There is a (hopefully minor and unsuccessful) push to eliminate birthright citizenship

[catsittingstill]

Like many of the people reading this, I am a citizen of the United States of America.

Because I was born here.

Now there is a push to eliminate birthright citizenship.  Not for the likes of me; I'm white.  No, it's to eliminate it for children born to illegal immigrants.

The obvious effect of this would be to create a hereditary underclass.  If you're born of citizens, you're a citizen.  If you're born of legal immigrants you're ???  If you're born of illegal immigrants you're a noncitizen.  (What if only one parent is illegal?  Dunno.)  And if you're a non-citizen, and you didn't enter the US legally (I guess being born doesn't count!), then *your* kids are noncitizens.  And so on.

So what I'm wondering is, have I missed something?  Is there a way to eliminate birthright citizenship *without* ending up with a hereditary underclass?  And, for that matter, is this production of a hereditary underclass an unintended side effect?  Or the whole point?

Comments

[maiac.livejournal.com]

I think these fools believe that if they eliminate birthright citizenship, they can deport anybody who isn't just like them and have the United States that exists only in their very tiny minds. A hereditary underclass of exploitable peons is an unintended benefit.

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect that this question will be best answered by somebody you disagree with strongly. The disagreement will continue and perhaps get worse, but you will have a clue as to what the other side thinks like. (Do you have people like that on your friends list? Or am I inadvertently telling you that you should pay a bit too much attention to a troll?)

Nate

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

The production of a hereditary underclass is, I suspect, the entire point. America isn't for them, you understand. It's not for those filthy, icky brown people.

And hey, if they can make it retroactive, then it won't matter whether that brown guy in the WHITE House has a shifting-goalposts-definition-of-real birth certificate or not...

Whether that's part of the main goal, or merely a nice little side benefit, is left as an exercise to the reader.

[occams_pyramid]

Retroactive? Hey,good idea - I doubt that those pilgrim fathers had proper immigration papers from the local authorities.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I came across this the other day, and you might also find it worth reading:

http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/1943/aviva_chomsky_immigration_myth/

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Of course it's intended.

But they won't deport *all* the Icky Brown People. They intend to let some of them stay and clean white peoples' houses for subminimum wage, as the Founding Uncles intended.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

If you believe Lessig, the creation of an underclass is the whole point. The idea is that for them to have the money to keep it, and for us to give it to them. I think he makes a certain amount of sense.

http://bit.ly/b42TQt

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Creation of a permanent underclass was a goal of the Taney Court. In Scott v. Sanford, the infamous Dred Scott decision, the Taney Court found that African-Americans were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Birthright citizenship was established by the 14th amendment to reverse that decision.

So, probably, yes, that is the point for some of the people in this "movement," if you can call something with little deep popular support a movement. Other people in this movement want to deport all undocumented aliens they can find, all the millions them, and they wouldn't mind if some brown-skinned citizens went with them. And, oh, say it softly, there are some who would like to see a Final Solution.

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

Birthright citizenship is explicit in the 14th amendment. It would be tough to change.

NOT my opinions, merely overheard...

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

I don't think the production of a hereditary underclass is either an unintended side effect or the whole point, because I think (listening to some neighbors weighing in on the Hispanic migrant workers in the county)the point is to be able to *deport* the "non-American" immigrants.

The argument that I heard goes: if the illegal immigrants have American children with U.S. birth certificates from being born in a U.S. hospital, then authorities are reluctant to deport the entire family, mother, father, and child, because then they run afoul of depriving the U.S.-born child of its rights, because you can't deport a U.S. citizen if that citizen has done nothing wrong, and the child is just a kid. You cannot separate the mother and father from the child legally to keep the child in the U.S. and deport only them. (And I choke on the idea that it is still okay in their minds to deport someone innocent who has done nothing wrong...)

So, if lawmakers decide that illegal immigrants squatting on American soil spawn kids, those kids are also illegal, because their mother was at the time of birth. Then, you can boot all of them out. Why reward the parents for successfully having a baby, thus making them be able to legally extend their illegal stay? And since these illegals are all poor, they can't even pay the hospitals for the births, so taxpayers are paying for these illegals to have American babies.

And, oh, yes, also overheard: the Hispanics take American jobs away from "real" Americans, "steal" government moneys from the American poor, dirty up our parks, and make it so that you can't hear decent English spoken in stores and the streets.

Re: NOT my opinions, merely overheard...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The problem with creating a hereditary class of deportable people is that, unless you actually deport them all, you are by definition creating a class of people who can't go to the law for protection--and if they don't start out a hereditary underclass they will swiftly become one.

Re: NOT my opinions, merely overheard...

[patternbuilder.livejournal.com]

Actually, INS doesn't slow down deportations at all based on the kids' immigration status. Here in Georgia where a chicken processing plant was raided, they arrested all the hispanic / brown people, including some citizens. The non-hispanics were skipped, even though some of the light skinned workers were not citizens.
The horrible part was that dozens if not hundreds of children came home from school to empty houses and no parents. The local churches got involved and sheltered many of the effectively orphaned kids.
ACLU was suing INS last I heard over how the raid was carried out.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Now that I've vented my disgust, I can add a few more thoughts.

As the Time post points out, however, it would be very difficult to do this, so I don't think this will be done. It is just more stirring up of hatred to gain political support. I want this authoritarian period to be over, already, but I think we are in for years more of it.

A Previous Example to prove your hypothesis

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

Koreans who emigrated to Japan two and three generations ago are still considered non-citizen aliens there, and thus are second-class residents in the only country they've ever lived in.

Re: A Previous Example to prove your hypothesis

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Turks in Germany, similar story. IIRC, Arabs in France are nominally citizens, but ostracized in many ways.

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

How can this even be under consideration? Citizenship by birth seems to me like such as basic concept, I can not think of a way that birthright citizenship can be eliminiated without creating an automatic underclass. this would be such a step backwards that my personal consideration, and is not only stupid but ill considered. Perhaps it's not a real thing? It's beyond insane. I don't understand how any government who claims to lead a free country could even consider such a thing. So no I don't think you have missed anything, it's simply wrong.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Actually, there are two models for citizenship; geographical (by place of birth) and ancestry (who you're descended from). Different countries give them different weightings, with weird results; my wife (British) has just discovered she's Canadian, and a Californian friend has just acquired an Irish passport -- in both cases due to grandparents.

But this particular piece of lunacy has a primary target:

OBAMA!!11!!ELEVENTY!

(Because dontcha know he's Kenyan?)

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get the feeling that's one of the goals of this mess. There are people who're convinced that Obama's not really an American citizen. Not in the true, low-melanin way that counts, you understand.

[shannachie.livejournal.com]

Just for comparison: in Germany, there is no birthright citizenship. Children of (legal) immigrants who have not changed their nationality get a right to choose at the age of 18 what nationality they would like to be.
But maybe our situation is different. We get a lot of people who immigrate for work but do not wish to change their nationality. Sometimes this has to do with the fact that they own land in countries where foreigners are not allowed to own land - they would lose thier assets at home. Sometimes, unfurtunatly it has to do with the fact that they do not wish to integrate at all, don't like equal rights and did not originally plan to stay very long - and suddenly there's a second generation.
Personally I think Germany is handling the entire immigration and itnegration issue very badly. But I would not know how to make it better.