving LEOs the right to stop anyone who appeared to be illegal and ask for papers.
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So police in Southern Texas shouldn't have the right to ask for I.D. when they spot groups of people huddled in the desert who can't speak English? Should they just assume they're foreign campers with no supplies hanging out in Texas in July?

Whenever this issue of profiling comes up, I always think of Israel's El Al airline, where they profile like crazy and haven't had a terrorist attack on a plane in the last 30 years.

Should I be offended if I, a 39 year old male, get asked a lot more questions by airline security than the grandma from Wisconsin? Of course not. Men are much more likely to be terrorists, and security would be very foolish not to scrutinize men more than women.

By the same token, why should we oppose police doing ID checks on people who can't speak English? Maybe that girl in San Fran would be alive today if police had been more vigilant.
 
Fudbucker said:
So police in Southern Texas shouldn't have the right to ask for I.D. when they spot groups of people huddled in the desert who can't speak English? Should they just assume they're foreign campers with no supplies hanging out in Texas in July?

Whenever this issue of profiling comes up, I always think of Israel's El Al airline, where they profile like crazy and haven't had a terrorist attack on a plane in the last 30 years.

Should I be offended if I, a 39 year old male, get asked a lot more questions by airline security than the grandma from Wisconsin? Of course not. Men are much more likely to be terrorists, and security would be very foolish not to scrutinize men more than women.

By the same token, why should we oppose police doing ID checks on people who can't speak English? Maybe that girl in San Fran would be alive today if police had been more vigilant.
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When I said anyone, I meant anyone in the U.S., not people within a 100 miles of the border.
 
Bob001 said:
Fair enough. But what happens to the child if the parents, for whatever reason, fail to do so? The consequences of their negligence (or ignorance or whatever) fall on the child, not the parents. If a baby doesn't automatically receive citizenship either through his parents or by his birthplace, he could literally grow up without holding citizenship anywhere.
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If the parents don't register the birth in the U.S. then AFAIK the child wouldn't have a right to U.S. citizenship as the rule currently stands. This would effectively be the same thing, not registering the birth with the appropriate authorities.
 
Z said:
Great - a future America with officers on every corner, asking everyone for their papers.

Why does that scenario sound familiar???
Click to expand...

That's quite a leap and a bit of a non-sequitur from not having "birthright" citizenship.

Here in the U.K. we don't have "birthright" citizenship and we don't have a requirement to carry I.D. Indeed you don't even have to carry your licence and registration with you when you drive. In the event that you are stopped then you have a period of time to present your documents at a local police station.

Sure you'd need to present your identification and citizenship documentation when registering the birth of your child but that's hardly a common occurrence.
 
The Don said:
If the parents don't register the birth in the U.S. then AFAIK the child wouldn't have a right to U.S. citizenship as the rule currently stands. This would effectively be the same thing, not registering the birth with the appropriate authorities.
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Births in the U.S. are routinely registered by the hospital with a city or county vital records office. The parent doesn't have to do much except sign a form. And if for some rare reason there was no birth certificate, a person can still prove his birthplace and U.S. citizenship with other documents -- baptismal records, hospital and school records, sworn statements from relatives and other witnesses, etc. He's not out of luck forever.
http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/information/secondary-evidence.html

But in the example of the Indian parents in the U.S., the parents have to travel to the Indian embassy or a consulate -- only six in the entire country -- within one year of the birth to preserve the child's Indian citizenship. That could be quite a burden.

If birthright citizenship was eliminated in the U.S., it sounds like proving a child's citizenship would require the parents to take the baby's standard birth certificate and their own citizenship documents to a federal office somewhere -- non-existent now, so a whole new agency would have to be created -- like applying for a passport. A certain -- maybe substantial -- percentage of parents would fail to do so for a variety of possible reasons, leaving the kid in a legal limbo which would have to be resolved somewhere down the road, probably by the courts. I suspect that the administrative and legal complexities and burdens would outweigh any possible benefit to ending birthright citizenship.
 
Fudbucker said:
So police in Southern Texas shouldn't have the right to ask for I.D. when they spot groups of people huddled in the desert who can't speak English? Should they just assume they're foreign campers with no supplies hanging out in Texas in July?

Whenever this issue of profiling comes up, I always think of Israel's El Al airline, where they profile like crazy and haven't had a terrorist attack on a plane in the last 30 years.

Should I be offended if I, a 39 year old male, get asked a lot more questions by airline security than the grandma from Wisconsin? Of course not. Men are much more likely to be terrorists, and security would be very foolish not to scrutinize men more than women.

By the same token, why should we oppose police doing ID checks on people who can't speak English? Maybe that girl in San Fran would be alive today if police had been more vigilant.
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Without working through all the specifics, the officer should assume they are citizens and move on.
 
I like the Starship Troopers idea. Anyone who serves in the military for a time gets citizenship automatically. Everyone else is just somebody that happens to live here at the moment. Of course it's stupid. I don't deny that. It's got a certain charm to it, however.
 
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Manopolus said:
I like the Starship Troopers idea. Anyone who serves in the military for a time gets citizenship automatically. Everyone else is just somebody that happens to live here at the moment. Of course it's stupid. I don't deny that. It's got a certain charm to it, however.
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I'm 4-F.
Can I just go out a kill some enemies of the state and get my citizenship that way?
 
The Don said:
If the parents don't register the birth in the U.S. then AFAIK the child wouldn't have a right to U.S. citizenship as the rule currently stands. This would effectively be the same thing, not registering the birth with the appropriate authorities.
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This worries me though, because it's already happening. There was a family in Colorado who birthed their daughter at home and declined to register her birth so as to avoid her 'ownership by the state'. Now she's coming of age, and would like to avail herself of her birthrights----which the state doesn't know she has.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
This worries me though, because it's already happening. There was a family in Colorado who birthed their daughter at home and declined to register her birth so as to avoid her 'ownership by the state'. Now she's coming of age, and would like to avail herself of her birthrights----which the state doesn't know she has.
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I knew a woman like that in Hawaii. She couldn't even travel off the island, because she had no ID. Finally she got a lawyer who helped her establish her identity and citizenship. The girl in Colorado should do the same.
 
Doghouse Reilly said:
I knew a woman like that in Hawaii. She couldn't even travel off the island, because she had no ID. Finally she got a lawyer who helped her establish her identity and citizenship. The girl in Colorado should do the same.
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As I noted above, to obtain a passport -- the gold standard for citizenship -- the State Department will accept a variety of other documents, including school records, medical records and sworn affidavits. There is even provision for filing a Delayed Birth Certificate. She might not even need a lawyer.
http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/information/secondary-evidence.html
 
Bob001 said:
Births in the U.S. are routinely registered by the hospital with a city or county vital records office. The parent doesn't have to do much except sign a form. And if for some rare reason there was no birth certificate, a person can still prove his birthplace and U.S. citizenship with other documents -- baptismal records, hospital and school records, sworn statements from relatives and other witnesses, etc. He's not out of luck forever.
http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/information/secondary-evidence.html

But in the example of the Indian parents in the U.S., the parents have to travel to the Indian embassy or a consulate -- only six in the entire country -- within one year of the birth to preserve the child's Indian citizenship. That could be quite a burden.

If birthright citizenship was eliminated in the U.S., it sounds like proving a child's citizenship would require the parents to take the baby's standard birth certificate and their own citizenship documents to a federal office somewhere -- non-existent now, so a whole new agency would have to be created -- like applying for a passport. A certain -- maybe substantial -- percentage of parents would fail to do so for a variety of possible reasons, leaving the kid in a legal limbo which would have to be resolved somewhere down the road, probably by the courts. I suspect that the administrative and legal complexities and burdens would outweigh any possible benefit to ending birthright citizenship.
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I get that any change would be disruptive but properly registering the birth of your child is not onerous. The example I gave earlier is just one of dozens among friends and acquaintances who have done this.

Other countries manage just fine at coping with the birth of non-citizens without having the problems you describe. Indians working in the UK somehow manage to register the birth of their children without rendering them stateless.
 
for the past few years, the State of Texas has been refusing to register birth certificates for the children born in Texas of illegal aliens

There is finally a lawsuit working its way through the courts.

Texas is about to get it's ass handed to them again.
 
Based on my travels through the internet, there are a fair amount of people out there who are totally ignoring of how the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment works.
 
Ladewig said:
I'm 4-F.
Can I just go out a kill some enemies of the state and get my citizenship that way?
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Well, according to the book your service can consist of being experimented on, if that works for you. It's quite clear in the book that everyone, regardless of ability, has a right to serve in some fashion if they so choose. It was also clear that your chances of surviving that service weren't particularly great.

That's how I remember it anyway... been a while.
 
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