Isn't this statement aimed at citizenship tourism or whatever its called?
I used to live in a state where some new friends had told us about places that facilitated pregnant women's trips to the US solely for the purpose of staying and giving birth in the US so the child could become citizens. They then head home. I have no idea how prevalent this is.
If people really want to stop this kind of birth citizenship tourism they must vote for people who will pledge to amend the constitution using the proper democratic process.
But today's climate is so hostile to any kind of rational discussion about how to change laws. One faction just wants to deny citizenship right now to any people they seem not "american enough" while the other faction cannot possibly entertain any change to the current system or else It would concede something to the populist faction
I can imagine a compromise that exchanges a path to citizenship for DACA kids for restrictions on birthright citizenship.
What is missing from this debate is the practical side of things. On the one hand, a permanent underclass of non-voting second class citizens is probably not a stable long term equilibrium.
On the other hand, allowing anyone to visit the US to have their baby and automatically receive all the benefits of US citizenship is also not a stable long term equilibrium.
What change would you suggest? A minimum period of time in the country before birthright citizenship applies? What about people who enter the United States illegally and then have a child twenty years later? What about my ancestors, who entered the country legally but never pursued American citizenship?
The 14th amendment was written the way it was to create a bright line that was easy to implement. I'm sure they considered other ways of framing the issue. I think it's brilliant just the way it is.
Yes, the Justices in dissent have an ideological opposition to "citizenship tourism" and are working backward from that to find it to be out of scope of the Constitutional language. But that's wrong, that's not their job.
I had a friend from Shanghai who did this. It’s completely legal, you can have a proper tourist visa and be pregnant when you enter the USA, there are hospitals in SoCal that even cater to anchor babies and will express a passport for them so the parents can return with the baby shortly after birth.
That was back in the early 2010s, I don’t think it was prevalent then (I just had too many friends with the money to do that). I don’t think it is common now because Chinese citizens have more confidence about China and so aren’t looking for backup plans anymore.
The question of whether babies born to foreign tourists are automatically citizens is separate from the question of whether this is desirable.
On the desirability side of things, it's been this way for the entire history of this country (the amendment just codified how things were already done) and it seems to have worked OK. But even if we were to decide that this is bad, it would need to be fixed with an amendment.
Solicitor General Sauer brought up the same point during oral arguments in this case, and he didn't seem to know how prevalent it was either. Seems like the kind of thing you should have figured out before making your case to the Supreme Court.
Well, it doesn't matter. If the SCOTUS decides that some people, in certain circumstances, are not in jurisdiction of US law, then they have to apply that notion everywhere.
They can't pick and choose "oh no they are in jurisdiction of law A but not in law B". Jurisdiction is a fundamental concept, there's no middle ground.
As for whether people are really doing birth tourism: sure, there might be some cases, but well, they are using something that the legal system allows. If the country feels like it doesn't want that happening, it needs to amend the Constitution.
(Also, let's not kid ourselves that the birth tourism thing is what conservatives care about... People doing that kind of thing are usually rich. The real target are poor illegal immigrants giving birth in the country.)
> They can't pick and choose "oh no they are in jurisdiction of law A but not in law B". Jurisdiction is a fundamental concept, there's no middle ground.
I mean, they shouldn't do this but clearly they can rule however they want with any pretext they want, because they answer to nobody but themselves. Who's going to tell them they can't do something? Who is left to appeal to?
It's a deeply corrupt and undemocratic institution, with virtually unchecked power to rewrite legislation and even the Constitution at a whim.
Jurisdiction is not some singular concept that means the same thing in every context. You can have jurisdiction over some things in some contexts and not have jurisdiction over other things in other contexts.
The fourteenth amendment doesn't say "within the jurisdiction" but "subject to the jurisdiction": if you break a window as a tourist, you expect to be prosecuted because you committed a crime within that jurisdiction, but you do not expect to be conscripted into military service or to pay income tax, because you are not subject to the jurisdiction.
Birth tourism is definitely an issue for conservatives worried about China. Here's a 2019 ICE press release on prosecuting someone who was running a birth tourism ring to benefit Chinese government officials: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/chinese-national-pleads-gu...
The right is concerned that Chinese-American dual citizens born in the US but raised in China might, upon reaching adulthood, act with impunity as US-citizen agents of the Chinese Communist Party.
Citizen tourism is not a real concern; good grief why do people care about fringe issues that impacts no one instead of concentration of corporate power, consolidation of wealth, and decreasing rights for citizens?
Because the people in power don't believe those last things are problems, so they distract us with the former things which actually aren't problems that they present as problems.
> I used to live in a state where some new friends had told us about places that facilitated pregnant women's trips to the US solely for the purpose of staying and giving birth in the US so the child could become citizens. They then head home. I have no idea how prevalent this is.
As many as 26,000 mothers do it (birth tourism) every year.
CIS analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data to track the number of foreign-born mothers who gave birth in the United States. Researchers cross-referenced those births against federal figures of temporary visitors. They isolated foreign mothers who arrived on short-term visas, gave birth, and did not establish long-term residency in the U.S. CIS concluded that 20,000 to 26,000 births annually are attributable to women arriving on short-term tourist visas specifically to obtain citizenship for their children.
Genuine question.
Isn't this statement aimed at citizenship tourism or whatever its called?
I used to live in a state where some new friends had told us about places that facilitated pregnant women's trips to the US solely for the purpose of staying and giving birth in the US so the child could become citizens. They then head home. I have no idea how prevalent this is.
If people really want to stop this kind of birth citizenship tourism they must vote for people who will pledge to amend the constitution using the proper democratic process.
But today's climate is so hostile to any kind of rational discussion about how to change laws. One faction just wants to deny citizenship right now to any people they seem not "american enough" while the other faction cannot possibly entertain any change to the current system or else It would concede something to the populist faction
I can imagine a compromise that exchanges a path to citizenship for DACA kids for restrictions on birthright citizenship.
What is missing from this debate is the practical side of things. On the one hand, a permanent underclass of non-voting second class citizens is probably not a stable long term equilibrium.
On the other hand, allowing anyone to visit the US to have their baby and automatically receive all the benefits of US citizenship is also not a stable long term equilibrium.
What change would you suggest? A minimum period of time in the country before birthright citizenship applies? What about people who enter the United States illegally and then have a child twenty years later? What about my ancestors, who entered the country legally but never pursued American citizenship?
The 14th amendment was written the way it was to create a bright line that was easy to implement. I'm sure they considered other ways of framing the issue. I think it's brilliant just the way it is.
Yes, the Justices in dissent have an ideological opposition to "citizenship tourism" and are working backward from that to find it to be out of scope of the Constitutional language. But that's wrong, that's not their job.
I had a friend from Shanghai who did this. It’s completely legal, you can have a proper tourist visa and be pregnant when you enter the USA, there are hospitals in SoCal that even cater to anchor babies and will express a passport for them so the parents can return with the baby shortly after birth.
That was back in the early 2010s, I don’t think it was prevalent then (I just had too many friends with the money to do that). I don’t think it is common now because Chinese citizens have more confidence about China and so aren’t looking for backup plans anymore.
The question of whether babies born to foreign tourists are automatically citizens is separate from the question of whether this is desirable.
On the desirability side of things, it's been this way for the entire history of this country (the amendment just codified how things were already done) and it seems to have worked OK. But even if we were to decide that this is bad, it would need to be fixed with an amendment.
Solicitor General Sauer brought up the same point during oral arguments in this case, and he didn't seem to know how prevalent it was either. Seems like the kind of thing you should have figured out before making your case to the Supreme Court.
Well, it doesn't matter. If the SCOTUS decides that some people, in certain circumstances, are not in jurisdiction of US law, then they have to apply that notion everywhere.
They can't pick and choose "oh no they are in jurisdiction of law A but not in law B". Jurisdiction is a fundamental concept, there's no middle ground.
As for whether people are really doing birth tourism: sure, there might be some cases, but well, they are using something that the legal system allows. If the country feels like it doesn't want that happening, it needs to amend the Constitution.
(Also, let's not kid ourselves that the birth tourism thing is what conservatives care about... People doing that kind of thing are usually rich. The real target are poor illegal immigrants giving birth in the country.)
> They can't pick and choose "oh no they are in jurisdiction of law A but not in law B". Jurisdiction is a fundamental concept, there's no middle ground.
I mean, they shouldn't do this but clearly they can rule however they want with any pretext they want, because they answer to nobody but themselves. Who's going to tell them they can't do something? Who is left to appeal to?
It's a deeply corrupt and undemocratic institution, with virtually unchecked power to rewrite legislation and even the Constitution at a whim.
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Jurisdiction is not some singular concept that means the same thing in every context. You can have jurisdiction over some things in some contexts and not have jurisdiction over other things in other contexts.
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The fourteenth amendment doesn't say "within the jurisdiction" but "subject to the jurisdiction": if you break a window as a tourist, you expect to be prosecuted because you committed a crime within that jurisdiction, but you do not expect to be conscripted into military service or to pay income tax, because you are not subject to the jurisdiction.
Birth tourism is definitely an issue for conservatives worried about China. Here's a 2019 ICE press release on prosecuting someone who was running a birth tourism ring to benefit Chinese government officials: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/chinese-national-pleads-gu... The right is concerned that Chinese-American dual citizens born in the US but raised in China might, upon reaching adulthood, act with impunity as US-citizen agents of the Chinese Communist Party.
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Citizen tourism is not a real concern; good grief why do people care about fringe issues that impacts no one instead of concentration of corporate power, consolidation of wealth, and decreasing rights for citizens?
Because the people in power don't believe those last things are problems, so they distract us with the former things which actually aren't problems that they present as problems.
The best I can tell, 7-9% of US births are to non-US citizen parents. Maybe you could clarify what exactly you mean by “citizen tourism?”
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> I used to live in a state where some new friends had told us about places that facilitated pregnant women's trips to the US solely for the purpose of staying and giving birth in the US so the child could become citizens. They then head home. I have no idea how prevalent this is.
As many as 26,000 mothers do it (birth tourism) every year.
CIS analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data to track the number of foreign-born mothers who gave birth in the United States. Researchers cross-referenced those births against federal figures of temporary visitors. They isolated foreign mothers who arrived on short-term visas, gave birth, and did not establish long-term residency in the U.S. CIS concluded that 20,000 to 26,000 births annually are attributable to women arriving on short-term tourist visas specifically to obtain citizenship for their children.