Curious what the board thinks of this policy? (And trying to be cordial about this debate). It appears to be a longstanding British colonial rule that much of Europe has done away with, albeit this still remains in developed countries like Canada. Practically speaking, it would be very difficult to implement and perhaps the overall effect might actually be fairly small. On the other hand, why have it? There are certainly many groups exploiting it - on both sides of the income spectrum. Thoughts?

There is no policy reason to encourage illegal immigration by offering birthright citizenship. I don't believe any other county does this.

The economic argument is bogus. There are plenty of people who want to come to the US legally if there is a labor shortage. And illegal immigration imposes costs and pushes down wages for lower skilled jobs by creating a permanent underclass.

We should have a merit based immigration system with a mechanism to allow a limited number of asylum cases (true asylum, not merely economic need).

In terms of the legal merits, it comes down to the meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction" in the 14th amendment. I think its an uphill battle for the Trump position given historical precedent, but the Trump admins legal arguments have some merit. In particular, I think its an open question as to whether Congress can enact a law to define what "subject to the jurisdiction" means - as opposed to requiring a constitutional amendment. I don't think Trump can do that via executive order so I think he loses on that.

What distinguishes the US experiment from the moribund states of Europe is that the center always moves. Immigrants constantly change culture, demographics, become assimilated and new branches of " Americans" prosper. Going back to something that doesn't exist makes no sense

We have been living a political fiction thanks to people who ignore second-order effects and pretend that incentives don't matter.

Library of congress just deleted history! 1866 congressional doc where originator of 14th said foreigners or aliens do not get birthright citizenship. Everyone save a copy NOW, History deleted! OMFG!#birthright #BirthrightCitizenship #trump https://t.co/WJu9GtOQKf pic.twitter.com/GQV3Eaa4Nk

— Bad Kitty Unleashed 🦁💪🏻 (@pepesgrandma) October 31, 2018

Zippergate said:

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We have been living a political fiction thanks to people who ignore second-order effects and pretend that incentives don't matter.

Library of congress just deleted history! 1866 congressional doc where originator of 14th said foreigners or aliens do not get birthright citizenship. Everyone save a copy NOW, History deleted! OMFG!#birthright #BirthrightCitizenship #trump https://t.co/WJu9GtOQKf pic.twitter.com/GQV3Eaa4Nk

— Bad Kitty Unleashed 🦁💪🏻 (@pepesgrandma) October 31, 2018

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The wording of the 14th Amendment is different than what is quoted from some unnamed Michigan Congress Critter in conversation. The 14th Amendment doesn't make a distinction about whether a person born in the US is a foreigner or not. See Section 1 below. Here's the only part that talks about birth and citizenship.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State in which they reside."

Nothing there about whether your parents were foreigners.

Eastern Oregon Bear said:

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Zippergate said:

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We have been living a political fiction thanks to people who ignore second-order effects and pretend that incentives don't matter.

Library of congress just deleted history! 1866 congressional doc where originator of 14th said foreigners or aliens do not get birthright citizenship. Everyone save a copy NOW, History deleted! OMFG!#birthright #BirthrightCitizenship #trump https://t.co/WJu9GtOQKf pic.twitter.com/GQV3Eaa4Nk

— Bad Kitty Unleashed 🦁💪🏻 (@pepesgrandma) October 31, 2018

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The wording of the 14th Amendment is different than what is quoted from some unnamed Michigan Congress Critter in conversation. The 14th Amendment doesn't make a distinction about whether a person born in the US is a foreigner or not. See Section 1 below. Here's the only part that talks about birth and citizenship.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State in which they reside."

Nothing there about whether your parents were foreigners.

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Sounds like the argument is going to be that illegal immigrants are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," which (as I've been saying) sounds like a huge stretch that the Court is very unlikely to go for.

Moreover, why even go for this? Immigration has been controlled in the past even with birthright citizenship on the books and can be again. Seems like an unnecessary headache to pursue a re-write of the Constitution.

DiabloWags said:

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From a pure economics standpoint, why would anyone want to decrease the taxpaying labor force?
Do you really want to create even more wage increases and inflation due to less labor supply?

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Because people aren't a unit of labor. People have lives and want to live in a place with a sense of community and when you import people from other cultures en masse and do it year after year, with no breaks, you will tear down society from a high trust community to a low trust one. Nevermind the economic costs associated with it, it destroys social cohesion if you don't give the people you are bringing in time to americanize. The United States is a test case, nothing like this country has ever been tried, but at the same time, we have to learn from mistakes quickly and adjust otherwise you'll just end up with a collection of people with nothing in common and eventually the unity that we try and achieve will just break down.

sycasey said:

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MinotStateBeav said:

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DiabloWags said:

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From a pure economics standpoint, why would anyone want to decrease the taxpaying labor force?
Do you really want to create even more wage increases and inflation due to less labor supply?

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Because people aren't a unit of labor. People have lives and want to live in a place with a sense of community and when you import people from other cultures en masse and do it year after year, with no breaks, you will tear down society from a high trust community to a low trust one. Nevermind the economic costs associated with it, it destroys social cohesion if you don't give the people you are bringing in time to americanize. The United States is a test case, nothing like this country has ever been tried, but at the same time, we have to learn from mistakes quickly and adjust otherwise you'll just end up with a collection of people with nothing in common and eventually the unity that we try and achieve will just break down.

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The US has certainly had periods of high immigration in the past and has maintained social cohesion. What is different about this time?

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Yeah high immigration (nothing like what we just had by the way) but relatively high compared to that time period. But those times were also followed by shutting off the immigration valve for many years and allowing the new entrants time to acclimatize themselves. What we just had has really been unprecedented in our history.

sycasey said:

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MinotStateBeav said:

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DiabloWags said:

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From a pure economics standpoint, why would anyone want to decrease the taxpaying labor force?
Do you really want to create even more wage increases and inflation due to less labor supply?

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Because people aren't a unit of labor. People have lives and want to live in a place with a sense of community and when you import people from other cultures en masse and do it year after year, with no breaks, you will tear down society from a high trust community to a low trust one. Nevermind the economic costs associated with it, it destroys social cohesion if you don't give the people you are bringing in time to americanize. The United States is a test case, nothing like this country has ever been tried, but at the same time, we have to learn from mistakes quickly and adjust otherwise you'll just end up with a collection of people with nothing in common and eventually the unity that we try and achieve will just break down.

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The US has certainly had periods of high immigration in the past and has maintained social cohesion. What is different about this time?

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One difference is that the US has become an entitlement state, thereby increasing the cost of immigration.

Another thing that has changed is the attitudes of American and the immigrants. I grew up hearing that the US was a great melting pot where people of all backgrounds combined to make the country better/great. Saying that now literally considered a slur/microaggression in many quarters. As noted above, that leads to a loss of social cohesion.

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+us+is+a+melting+pot+slur&rlz=1C1UEAD_enUS1139US1139&oq=the+us+is+a+melting+pot+slur&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRhAMgYIAhBFGEDSAQg1MzM0ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

We’ve finally found what it takes for The New York Times to admit unborn babies are not just a clump of cells pic.twitter.com/je6g9MgnL7

— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) January 22, 2025

What's the big deal over a clump of cells? And did the NYT just use the word, "woman" over "birthing person"?

tequila4kapp said:

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I am not interested in doing the research on the issue so maybe it will turn out I am wrong. It is possible the "not subject to" language could exclude people not here legally. But I think the stronger argument is that the language applies to people like Diplomats who are legally in the country but literally not subject to the laws of the land.

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You have generally described one of the the leading arguments/interpretation of that clause. It is based on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, a case decided in 1898. In that case, the court looked to English common law to interpret the "subject to jurisdiction" clause and they noted that in England, diplomats and hostile occupants were not under the jurisdiction of the king.

In the Ark case, the parents were lawful residents of the US, but could not become US citizens because of laws such as the Chinese Exclusionary Act. The question was whether their child could become a citizen by birth when the parents were not eligible for citizenship.

Here is a quote from the holding of the Ark case:

"Chinese persons, born out of the United States, remaining subjects of the emperor of China, and not having become citizens of the United States, are entitled to the protection of and owe allegiance to the United States, so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here; and are 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' in the same sense as all other aliens residing in the United States."

There are arguments that the Ark case was wrongly decided (i.e., the 14th Amendment was misconstrued). But there are also arguments that the Ark ruling does not apply to children of illegal immigrants.

DiabloWags said:

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BearGoggles said:

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There is no policy reason to encourage illegal immigration by offering birthright citizenship. I don't believe any other county does this.

The economic argument is bogus. There are plenty of people who want to come to the US legally if there is a labor shortage. And illegal immigration imposes costs and pushes down wages for lower skilled jobs by creating a permanent underclass.

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Can't wait to see all those white folks showing up to pick crops in the Central Valley due to the coming labor shortage.
I'm sure that you know many people that would be willing to do that kind of work, right?

To claim that Trump's birthright citizenship policy wouldn't have any economic impact on California would be the understatement of the year.

To hear someone call this BOGUS is completely asinine.
Has no basis in reality.

CALIFORNIA employs the most farm workers of any state in the nation and grows HALF the produce consumed in the United States. The economic impact would be massive.

These MAGA farmers could be ruined if Trump follows through with mass deportations - POLITICO

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Congrats on ignoring the original post in favor of your typical ad hominem.

If, to adopt your gross framing "white people won't do the work", then fortunately there will be lots of legal immigrants who will do the work. That was my original point, which you did not address. Or we can have a guest worker program. Or farms can raise wages. Or we can import more food from Mexico and other countries. Or all of the above.

There are lots of options besides allowing people to immigrate illegally. The first and best option is legal immigrants of which there are many waiting in line.

And in terms of birthright citizenship, Trump is not proposing to take away birthright citizenship from legal immigrants who are permanent residents. Full stop.

Ultimately, your birthright argument makes no sense. The farm worker illegal immigrants are coming here to work due to economic necessity. Do you think they won't come if it turns out their newly born children don't get citizenship? It seems pretty clear they will still come if the US allows it. Unless of course they're coming primarily to have a child on US soil - in which case your economic "we need farm workers" argument is irrelevant.

My mother picked fruit in Redwood City before Silicon Valley existed.
She did it to pay for college to become a health care professional.
In other words, she did it because it was lucrative.

If people who picked fruit were guaranteed lifetime free health care and/or a guaranteed minimum lifetime living wage and/or subsidized and/or matched contributions into an IRA, and/or a home purchase voucher, or any other way to reward critical, needed hard work, then we may have Americans storming for these jobs.

To know that they're securing their financial futures FOR LIFE would be all the incentive they ever needed to do such "lowly work."

Imagine how many people in the bottom economic demographic would be lifted up by a program like this?

Would probably put a big dent in the homeless situation.

Isn't food worth the social spending needed to put it on the table?

But since we cannot have discussions of solutions like these, we'll never even be able to move forward.

Everyone lacks imagination when it comes to actually implementing programs that help PEOPLE, not corporations, or the rich or the wealthy.

Good post.

My alternative version...imagine if we didn't bring in cheap labor and farms had to pay an actual market rate for labor. (read: there IS a price at which lazy white Americans will do this work). Yes, fruit would be outrageously expensive...for a while. But wages for a sector of the population would actually be "livable" and that would have a pretty big impact throughout the larger labor market, if not economy.

I think it's just a racist or xenophobic consideration to oppose. People don't want new languages, cultures, religions.

Some reasonable arguments in your post but if assuming the motives of others is fair game, let's turn the tables. What could possibly be the motivation for importing millions and millions of unvetted people including terrorists, drug smugglers and human traffickers and not wanting to deport violent criminals? What is your motive for defending such a ridiculous policy? Marxist ideology? virtue signalling? irrationality?

I would disagree with you that population growth is the be-all-end-all. With increases in productivity from AI, automation, etc, the need for labor is greatly reduced. Why is it that so many in your party talk about the need for UBI? Can you explain how UBI is consistent with importing the lowest of the low in terms of human capital? And why do we need so much labor when we have a sizeable underutilized underclass that is like the immigrants flowing in?

Open borders folks love to point to the great European waves of immigration a century ago as justification for unfettered immigration today. Fine, let's re-create those conditions. No free rent, no EBT, no free health care, no free school lunch or child care, in short, zero financial support. Until we have those conditions again, they cannot claim that the current immigration wave is the same as before. Of course we can and should have immigration. Who is arguing against that? The priority should be adding vetted immigrants who bring something to the table. America first. If one really cares for the world's poor, the priority should be to help them in the countries where they currently reside, not fly them into this country, splash them with cash and benefits and tell them how oppressed they are.

The unfunded liability of social security and medicare is well over 100 trillion dollars. Every immigrant who brings over their elderly parents (who add nothing to the economic activity of this country other than the extra demand for hip replacements, pharmaceuticals, etc) is adding to that liability. The very first thing you learn in economics is the concept of scarcity. Just because the government can print money doesn't change the fact that resources are scarce. Nominal, not real, prosperity is the bill of goods we're being sold.

Take it to the Supremes.