Will you give me your arguments for and against birthright citizenship?

If a child born in a country is not given birthright citizenship, is the child stateless? It would create a class of people without citizenship of any nation.

According to Webster’s, birthright is one word. Blood right must be two words because it isn’t in the dictionary as one.

Where I live, if one of the parents is a foreigner they can opt for which one they like the best. It’s not hard to obtain citizenship here so which one they choose is not much of an issue (rules and regulation applied). I think both system have their ups and down depending on the situation.

To answer which one I prefer is depending on who I am. If I am a foreigner and I visit a better country with better wellbeing support of course I’ll opt for the future kids to have the right to become permanent citizen (which can also help me to obtain green card in the process). If my spouse is living a richer life in another country of course I would like the kids to have the same citizenship as his. All depend on the situation, pragmatic situation, I mean (I don’t care how this will affect the government).

@zenvelo There are provisions and exceptions for people who are stateless, maybe I should include that. Thanks for that question.

Almost all countries have blood right citizenship so the stateless situation is quite rare I would think. Even the US, where we obsess about birthright citizenship, we also have blood right citizenship, but there are some qualifying parameters to it. Like how long the parent was out of the country.

Maybe I should go over that too, the very specifics in America for blood right. I had thought about it, which opens up the question what natural born citizen means and does the president actually have to be born in America. I was afraid if I brought it up the audience would obsess on that topic. Easily half the audience is right wing, a portion of that half were probably birthers.

You asked what would happen if a country didn’t have blood right citizenship, @JLeslie. @zenvelo pointed out that a whole bunch of people would be stateless.

^^Like I said, overall no, almost all countries have blood right citizenship, but yes some people will wind up stateless, which is something that I will add to the discussion now. It’s a good topic to go over.

But your question asked us to hypothesize about what if they didn’t have birthright citizenship laws @JLeslie. You asked for hypothetical scenarios.

I believe birthright citizenship was created to deal with the oddball cases. A couple is visiting this country and the woman is pregnant. She gives birth on our soil. The parent can then decide if the child has dual citizenship…this country and their home country. It would also apply to those having children in this country while here on green cards, work visas, etc. Same situation. I believe that for birthright citizenship to apply, the parents would need to be here legally. Truly oddball cases (ship wreck and the mother washes up on shore or is rescued in our waters and gives birth for example) could be dealt with in a case-by-case basis. Sneaking into our country to give birth so that you can claim citizenship through your kids is a scam. You violate the law and then decide you should be rewarded for your efforts? No. That would be like saying a jewel thief that is caught should be allowed to keep the jewels he stole because he had them in his possession when he was arrested. And in all these cases, the child would have citizenship, not the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, guardians or any other relation. The child could exercise that citizenship at a time in the future when they are legally able to be on their own. And in ALL cases, the laws of the home country need to be considered as well. Do they allow dual citizenship? If not, then the parents need to work through them to come to some agreement. This brings up the confusion of jus soli and jus sanguinis (birthright and blood right citizenship).

^^Your idea of why it was created doesn’t really make sense. Back in the day America didn’t allow dual citizenship.

It seems to me birthright citizenship was just practical in the New World. There was massive immigration, and most immigrants wound up staying in their new country.

True, but really, how would they know? I agree that most people coming here were here to stay. But what if they weren’t? Our laws say a child born here has citizenship, if the parents want it to have that citizenship. But what if the parents didn’t say anything and kept blood right citizenship for the child in their home country as well? Records were not widely shared or available. It would be interesting to see if there was a way to see if this happened and if so, how often.

I’m sure the law originated early in the USAs history as they wrestled with who should qualify to govern. Our early forefathers were born in England, or at least born of parents who immigrated here from England and who were English citizens.

The law was enshrined in the US Constitution in the 14th Amendment, after the Dred Scott decision denied citizenship to African Americans.

For those wondering about children born in the US but returned to the home of their immigrant parents, read Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, who was born in New York City, but went to Limerick as a small child with his Irish parents. He was fortunate to be able to return to the US as a young man.

I have read Angela’s Ashes.” It….leveled me.

Excellent post @zenvelo. I didn’t know that about Dred Scott.

My grandsons were born in France to American citizens. They are not stateless, they are Americans. According to French law, they can apply to be French citizens as well when they are 18 if they have lived in France for five years.

My sons were able to get British passports as well as their American ones because their father was British.

I did my presentation yesterday on birthright citizenship. I received some very nice compliments afterwords so that was nice. Some of the questions afterwards I couldn’t answer, but other people in the audience could. I’m not a legal expert as you know, I was just interested in the topic and people’s opinions. A lot of the discussion turned to immigration, which I expected might happen. If I do the presentation again I’ll be better prepared to answer questions.

One thing I was very happy to come across in my research, and I think many people in the audience were unaware of and found interesting, was the Supreme Court case of US vs, Wong Kim Ark. This case was a test to the 14th amendment, and basically solidified how we apply the 14th amendment. Here’s a 2 minute video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6y487b7mQj0 here also is the Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark

Ark was born during the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act. A horrible, very discriminatory law that was in force for 60 years! Chinese people had zero path to citizenship at that time. Here is a link about it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

I don’t understand why I haven’t heard any discussion in mainstream media or social media on this case or the exclusion act during all this time of anti-immmigration sentiment. History is my worst subject, so I’m not surprised I was unaware of the information.

I said how I felt citizenship helped with assimilation (that’s mostly opinion I guess).

Thanks again everyone on this Q for your brainstorming.