Thinking more about birthright citizenship

[Pointedstick]

This article got me thinking about birthright citizenship:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/2 ... 03435.html

"My life has changed without my father," Stephanie, an American citizen born in the United States, said to the camera in Spanish. She began to cry. "Since he's been gone, I miss him every day. Every morning when I wake up I wonder why they didn't let him stay here. Why do they have to be so cruel to the families that are here?"

This girl is right; it really is cruel to deport her father but leave her here. If you think about it though, the culprit is actually birthright citizenship: an illegal immigrant came to the USA, fathered a child who due to geography is legally a citizen, and then the illegal immigrant is found and deported. But they can't deport his child too since she's a citizen. The article is silent about the legal status of the mother, but reading between the lines, she's probably an illegal immigrant too. Also implied is that she is on some sort of state-administered welfare program for her non-specific "chronic condition."

So birthright citizenship has to result in breaking up families in the case when a parent illegal immigrant is caught, and makes the consequences of illegal immigration into a much more heart-wrenching affair when children are involved. The government's only choice for keeping the family intact is granting amnesty to the illegal immigrant since the child can't be deported along with the parent, as a US citizen.

It all really got me thinking about birthright citizenship. Does it really make any sense? Should people be automatically granted citizenship simply because they are born on U.S. soil, even if both of their parents are non-citizens?

I was reminded of a Portuguese family I met recently who timed a vacation to the USA to coincide with the birth of their daughter. Boom, just like that she's a dual US-Portuguese citizen. This girl has never been in the USA once since her birth and barely speaks any English. I was frankly shocked that what they did was even possible. This kind of strategic gaming of the system is something that seems very inappropriate to me.

[murphy_p_t]

I couldn't agree more w/ the premise of your question. In my mind, the answer is self evident.

So I understand opposing views...are there any well-articulated arguments defending birth-right citizenship in the 21st century?

Also, I think I've read that only the US has birthright citizenship. Is this accurate?

[moda0306]

PS,

I figured since you don't believe in government, you wouldn't worry yourself with something as obviously statist as the institution of "citizenship."    If the individual truly comes before the state, then citizenship is secondary to one's status as a individual.  We may not want to have agencies giving these people public benefits, but the forcible removal of them and relocation to where the police or feds feel they belong (how would they even decipher this?), or even simply saying that they can't work to earn income in the "private sector" because they don't have a valid government ID number, is a gross assault on the individual by the state.  "Citizenship" is just a bs word we give the order of trying to say who our government has authority over, or is accountable to, or, apparently, whether you even have the natural right to inhabit the rock we claim as America, or to work in it.  So the way I see it, citizenship is a function of the state.  However, so is the welfare and base societal benefits of living here (and lastly, so is "private property," but I digress)... so the question is does one offset the other, or is it just more statism (aka, do two wrongs make a right)?

Since employment laws and removing people from their homes to bring them to somewhere they may have never or barely been in their lives is on its face a coercive event of huge intrusion, I have trouble suggesting a legal framework around that act is fair.  However, like I said, they're receiving benefits for being here, and being a citizen "means something."  However, once again, this is a function of the state, not some kind of natural phenominon.

I guess the further question to ask is, do we really want to be deporting, for instance, an 18 year-old girl, to Mexico (how do we even know for sure if she's from there?), simply because her Mom wasn't a citizen 18 years ago?  If we're not going to do that anyway, there may be little point to changing the Amendment.  If we are, I think those in favor of such action need to realize what they're calling on the government to do... ripping people from their homes to send them to a land they've never been to.

The reason this is a difficult issue is precisely the same reason so many of these issues, at their root, are complex... trying to reconcile the sovereignty of an individual with the sovereignty of the state and all these resources we're somehow supposed to share is NOT easy, nor is there any inherantly natural solution.  Maybe taxes to pay for welfare benefits of someone else is an intrusion on individual sovereigty, but you can maneuver around that.  I have "options" in the tax world I live in.  I could simply work less and enjoy life more, cheat the system and probably get away with it, or continue to work hard for the marginal benefit I know I'll receive (after-taxes... of course) if it's worth it.  Someone being banned from working a job in the U.S., or ripped from what they've called a home for 5, 15, 30 (I don't know if there's any amnesty here) to return them to a country that may not even recognize them as citizens doesn't leave one with many options and is about as offensive an affront on individual dignity that I can come up with.

I have no problem with severely limiting access to certain public benefits for non-citizens... that's a legitimate debate... but I think it's obvious what I think about more aggressive forms of immigration control.  Build big walls, make it more difficult for non-citizens, but outlawing working in the U.S. seems extreme, as does actively deporting people who have lived their whole life here.  That's statism, pure and simple.  I'm much more a fan of an immigration policy that recognizes the importance of citizenship, but starts from a respect of individual sovereignty rather than a statist idea of "who belongs here," even though I'm one of the lucky winners of the ovarian lottery.

[notsheigetz]

Also, I think I've read that only the US has birthright citizenship. Is this accurate?

According to this website The US and Canada are the only two "developed" nations still offering birthright citizenship. Most who previously had it have since repealed it (wisely, IMHO)....

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/lear ... nship.html

[moda0306]

Also, I think I've read that only the US has birthright citizenship. Is this accurate?

According to this website The US and Canada are the only two "developed" nations still offering birthright citizenship. Most who previously had it have since repealed it (wisely, IMHO)....

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/lear ... nship.html

I thought you were an anarchist (or basically believe in "no government).

Isn't the idea of "citizenship" a function of the state?

Seriously curious how you view this.  Not trying to be snarky or argumentative.  I tend to have trouble with all this as private activity and public functions are so intertwined it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

[Pointedstick]

Moda,
Perhaps I should have started off by saying that I was taking off my anarchist hat. You are absolutely right that the concept of citizenship is a construction of the state. But, as you say, so is welfare. You know that my preference would be no state at all, but we don't live in that world. At the same time that I try to advocate for that, I also try to be realistic about the world we live in.

And in that world, we have a state that grants citizens substantial benefits, but simultaneously makes it difficult for people to become citizens, and drop-dead easy for those non-citizens to give birth to citizens purely based on geography. Furthermore, non-citizens can also receive many benefits that are mostly paid for by citizens. Within the logic of a state, all of this seems like a recipe for abuse to me.

It seems to me that if the state wants to hand out free stuff (primary education, medical care, etc) that gets paid for by citizens, then it become more important that the state not let in people who are likely to take more than they give back. As others frequently point out, most of the otherwise very progressive first world nations are much pickier about who they admit and how they grant citizenship than the USA is.

You can absolutely point to examples and hypotheticals that represent affronts to individual rights. But I think it's important to keep in mind that people would have made different decisions had they known in advance that the rules of the game would have been different. Without birthright citizenship and welfare for non-citizens, would these people have come to the USA and given birth to their daughter here to begin with? I think it's a lot less likely. The Portuguese family I mentioned sure wouldn't have.

Within the framework of having a state, if we wanted to pass a national law or constitutional amendment eliminating birthright citizenship and barring non-citizens from attending government schools or taking advantage of government medical care without paying for them in some manner, I would be fine with loosening up a lot on who could come in. The logic being that once non-citizens standing on US soil aren't immediately entitled to expensive stuff paid for by other people, it becomes a lott less important that they be prevented from entering.

The anarchist extreme of no state at all and you-get-what-you-can-pay-for also solves this problem nicely IMHO but it's not realistic within our lifetimes.

[MediumTex]

I have an idea for a Mexican entrepreneur.

Get a catapult and a bunch of those parachutes that BASE jumpers use.  Advertise a service to pregnant women in which you will wait for them to go into labor and then "toss" them into the U.S. so their babies can be born here.

With the parachute, I would think that a relatively soft landing would be possible.  You definitely want to make sure to protect the unborn baby, perhaps by outfitting the mother with a set of football pads and helmet (or something like that).

I would love to see the look on border patrol agents' faces when they started seeing pregnant Mexican women falling out of the sky dressed as football players.

If our entrepreneur really had a sense of humor, he could teach the women to make the following statement in English when they were apprehended: "Baby being born.  Please help.  Also, which way to Dallas Cowboys tryouts?"

[moda0306]

Question:

If one is believed to be an illegal alien, does the government have to prove you either weren't born here or aren't a citizen for some reason, or is the burden of proof on me?

I'd imagine that if the government wants to pull me from my home, they'd have to prove I wasn't born here.  Further, one might think they'd have to prove where I AM a citizen of if they're going to forcibly remove me from the country to go somewhere else.

The only other option, if they don't want you living/working in a community, is to put you in jail (even if they CAN prove beyond reasonable doubt that you're not a citizen).  So now we're essentially giving someone free food, shelter and medical care in a prison.



Also, flipping this subject on its head, why should whose someone's parents were have anything to do with "citizenship?"  And just because "other countries are doing it," I don't consder that a good reason, as other countries do all sorts of coercive things, some arguably better than others, not the least of which is guaranteed health insurance and free college.  Essentially, a child is not the private property of their parents.  Further, I no-more earned my citizenship than an "anchor baby."  If we're truly looking at this through the lens of individualism-first, state-second, if there is any fundamentally sound measure of citizenship, shouldn't it be where I came into this world?  Or should it be "who my parents are?"

Now we get right back to what the parents have rights to as they are now anchored here, but this isn't an argument about functionality so much as fundamental rights and philosophy (at least for me right now).  If we're going to have this animal called a state, but build it on the premise of respecting people as individuals (as oxymoronic as that sounds), then what is the criteria for "citizenship?"


One last part of my rambling, incoherent response, without anything that could be considered a rational thought (may God have mercy on my soul)... It seems like the main analysis of this surrounds the idea that "we can have a welfare state, or we can have open borders, but we can't have both."

This makes some sense, but since we'll never have either/or (it will always be some mix of the two), I'd like to compare those two. 

The mechansm through which the welfare state effects me is to the degree I have to pay for it... taxes, essentially.  The mechanism through which hawkish immigration policy effects "non-citizens" is via overt deportation (rounding people up and driving them somewhere they may not know and dropping them off there), or employment-illegalization (making it ILLEGAL to work or hire "non-citizens" for income).

Let's compare these two, as to which is more "coercive:"

- With taxes, I know what they are going to be, and I know what welfare benefits I have availability to if I don't work, and I choose to work for the income I make.  Not because I'm charitable... because it's worth it for me as a greedy individual.  I know almost exactly what taxes will be for the next year and probably not too far from the next decade on my maginal work, and get to make the decision as to whether it's worth it to work, or a better use of my time to enjoy the freedom I have and live off of less income.  I can even cheat the tax system if I want, and I'll probably get away with it for years-if-not-decades with few repercussions.

- With deportation or illegalized working, the government is being overtly coercive in ways that either remove me from my home, or disallow me from participating in the productive economy.  Without digging into details, this is some gestapo sh!t.

If the members of this forum had to put up with one or the other of those government coercion-risks, I'd bet dollars-to-donuts we'd take the current tax code rather than risk being deported or disassociated from the ability to engage productive employment.

So this isn't a yin/yang of statism where it all balances out.  Putting harsh rules around "citizenship" against people who've been here for decades is far more overtly coercive than having some portion of our taxes (well within our control to avoid) going towards a welfare state.

[murphy_p_t]

Moda,
I applaud you for applying the libertarian ideology to the question of illegal immigration. I think your effort is a small example of what is wrong in being overly dogmatic in applying an ideology to resolve problems afflicting the country. As evidence, there is another thread which already addresses much of what is wrong w/ unrestrained, unskilled immigration...in particular, CraigR made substantial contribution there, as I recall.

[smurff]

About deportation, one can be kicked out of the USA even if here legally.  If a person with a green card is convicted convicted of (or pleads to) a crime, there's a law that practically mandates they be candidates for expulsion to the country of their official citizenship when their prison/probation terms are finished. 

There have been many cases in recent years, including the case of the Tsarnaev's mother, who was convicted of shoplifting.  (She went with her sick husband back to Russia, so it never became an issue until her sons attacked the Boston Marathon.)  Others were infants when they were awarded green cards, have never left the USA, and have little or no direct connection to the country where they are to be deported.  The Rutgers student who videotaped his gay roommate in their room (roommate committed suicide, jumping from the GWB in NYC) was an example.

And there have been many cases of alleged Nazi guards who came here, gained citizenship, raised families, only to be expelled for lying when their records were challenged.

So getting the paperwork to stay here legally is no guarantee you can't be kicked out during a critical time in your life or your child's/grandchilds life.

It's a crazy system, and not just in the USA.

[Pointedstick]

Moda, that was a pretty good stream-of-consciousness, I'd say. And I agree with you on much of it. There's a pretty deep rabbit hole we have to go down when we take an anti-immigration position. I mean, if we're going to define citizens vs non-citizens, then we need some method to distinguish the two. That pretty much means a national ID system, which is in and of itself a substantial aid to government tyranny and open to lots of abuse. It means having to prove you're a citizen, or, conversely, having the government harass and oppress people suspected of not being citizens.

There's no question my mind that we're dealing with a "best of the bad options" situation here if we embrace some kind of state solution. That's where the rubber meets the political road. We need to come up with a system that respects individual liberty as much as possible within the context of a state, because we can't delete the state, and we all agree that individual liberty ought to be maximized.

Personally, I think the best way to maximize individual liberty vis-a-vis immigration within a state context would be something like this:
1. Open physical borders
2, No employment restrictions
3. All government services require proving citizenship
4. Work does NOT require any kind of proof of citizenship
5. De-criminalize discrimination against non-citizens
6. Eliminate the minimum wage
7. Eliminate birthright citizenship
8. Military service grants citizenship

[murphy_p_t]

re: point 8...didnt the roman empire do something like that...use foreigners / mercenaries to extend the empire to grab more lands / resources...until the collapse.

admittedly, this is probably a superficial view of the collapse of the roman empire

[Pointedstick]

Also moda, another major objection to the welfare state--especially among conservatives--isn't just that you have to pay for it; it's that it changes the character of society by allowing sloth and dependence to a much greater degree than otherwise. It also effectively subsidizes otherwise unsustainable lifestyles--such as single motherhood.

The big issue with welfare that I see among liberals and conservatives is that they don't agree on its basic effect.

Liberals see it as a charitable, compassionate expression of society's effort to take care of people with bad social safety nets that helps people down on their luck get back on their feet, whereas conservatives believe it encourages people to partake more of the subsidies and subsidized lifestyles, creating an ever-growing dependent underclass.

[CA PP]

For Canada i think you have to be a resident of the country, not just passing by.  Here s what I found.

BY BIRTH: Person born on or after February 14, 1977, regardless of the nationalities of the
parents. Exceptions to this law include children born to diplomatic personnel and children of
parents who were not legal residents in Canada at the time of the birth.

Source: http://www.multiplecitizenship.com/wscl/ws_CANADA.html (dated prior to 2001)

[moda0306]

Moda,
I applaud you for applying the libertarian ideology to the question of illegal immigration. I think your effort is a small example of what is wrong in being overly dogmatic in applying an ideology to resolve problems afflicting the country. As evidence, there is another thread which already addresses much of what is wrong w/ unrestrained, unskilled immigration...in particular, CraigR made substantial contribution there, as I recall.

CraigR's arguments weren't based on fundmental moral philosophy, but on social engineering preferences around how he'd like to see this country "survive," which is fine (for instance, I prefer highways and rail to a blimp-based infrastructure).  I agree with a lot about what he had to say.  However, he kind of glossed over the fact that illegalizing gainful employment of certain individuals in this country is horribly coercive and would probably result in absolute misery of some.  Of course, the misery of "others" isn't factored in to the social engineering preference math. This is fine I guess, but it deserves to be pointed out, especially if we're talking about trying to build a political philosophy on "individual first, state second."

Also moda, another major objection to the welfare state--especially among conservatives--isn't just that you have to pay for it; it's that it changes the character of society by allowing sloth and dependence to a much greater degree than otherwise. It also effectively subsidizes otherwise unsustainable lifestyles--such as single motherhood.

The big issue with welfare that I see among liberals and conservatives is that they don't agree on its basic effect.

Liberals see it as a charitable, compassionate expression of society's effort to take care of people with bad social safety nets that helps people down on their luck get back on their feet, whereas conservatives believe it encourages people to partake more of the subsidies and subsidized lifestyles, creating an ever-growing dependent underclass.

As individuals, we don't have a right to impose our will on what our "overall society" looks like unless we're looking at a populist/statist model where enough of us can say that we don't like seeing people starve in the street at an old age and the majority of us vote in people who will enact Social Security.  This is the same model a libertarian/anarchist would abhore.  Just because you don't like seeing fat welfare queens and their kids at the park (I don't either), doesn't mean your personal liberty has been usurped.  It's just the same inconvenience I feel when I see children without health insurance and "I dont like it."  It's a social engineering preference, not a position taken rooted in individual liberty.

Further, I know a lot of liberals see the welfare state as "charitable."  And while I don't prefer our exact model of welfare state, I don't see the principal of a safety net as "charitable" any more than deeding land/resources as "private property" to individuals is "charitable."  I see it, essentially, as a different take on the social contract (one that doesn't just protect an ill-defined set of "negative rights").  We live in a complex world of individualism but having to share resources, and a system of private property (with defining and allocating a much more in-depth process) & social safety net (the floor of which is also an in depth discussion) seems like a phenomenal compromise to maximize productivity, security (not just military), freedom, and fairness.

However, it's unacceptable and inconsistent to me to have some select group withholding vital natural resouces in exchange for "others" labor, only to have NO social safety net for those "others."  Actually... for everyone, not just the others.

[Pointedstick]

As individuals, we don't have a right to impose our will on what our "overall society" looks like unless we're looking at a populist/statist model where enough of us can say that we don't like seeing people starve in the street at an old age and the majority of us vote in people who will enact Social Security.

Sure we do… within the context of a state. That's all politics is; collective determinations about what society will look like. And democratic politics just does it on the basis of majority. As long as we have a state whose leaders are chosen by majoritarian democracy, the character of society is going of be determined by what the majority of people vote for. If that's a statist concept that's at odds with individual liberty (which I would agree with) then we'd better focus on the marketplace rather than the ballot box and try to minimize the impact of politics on people's decision-making processes.

[moda0306]

As individuals, we don't have a right to impose our will on what our "overall society" looks like unless we're looking at a populist/statist model where enough of us can say that we don't like seeing people starve in the street at an old age and the majority of us vote in people who will enact Social Security.

Sure we do… within the context of a state. That's all politics is; collective determinations about what society will look like. And democratic politics just does it on the basis of majority. As long as we have a state whose leaders are chosen by majoritarian democracy, the character of society is going of be determined by what the majority of people vote for. If that's a statist concept that's at odds with individual liberty (which I would agree with) then we'd better focus on the marketplace rather than the ballot box and try to minimize the impact of politics on people's decision-making processes.

I was actually saying just that... sorry if it was unclear.

As individuals, we don't have a right to impose our will on what our "overall society" looks like unless we're looking at a populist/statist model

I was saying that in the lense of individual liberty, we can't complain about the "ugliness of society" as an affront to us no more than a deer should complain that other deer eating apples in my yard are an affrontto his liberty.  We should only focus directly on how the state overtly conflicts with our liberty.  I was trying to compare the actions of "welfare state" with the actions of "deporting people" from the perspective of which is a worse direct affront to individual liberty.  The latter clearly is.

The reason I point that out is because we're NEVER going to have perfect liberty, but it surely doesn't hurt to have individual liberty as a starting philisophical position, which only gets amended for the fact that we're essentially greedy animals stuck on a big rock together with limited resources, and we have to find away of arranging those resources amongst each other in ways that (hopefully) vastly improves non-freedom considerations like security, fairness, prosperity, and productivity.  In that context, deportation is clearly vastly more coercive than taxation, which are the two direct intrusions related to hawkish immigration policy and the welfare state, respectively.

If we're arguing about which will give us nicer parks to have our kids playing in, and which one will give our kids schools that only speak one language, or which will allow us to take the bus to work without having to put up with poor Mexicans picking our pockets, then we have a more complex social policy debate going on, but it's one in the context of the legitimacy of the state as an entity that can and will socially engineer situations to our liking.  There's no doubt that if we simply dissect the poor and illiterate from our society and (insert removal mechanism here) with them and forgot about how they feel about it, the rest of us would be "better off."  The question is, is that removal mechanism a gross assault to individual liberty beyond a line of acceptance as a reasonable tool to balance that liberty with fairness, production, prosperity, and security.  I would say it is, but this is just where the rich debate begins.

[Pointedstick]

I was saying that in the lense of individual liberty, we can't complain about the "ugliness of society" as an affront to us no more than a deer should complain that other deer eating apples in my yard are an affrontto his liberty.  We should only focus directly on how the state overtly conflicts with our liberty.  I was trying to compare the actions of "welfare state" with the actions of "deporting people" from the perspective of which is a worse direct affront to individual liberty.  The latter clearly is.

The reason I point that out is because we're NEVER going to have perfect liberty, but it surely doesn't hurt to have individual liberty as a starting philisophical position, which only gets amended for the fact that we're essentially greedy animals stuck on a big rock together with limited resources, and we have to find away of arranging those resources amongst each other in ways that (hopefully) vastly improves non-freedom considerations like security, fairness, prosperity, and productivity.  In that context, deportation is clearly vastly more coercive than taxation, which are the two direct intrusions related to hawkish immigration policy and the welfare state, respectively.

The thing is, once we accept that we'll never have perfect liberty and there will always be a state, we have to accede to a whole host of liberty-harming constructions in order to keep our state from collapsing.

For example:
Having a state requires borders; borders require a political difference between land and people within those borders and the land and people outside them. And this also shows that there must be some way to differentiate insiders from outsiders. If your quest to abolish the coerciveness of deportation requires that you abolish the distinction between insiders and outsiders, then you've basically abolished the state entirely! And if you abolish deportation but keep the distinction between insiders and outsiders, then you've created a means for outsiders to impersonate insiders, which isn't a problem unless insiders have special benefits that outsiders don't.

So this isn't about social policy, it's about the stability of the state. If outsiders come pouring in and overwhelm the resources of insiders, it could lead to the state collapsing entirely under the burden, or create a civil war, or a reverse revolution, or some similarly damaging event that I think we can both agree would be bad for prosperity and liberty.

I don't think you can have a geographically-defined state without the whole messy business of deportation, identification, and all those other coercive statist tools. If you want to get rid of all those oppressive tools then you really have two routes:

1. Abolish the whole state
2. Keep the state, abolish the coercive mechanisms, and abolish any free, tax-supported benefits granted to citizens and non-citizens alike