GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Friday he would deport the children of undocumented immigrants with their families, despite them already being U.S. citizens.
“There are legally contested questions under the 14th Amendment of whether the child of an illegal immigrant is indeed a child who enjoys birthright citizenship or not,” Ramaswamy said after a town hall in Iowa.
Ramaswamy is not the only GOP candidate to question U.S. citizenship rules. Former President Trump announced in late May that on his first day back in office, he would seek to end birthright citizenship by way of an executive order.
This guy will literally say anything if he thinks it will get him what he wants.
He has a couple of very specific jobs for the Republicans.
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He’s the token minority so that the GOP can point and say; “SEE WE’RE NOT RACIST, WE HAVE THIS GUY IN THE PRIMARY.”
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He’s moving the crazy line further out. He’s saying more and more outlandish things, so that the other insane assholes that are running, seem positively nice in comparison. Even though, compared to actual sentiment of the public at large, they are beyond deranged.
I am sure this asshole is well paid by the GOP.
I think he and his advisors are severely underestimating the entrenched racism of their base, especially the far right wing that he is trying to court. Oh yeah, and he’s also a Harvard and Yale educated lawyer who attended school on scholarship from a Soros. And he’s Hindu, and a vegetarian.
Take any GOP position on any topic. Now distort that (which alone is probably bad enough as is) until it’s the most ridiculously ludicrous extreme position you could possibly take. Now imagine it being said by a badly written cartoon villan. That’s the position that this guy takes on anything. I’m not even 100% convinced he’s a believer in his own bullshit. His entire campaign seems to be focused on catering almost exclusively to the ones who are so far to the right that even the MAGA nuts give them the side-eye.
I swear the guy would gut and eat a live puppy right in front of the 5 year old that it belonged to if it meant it would get him four extra votes from a family in Montana or something.
I would write this off as little more than a twisted publicity stunt rather than a campaign meant to be taken seriously, but the last time I said that was Trump when he came down that escalator in 2015.
Come to think of it, starting a Presidential bid by coming down an escalator is a very odd way to make an entrance. It’s like arriving on a blimp.
Actually, the entrance itself I don’t have a problem with. When you’re entering the political world out of nowhere, you need to make an attention-grabbing entrance. Trump did that in spades.
The problem is that he immediately followed that up with the most racist announcement of a presidential run in the country’s history, and just got worse from there.
An immigrant, in a country of immigrants, deciding he doesn’t like those that came after… 🤷🏼♂️
In the “Law and Order” party, but thinks you can override the Constitution by executive order
Nah he isn’t an immigrant, he’s all ours. His parents are immigrants though. He’s as American as chili on spaghetti.
Nah he isn’t an immigrant, he’s all ours. His parents are immigrants though.
So he’s trying to get rid of the way of getting citizenship as he got his?
You do realize that birthright citizenship is almost entirely nonexistent in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Austrailia, right?
at no point in the history of america has “but yurop does it” been a suitable justification for a policy. We are specifically trying to be better than europe
I m French and this is complete bullshit . If you re birth in France you are French at your 18 birthday.
I’m going to be honest, I’m not a fan of birthright citizenship either. I believe a person born in the US should need at least one parent to be a citizen or lawful permanent resident in order to obtain citizenship, and the system as currently set up is routinely abused (See the Chinese tourist industry as an example). But my personal opinion directly conflicts with the Constitution, and guess which one matters?
There’s absolutely no ambiguity here. The Constitution clearly states that any person born on US soil is a US citizen, full stop. There are no disqualifiers listed. Doesn’t matter where your parents came from. Doesn’t matter if they just showed up in the US 5 minutes ago. If they were born on US soil, they are a US citizen. Any change to that requires a Constitutional amendment. And the chances of that happening any time in the foreseeable future are less than zero.
EDIT: I just want to point out that requirements that at least one parent is a citizen and/or has established long term residency in the country is the standard in the UK, Austrailia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Spain, and several other countries.
Ending birthright chitizenship is the quickest way to a starship troopers style citizen/non-citizen class divide you can concoct, which is ironically the specific situation the 14th amendment was written to avoid, because prior to that none of the enslaved people were citizens so all their descendants wouldn’t be either
Exactly. Combine that with Native Americans and how we still have a problem with treating brown skinned folks like immigrants even when their family has been in a place since before it was America, especially in the portions of the country that once were Mexico. And we’ve also got the fact that we utilize long term labor from immigrants en masse.
There’s also the logical consistency thing. We’re the nation of immigrants. If you’re born here and raised here you’re one of us. I’d be willing to change it from birth to x time in childhood but that’s a lot of work for something I just don’t see as an issue. I think the way we’re making ourselves unappealing to immigrant labor is a much bigger problem in this country.
Ending birthright chitizenship is the quickest way to a starship troopers style citizen/non-citizen class divide you can concoct,
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this; we already have this now. There are citizens, and there are non-citizens. The law applies to both equally. Nothing would change.
And making sure that descendants of illegal immigrants are also not citizens is kinda the point. Allowing them to become citizens rewards the parents for illegal immigration, and establishes a “back door” path to citizenship through chain migration. The objective would be to disincentivize illegal immigration by removing one of the rewards for doing it.
I suggest we start with your citizenship first. Which of your parents was rightfully citizens? Can you prove it? How? The only acceptable documents are naturalization paperwork or a lineage that goes back to the revolution. Unless you’re suggesting only DAR members be citizens, a great many people (including almost all Black people) will be denied citizenship.
I think the birthright citizenship is the way to go. If you’re born in the US I think that should be the point where we go “Okay, you’re a citizen”. We could have a situation where a group of people are perpetually denied citizenship for some reason that’s advantageous to another group, and that ensures their children can’t becomes citizens either.
We could have a situation where a group of people are perpetually denied citizenship for some reason that’s advantageous to another group, and that ensures their children can’t becomes citizens either
We did! It was slavery, slaves and their descendants were not citizens, and if it were not for birthright citizenship from the 14th amendment, would not be citizens today
But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
If the child has at least one parent that’s a citizen or permanent resident, they’re a citizen. So there would be no issues there.
If both of the child’s parents are from a foreign country and are just here temporarily, they’d still be citizens of their parents’ home country. There’s no reason to extend US citizenship to a child who won’t be here for long.
If one or both of the parents establish permanent residency in the US, they can establish the same for the child as well, giving the child and the descendants a path to citizenship.
If both parents are here illegally, then the child shouldn’t be granted US citizenship (at least until at least one parent establishes lawful residency in the US). Neither should the descendants. Allowing them and the descendants to establish citizenship and give those who would otherwise be denied lawful residency is one of the biggest incentives for illegal immigration in the first place. These would be the only people affected by removal of birthright citizenship in the first place.
There wouldn’t be any ambiguity. It’s very simple. Was the child born on US Soil? If so, does the child have at least one parent that is a citizen/lawful resident? If the answer to either one of those questions is yes, the child is automatically a citizen. Yes, there are those who could abuse the situation as you described, but those people would do that no matter what. And no matter what your personal position is on birthright citizenship, both sides can say that the other side can be used for political advantage; eliminating birthright citizenship could lead to cases as you described above, where people try to deny others of lawful citizenship for political purposes. But the same can be said in the other direction: allowing automatic birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and is advantageous to Democrats because minorities tend to skew heavily left when they become of voting age.
Regardless of politics, I just don’t think that people should be rewarded for doing illegally what they couldn’t or did not want to do legally. It sucks for the kids, but that’s the parents’ fault, not the US government.
But the same can be said in the other direction: allowing automatic birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and is advantageous to Democrats because minorities tend to skew heavily left when they become of voting age.
Hmmm I wonder why that is 🤔🤔🤔
It sucks for the kids, but that’s the parents’ fault, not the US government.
This isn’t the kids’ fault, why should they be punished by being denied citizenship? Their parent’s country is not guaranteed to give them citizenship if they are born abroad. Also if we start making things like this legal then, for example, what’s to stop debt from being legally able to be transferred from parents to children upon death? It’s their parents fault they are in debt the first place, sucks for the kids but that debt has gotta be paid somehow, ya know?
Allowing them and the descendants to establish citizenship and give those who would otherwise be denied lawful residency is one of the biggest incentives for illegal immigration in the first place.
Citation needed. Economic uncertainties and climate change are pretty big reasons for illegal immigration, afaik, and those are much more short-term survival considerations… it’s not necessarily a plot to have anchor babies in most cases.
If both parents are here illegally, then the child shouldn’t be granted US citizenship (at least until at least one parent establishes lawful residency in the US). Neither should the descendants
This is insane and cruel and a just society would punish you by stripping your citizenship
This debate has been ongoing in Canada for a while now, but personally I’m going to hold off on forming an opinion until someone can actually prove it’s an issue, because in Canada only ~500 births per year are from mothers who don’t live in Canada. It’s not even worth forming an opinion over, it’s just another polarizing distraction. Not sure if it’s as much of a non-issue in the US as well, but honestly it’s not even worth thinking about until someone shares some actual data.
Much, MUCH different in the US.
There were just shy of 800,000 births by undocumented immigrants between 2010 and 2016, or over 110,000 births per year. So several orders of magnitude above Canada.
Technically only a single order of magnitude in terms of total births (3% vs 0.1%). Up to Americans to determine whether 3% of all births is worth worrying about though.
Or just deny travel visas to pregnant women, add in an investigation for people who aren’t living in the US but have a baby here. If you are really worried about that, there are better ways than wholesale removal. It just doesn’t really seem like a problem.
deny travel visas to pregnant women
Right, cause that’s a situation we really want to give CBP power over… pregnancy tests for all women at the border? Pregnant women who can’t travel for business anymore? At that point, just make us 2nd class citizens and get it over with.
I think the issue is maybe not all countries recognize children of their citizens as also being citizens if born in another country? I could be wrong though, all countries might recognize the children, I’m not that well versed in global citizenship rules.
If that were the case though, someone born in the US would technically not be a citizen anywhere if not for birthright.
This is the same Republican party that vehemently defends the 2nd Amendment whose definition is much more widely “contested”, despite having much more real and dire consequences than the 14th.
