Comment by fmobus
6 days ago
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.
I'll point out how many cases are decided unanimously. It's quite rare for a case to be decided 6-3 on ideological lines.
They can be impeached, though the efficacy of that is questionable these days.
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.
Surely "subject to the jurisdiction" must mean subject to any jurisdiction, or it is completely meaningless.
That’s a plausible meaning but it erases the exceptions for diplomats and Indians that everyone agrees exist.
2 replies →
In that case, the use of the word jurisdiction in the 14th Amendment is meaningless, too ambiguous to rely on. Unless we think the Constitution should be living, breathing, and adapt to the current political environment. Is that the current conservative viewpoint?
Not all originalists will hold the same views on how to deal with ambiguity in the same way not all on the living constitution side agree how ambiguity should be resolved. The takes are usually more on the "how to think about resolving the meaning" side than a "is there any meaning to resolve" side.
That said, the originalist viewpoint is usually more along the lines of "we should seek to resolve that ambiguity in context of when, why, and with which references the framers who wrote it had in mind". Most originalists are unlikely to care what an argument about the current political environment implies.
Well, a word can have different meanings in different contexts but still have a clear meanings in each particular context. But I agree that “jurisdiction” doesn’t have a well defined meaning in the context of individuals being subject to the jurisdiction of a nation.
In that case, the proper approach is to look at other evidence of what the drafters meant, which is what both the majority and dissents did.
4 replies →
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.
dont you have to pay income tax if you stayed and earned money?
[0] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/taxa...
Even better, Chinese anchor babies born in the USA are subject to pay income tax on income they earn in China. It’s not even clear they can get out of it by renouncing their citizenship when they turn 18 to take Chinese citizenship instead (when they have to decide). I think it’s more trouble than it’s worth now.
Sorry, that makes zero sense. Why are you picking conscription into military service or obligation to pay income tax as the defining jurisdiction? Why those two things, and not something else?
Specifically, of those two things you selected: the first would be horrendously problematic as the defining jurisdiction, since it would exclude persons ineligible for conscription (women, disabled persons, etc), and the second wouldn't even have the effect you are suggesting, since persons on non-immigrant visas sometimes _are_ subject to income tax. Heck, I don't even reside in the US, am not a citizen, and I do pay income tax on my RSUs. What gives?
As for the Chinese spy/saboteur/etc: treason will still be treason, and it's not like your country was above internment camps.
What if you're in the US on a work visa, so you do expect to pay income tax but don't expect to be conscripted into military service? What's the correct preposition for that case?
Still "subject to the jurisdiction of". US law doesn't currently have a law allowing them to be conscripted, and it would be very ill-advised to do so and it would cause a lot of diplomatic backlash, but it certainly could pass such a law if it chose to.
4 replies →
> 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.
The US seems fully committed not to learn from its past. I suppose the expectations are for expulsions and/or west-coast internment camps for Chinese-Americans should there be a hot war between the US and China. It figures, since the MAGA is all for turning back the clock.