(10-30-2018, 09:41 PM)MalabarJag Wrote: (10-30-2018, 03:11 PM)TJBender Wrote: Being of a foreign diplomat is one things, but the author even specifies that *the person in question* must be an immigrant or alien, not their parents. Someone born on US soil has not, at any point in their lives, been an alien or immigrant, therefore they are a citizen by birth. This isn't a question of settled law. It's written in the damn Constitution, and a President attempting to circumvent the Constitution by way of executive order then acting upon that unconstitutional order is impeachable, hopefully imprisonable and/or deportable.
Are you that crazy? A president writing an executive order is not committing a "high crime or misdemeanor" no matter how unconstitutional the executive order is. The courts will stop it, and Trump knows that. This is only a way of getting a dialog started.
As far as someone born in the US automatically being a US citizen, aren't the children of foreigners considered citizens of their home country?. Aren't those children subject to the jurisdiction of their parents' country? So what you are claiming is the Constitution grants automatic dual citizenship of foreigners' children.
I know that children of US citizens born abroad are considered US citizens. Are there nations that refuse to grant citizenship if the parents are in a foreign country when their child is born?
I believe that a President who willfully, knowingly uses their office to violate the Constitution should be impeached, yes. I think a President rewriting the Constitution to suit their whims should fall under the high crimes and misdemeanors category, as the Constitution is the law that supersedes all other laws in this country. Yes, children of foreigners born on US soil are granted dual citizenship if their home country allows it. They are subject to the laws and jurisdiction of the United States while here. Case in point: let's assume China grants dual citizenship to the child of a Chinese couple born elsewhere (not sure if they do). It's also illegal in China to have more than one child. If the mother gives birth to her child while over here from China on a student visa (example) and this is her second child, she might have committed a crime in China, but she hasn't here. She's not subject to the laws and jurisdiction of China while in the US; she's subject to ours. So is her child, and her child is therefore an American citizen.
Yes, there are nations that do not grant citizenship if a child is born to two citizens of that country in a foreign nation. On the flipside, despite what the diplomat in chief and White House Constitutional Scholar might have said earlier, the US is not the only country that grants birthright citizenship.
(10-30-2018, 10:41 PM)jj82284 Wrote: (10-30-2018, 07:18 PM)TJBender Wrote: I agree with probably more than you think. If it's safe to do so, I'm not opposed to sending expectant mothers here illegally outside of our borders before any child is born. Cutting off immigration entirely would be a disaster. It wouldn't stop illegal immigration, but it would thrash our economy. I don't support blanket deportation, but I don't support blanket amnesty either. I think a true plan to fix illegal immigration (as much as it can be fixed) will have to involve an economic wall rather than a boondoggle that effectively cedes large chunks of land to Mexico and doesn't stop a damn person.
Nathaniel Hackett's playcalling would do a better job of stopping immigration than a fence in the desert, and while Nathaniel Hackett's offense does tend to lose yards, it doesn't cede miles upon miles of US land to Mexico because the fence can't be built directly through a mountain range in Arizona, the footers can't extend into Mexican soil and it can't be built in a way that would interfere with the natural flow of the Rio Grande. It would cut off wildlife migration routes (or are deer and rabbits illegal immigrants too?) and, as it already has with rivers crossing the border in California and Mexico, interrupt the natural ecosystem. All for what? To stop people from crossing into the US in places where they don't cross into the US anyway? I'm not saying knock down the walls we have. Most of them are doing their job, but that's because most of them are in high-traffic areas near major roads and border towns where someone could easily disappear. They're not there to stop, they're there to slow down so the Border Patrol can get there. The uninhabited desert doesn't need fences to stop traffic that, for the most part, isn't there. Expand and beef up fencing around major cities, towns, highways that approach the border (I-10 and I-8, in particular), anyplace else that someone could easily get in and get lose, sure. But don't waste billions of dollars that should be going to infrastructure, education, better equipment and better Border Patrol agents, real tax cuts that don't turn into a pumpkin in 2024, etc.
My objection to a wall is really not about the people coming across. It's about there being a right way and a wrong way to do things--economically and practically. A $25 billion wall (that's 250 years of Aaron Rodgers at QB...we should be so lucky) that is going to be more of a symbol to make the far right feel good about themselves than an actual measure to prevent immigration is just ridiculous.
At current, they think that they need 5000 more judges to handle the backlog of amnesty cases (nearly 3/4 of a million) to even approach the turn around needed to comply with the Flores Declaration and billions of dollars in infrastructure to detain he physical people crossing the border. When you factor in those costs a wall would actually pay for itself in less than a presidential term.
As for birthright citizenship, historically there have been understood to be three prime common law exceptions to the jus soli doctrine, 1.) Foreign diplomats, 2.) Tourist ships incidentally in terrestrial waters, 3.) enemy invaders/combatants.
No, it really wouldn't. What would pay for itself is an overhaul of the immigration courts to streamline the process. They've been chronically underfunded and understaffed. Hire more judges, yes, but also hire arbitrators, administrative judges, whatever you want to call them to go through and get the easy cases out of the system, and there are many. The guy here claiming asylum for the fourteenth time, the group of single males who were observed cutting through a helicopter mat fence with an acetylene torch, the guys who called the Border Patrol a bunch of bad words, get that stuff cleared out. Let the cases that should actually go to judges, like people credibly requesting asylum or mothers with children, go in front of the judges, and let the obvious ones be rejected on paper before anyone's time is spent on them. Again, my objections are not entirely philosophical. They are largely economic and, to an extent, environmental.
Or we could just update the goddamned immigration laws to put some real teeth behind them for employers and landlords that knowingly deal with illegal immigrants.
As for jus soli, they're clearly not foreign diplomats, they're not tourists, and last time I checked we weren't at war with anyone, although I'd hardly hold it against the President for trying to withhold citizenship from a child named Jihad born to two Iranians who walked over from Mexico waving an ISIS flag. There is nothing in the common law exceptions which rules out immigrants, even illegal ones. In fact, it seems to me that if you end birthright citizenship for undocumented immigrants, you'd have to end it for everyone here legally, maybe even creep on up the ladder to naturalized citizens. After all, many of them retain dual citizenship. And what about naturally-born Americans who have dual citizenship by birth or parentage in a foreign country? See the slope here and how slippery it is, and how impossible it is to draw lines on the issue?
Then again, if Paul Ryan is saying he can't do what he wants here, this is probably not something we need to worry about. It's just another bit of fluffing from Trump to make sure his base is fully agitated coming into the election. They're still losing the House.
