[Winstonm]

PassedOut, on 2015-August-22, 07:20, said:

You haven't mentioned fathers. What should be done if the father is a citizen and the mother is not?

I hadn't thought before about making the mother of a child born here a citizen automatically too, but that idea certainly has the virtue of simplicity. What would be the downside?

I guess according to Donald Trump's anchor baby theory, giving these woman automatic citizenship would be an example of Anchors Away, My Boys, Anchors Away!

[kenberg]

PassedOut, on 2015-August-22, 07:20, said:

You haven't mentioned fathers. What should be done if the father is a citizen and the mother is not?

I hadn't thought before about making the mother of a child born here a citizen automatically too, but that idea certainly has the virtue of simplicity. What would be the downside?

Fathers rather than mothers because we know who the mother is. I have been told that this is the logic behind the Jewish idea that you are Jewish if your mother was Jewish. At any rate, giving or not giving citizenship to the child based on the legal status of the mother would be fairly simple, basing it on the status of the alleged father would invite complexity and perhaps some gaming of the system.

The downside, if there is one, would be that this might not be the best way to choose who is a citizen and who is not. American citizenship is a quite valuable asset. If we agree that not everyone can be a US citizen simply because they wish to be, then we have to decide on what basis a person can become a citizen. One way might be to go through the immigration process, learn the language and American laws, take a test on those laws, and swear allegiance. Another way, at least for women, would be to cross the border when eight months pregnant, elude border enforcement for a month, give birth and claim citizenship. I prefer holding out for the first method.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2015-August-22, 08:19, said:

I wonder whether or not you allow for the possibility that the Constitution is subject to interpretation, and that interpretations that are different from yours are just as legitimate, thus, when you say, "ignoring the Constitution" what you may actually mean is "ignoring my personal point of view concerning the constitution"?,

The Constitution represents the law of our land, but it is not divinely inspired, sacrosanct. It is a human document written in compromise by humans. And its meanings are certainly not precisely etched on stone tablets.

I think wisdom is the understanding that there is no shame in being wrong, as we are all wrong from time to time and it is a shared human experience, that the only shame is in unwillingness to change in the face of contradictory facts.

Btw, I happen to agree with you that Constitutional amendment is the method that should be used as it is the only way to force an out-of-control Supreme Court to act rationally.

Sure, interpretation happens. And, imo, really it has to happen. If we couldn't do some interpreting we would need many more amendments. With the 14th, the interpretation seems to center around "subject to the jurisdiction thereof". I don't know how this has been interpreted but I would think it would not exclude very many people. Maybe the child of an Ambassador, if the special legal privileges of Ambassadors means that they, and their children, are not subject to US jurisdiction. But with immigrants, legal immigrants or illegal immigrants, the child would seem to me to be subject to our jurisdiction. So I don't see much interpretative wiggle room there.



It would be interesting to know if the drafters of this amendment really meant that anyone who could scurry across the border for an afternoon delivery could secure American citizenship for the child. Maybe they did. To me, it seems very wrong-headed. But it is what they said, so perhaps it was what they intended.

[StevenG]

If you do not give a child US citizenship, it does not follow that they become the citizen of another country. To where do you deport the child?

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on 2015-August-22, 08:33, said:

Fathers rather than mothers because we know who the mother is. I have been told that this is the logic behind the Jewish idea that you are Jewish if your mother was Jewish. At any rate, giving or not giving citizenship to the child based on the legal status of the mother would be fairly simple, basing it on the status of the alleged father would invite complexity and perhaps some gaming of the system.

The downside, if there is one, would be that this might not be the best way to choose who is a citizen and who is not. American citizenship is a quite valuable asset. If we agree that not everyone can be a US citizen simply because they wish to be, then we have to decide on what basis a person can become a citizen. One way might be to go through the immigration process, learn the language and American laws, take a test on those laws, and swear allegiance. Another way, at least for women, would be to cross the border when eight months pregnant, elude border enforcement for a month, give birth and claim citizenship. I prefer holding out for the first method.

Still, your idea of granting citizenship to both mother and child would immediately solve the problem of breaking up mothers and children via deportation. And I suppose that the number of women who would get pregnant so they could sneak across the border to gain citizenship would be so miniscule as to be inconsequential. Why not come over the border first and get pregnant here?

[jonottawa]

Here's a great response after Megyn Kelly's inappropriate line of questions (for which she was suspended) to the Donald at the first debate.

[kenberg]

StevenG, on 2015-August-22, 09:18, said:

If you do not give a child US citizenship, it does not follow that they become the citizen of another country. To where do you deport the child?

That's easy. The whole idea is to keep mother and child together. There might be cases when this is impossible. Sure. So we don't do the impossible. But the intention is either mother and child stay in the US, or mother and child are sent together to wherever you would send the mother if she were alone. Really the interaction is between authorities and the adult. The child is kept with the mother to whatever extent this is reasonable. It will happen that the mother disappears. Or it will happen that the mother is not someone anyone would leave a child in the care of. But these are exceptional cases.

So I am saying:
First, you decide whether the mother stays or goes.
Then, unless there is a very strong reason to do otherwise, the child goes with her.

[mikeh]

jonottawa, on 2015-August-21, 10:12, said:

See, even Mikeh, one of the most brilliant people I know, has been brainwashed by decades of CBC Koolaid. That's why it's fruitless for me to try to debate the issue.

Since I like Mike so much, I'll give it a go:

First, 'global warming' became 'climate change' when there were freak cold events and people used those freak cold events to ridicule 'global warming.' So it's not about mealy-mouthed, it was a case of the Al Gores of the world covering their butts.

Second, if you believe pollution & mass extinction are huge problems (& I do, I would also wager I have a significantly smaller carbon footprint than 99% of the people on this forum, including you.) then it is only logical to investigate the cause of these problems. In a word, what's the cause?

Overpopulation. You'd never know that if you get all your information from the MSM, but if you stop & think about it for 5 minutes, it's self-evident. Sustainable development with zero population growth should be the goal of any sane individual who cares about the future of our planet & the people who will populate it.

The first world has been very responsible with respect to solving the problem, maintaining very low (in some cases sub-replacement) birth rates.

The rest of the world hasn't.

Your solution is to let all the countries of the first world be flooded with 3rd world immigrants until they become 3rd world countries with 1st world carbon appetites & with NO appetite for curbing global warming.

I would call that solution bizarre.

tl;dr If you don't understand the connection between immigration & climate change, I suggest you turn off the CBC for a few days & have an independent think.

Here's a neat article about what happened to the Crocodile Hunter's daughter when she sent an essay to Hillary about overpopulation. A brief excerpt from Bindi's essay: "I believe that most problems in the world today, such as climate change, stem from one immense problem which seems to be the 'elephant in the room' that no-one wants to talk about. This problem is our ever expanding human population. We are experiencing Earth's sixth mass extinction right now. ..."

Here's a cool nature video. See if you can identify its relevancy to this discussion.



Or this ad:

https://vimeo.com/11212514

You don't seem to be very logical here.

Of course overpopulation is a big problem. Altho it is fair to say that many of the most rapidly reproducing humans have the lowest carbon footprint, it is also obvious that if, say, China had a population of 500 million, it wouldn't be producing as much greenhouse emissions, assuming that nothing else was changed. The same would be true if the US has a population of 150 million, and so on.

Freak cold events are a natural by-product of global warming, and anyone with any basic understanding of physics would know that. Add heat to a dynamic, chaotic system and the internal fluctuations in the system will increase. The overall trend will be warming, but there will be localized cooling as well. Only a dedicated denier or an idiot (the terms are not entirely equivalent) would think otherwise.

As for my solution being unlimited immigration: no, not at all. But the Trump plan lacks, shall we say, nuance. it is a typical populist approach: a simplistic solution to a complex problem. When most of one's population gets their understanding of the world from Youtube or Fox or indeed any media, then one gets a scientifically illiterate society, doomed to make stupid choices.

[kenberg]

PassedOut, on 2015-August-22, 09:20, said:

Still, your idea of granting citizenship to both mother and child would immediately solve the problem of breaking up mothers and children via deportation. And I suppose that the number of women who would get pregnant so they could sneak across the border to gain citizenship would be so miniscule as to be inconsequential. Why not come over the border first and get pregnant here?

Sure. They might.

Most people are just trying to live their lives. We probably agree on that. But rules, especially strange rules, can have an affect.

When I was in grad school many years ago I knew a woman who had an offer of marriage as a business relationship from someone who wanted to stay in the country. I have heard of other such offers but in this case I mention I am sure that it was so. She was considering it, and we discussed it. She declined the offer.

This also was the time of new rules to deal with the "brain drain". grad students would come to the US, typically from India or Pakistan, with the promise to go back. But then they would try to avoid it. The US set up rules that required them to leave the US, but couldn't or didn't see to it that they returned to their former country. I knew several that went to Canada, which for starters does did not please the government of the country that they came from. Also, after a year or so, they could apply to come back to the US. These things are tough to get right.

I doubt that many women decide to get pregnant with the sole purpose of giving birth in the US and thereby getting to stay in the US as the mother of a young citizen. That would be extreme. Happens, I suppose, but probably not in large numbers. But women do get pregnant, and then they naturally start to consider what a good plan would be. The current set up certainly would be motivation to get across the border before giving birth.

There is a sense in which this is all very much a wasted discussion. Donald Trump is not going to be elected, and whoever does run, on either major ticket, is not going to campaign on changing the 14th amendment. Not if he wants to win, anyway. But I do wish the writers of that amendment had thought through the consequences a bit more than I think they did.

An aside: There was an interesting article in the Washington Post a while back. Some high level academic wrote a journal article saying that stories of discrimination against Irish workers some 100+ years ago was not really very widespread and that advertisements for jobs stating that "No Irish need apply" basically didn't happen. Some youngster, 12 or maybe 13 or 14, read this and decided to check it out. It's the internet age and she was good at it, and I guess with some guidance from her father she found evidence to the contrary. She will now have an article published in the same journal, where she contradicts the professor.

Not particularly relevant to anything, but it was nice.









,

[Winstonm]

mikeh, on 2015-August-22, 14:05, said:

When most of one's population gets their understanding of the world from Youtube or Fox or indeed any media, then one gets a scientifically illiterate society, doomed to make stupid choices.

Let me butt in here because I experienced a real sinking feeling the other day while watching the network news. It occurred to me that a huge amount of air time is being given to the right-wing histrionics while little is being said about Clinton, Biden, and Sanders. I fear that whosoever controls the media controls the minds of America, and since Reagan there has been a steady erosion of competition, especially among the various media organizations, and we are left with a handful of powerful people in control of the majority of the news.

The Republican right wing now has more in keeping with a religious organization than a political party, unwilling to compromise their beliefs, and led by a few extremely wealthy individuals.

The last two Presidential elections showed that common sense still rules America, but since the midterm elections gave Congress to the Republicans I have serious doubts about the future - doomed, indeed, to make a stupid decision.

[kenberg]

I don't even know who the anchors on the news programs are anymore. I long ago gave up on 60 minutes. And really, I am not so fond of PBS either. I only know what I read in the newspapers. And of course here on the water cooler.

[jonottawa]

mikeh, on 2015-August-22, 14:05, said:

You don't seem to be very logical here.

Of course overpopulation is a big problem. Altho it is fair to say that many of the most rapidly reproducing humans have the lowest carbon footprint, it is also obvious that if, say, China had a population of 500 million, it wouldn't be producing as much greenhouse emissions, assuming that nothing else was changed. The same would be true if the US has a population of 150 million, and so on.

Freak cold events are a natural by-product of global warming, and anyone with any basic understanding of physics would know that. Add heat to a dynamic, chaotic system and the internal fluctuations in the system will increase. The overall trend will be warming, but there will be localized cooling as well. Only a dedicated denier or an idiot (the terms are not entirely equivalent) would think otherwise.

As for my solution being unlimited immigration: no, not at all. But the Trump plan lacks, shall we say, nuance. it is a typical populist approach: a simplistic solution to a complex problem. When most of one's population gets their understanding of the world from Youtube or Fox or indeed any media, then one gets a scientifically illiterate society, doomed to make stupid choices.

I'm sensing a great deal of cognitive dissonance. Could I actually be getting through?

"You don't seem to be very logical here."

I'll take that as politespeak for "You're an idiot." So I'll disregard it.

"Of course overpopulation is a big problem. ..."

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM. But like the climate, at least you're getting warmer. Bill Gates is spending most of his billions accelerating that overpopulation. He's succeeded in doubling the population of Africa in the last ~25 years, in spite of the AIDS epidemic there. Are we better off because of it? Is that what we're here to do, cram as many homo sapiens as we possibly can on this little green ball before it all goes poof? When was the last CBC documentary on global overpopulation?

"Freak cold events ..." I don't dispute any of that. To me, pollution & mass extinctions are a huge problem. I don't think 'climate science' is a very exact science but we're definitely polluting too much & non 1st world countries are breeding too much in a world where over 1 billion people who are ALREADY HERE get by on less than $1/day.

"As for my solution being unlimited immigration: no, not at all. But the Trump plan lacks, shall we say, nuance. ..."

In other words you agree with 90% of the plan. But you'd rather see someone with an amnesty plan that you agree 10% with become President. You want the United States nuclear arsenal to be in the hands of a 3rd world country? And I'M the 'not very logical' one.

A nation without borders is not a nation. A nation without laws is not a nation. A nation that doesn't serve the interests of its citizens is not a nation. That's the essence of the Trump plan. Incidentally, it's virtually identical to the plan they have in Israel. It's nothing more than a (long, LONG overdue) return to sanity.

I swear, if the Baby Boomer generation were a president, they'd be George W. Bush. "We got gay marriage! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!"

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2015-August-22, 08:33, said:

Fathers rather than mothers because we know who the mother is. I have been told that this is the logic behind the Jewish idea that you are Jewish if your mother was Jewish. At any rate, giving or not giving citizenship to the child based on the legal status of the mother would be fairly simple, basing it on the status of the alleged father would invite complexity and perhaps some gaming of the system.

The ancient Hebrews didn't know about DNA. Nowadays, it would be easy to require a paternity test if we wanted to use the father to determine citizenship status.

However, it always bugs me how much importance is given to biological paternity. If a man raises the child for years, and has formed a normal paternal bond with the child, would it really be appropriate to break them up just because his wife cuckolded him?

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2015-August-22, 17:14, said:

The ancient Hebrews didn't know about DNA. Nowadays, it would be easy to require a paternity test if we wanted to use the father to determine citizenship status.

However, it always bugs me how much importance is given to biological paternity. If a man raises the child for years, and has formed a normal paternal bond with the child, would it really be appropriate to break them up just because his wife cuckolded him?

As an adopted child, I am very much in agreement with the idea that your parents are the ones who raised you.

Paternity tests have their place in family law, but they should not trump everything.

The way I would apply that to citizenship: If we were to agree that when a child is born on US soil the child and the mother are to be given citizenship ( I do not advocate tis,, but suppose that it is done) then I would fine with extending this to a man who could reasonably be called the child's father. For example, if he is living with the child's mother and they have a long term family relationship. But there is much room for mischief. I can well imagine some guy showing up out of the blue but with DNA tests showing him to be the child's father.If all he did was to contribute his DNA, I would tell him to crawl back into the woodwork. But the law does not see things that way.

[blackshoe]

Winstonm, on 2015-August-22, 08:19, said:

I wonder whether or not you allow for the possibility that the Constitution is subject to interpretation, and that interpretations that are different from yours are just as legitimate, thus, when you say, "ignoring the Constitution" what you may actually mean is "ignoring my personal point of view concerning the constitution"?,

The Constitution represents the law of our land, but it is not divinely inspired, sacrosanct. It is a human document written in compromise by humans. And its meanings are certainly not precisely etched on stone tablets.

I think wisdom is the understanding that there is no shame in being wrong, as we are all wrong from time to time and it is a shared human experience, that the only shame is in unwillingness to change in the face of contradictory facts.

Btw, I happen to agree with you that Constitutional amendment is the method that should be used as it is the only way to force an out-of-control Supreme Court to act rationally.

All of my views are personal views. As are yours. So what? Your post is a non-sequitur as far as I can see.

[kenberg]

The extent to which the Constitution is unambiguous and the extent to which it is open to interpretation is, well, a matter of interpretation.

For example:

When i was in high school, we (boys) were not allowed to wear jeans and girls could not wear any sort of slacks. No one could burn the American flag. Now laws against burning the flag are unconstitutional . And dress codes are much relaxed. Except for hoop skirts.

Myself, I have never wanted to burn a flag or wear a hoop skirt, but I would have expected that if I were allowed to do one but not the other, it would be the hoop skirt that would be allowed, burning the flag would be forbidden.

Nothing is ever simple. Here is no law in Georgia forbidding hoop skirts, but the University is a state run organization. Also, I make a distinction between high school,and college, the latter being attended by people who are, at least chronologically, adults. We have (or rather we should have but current legal thinking may not support me) far more say in what high school students can and cannot do, say or wear than than we have with college students.


Is this digression at all relevant to the posted topic? I think so. Citizen's United applied (this is right isn't it) to unions as well to corporations. The political power of unions in the last century had a lot to do with helping the working class. Jimmy Hoffa was Jimmy Hoffa, but the Teamsters did well under him and Dave Beck. As did the auto workers. And coal mining got safer. Not safe, but safer. Not that there were never corrupt backroom deals.

Neither unions nor corporations are "people". That one sentence summary of the ruling was unfortunate. But the money comes from people and the decisions are made by people.

Positions on how much and how we should interpret the Constitution often depend on whose ox is being gored.

[jonottawa]

re: anchor babies

First, I consider this issue to be a 'yuge' distraction. The rest of the plan is great WITHOUT that provision. Debating that issue ad infinitum is a waste of time. If it passes, it will be challenged. If it is challenged, it will be found constitutional OR NOT.

But including that provision lets people (like MikeH) who want to seem 'less extreme' than the Donald find something they would moderate about his plan. That's probably a good thing. It's not recommended to go into a negotiation with an offer that is the minimum you're willing to accept. Propose a plan that includes decitizening anchor babies & then compromise on the same plan without that provision.

And to those who contend that particular issue shows how EXTREME the plan is, the fact remains that the vast majority of countries do NOT blanketly allow 'birthright citizenship' as it is indeed quite a nutty policy (at least to those of us who aren't one-world-government cultural Marxists) in the case of a mother who is in the country illegally.

[hrothgar]

jonottawa, on 2015-August-23, 07:06, said:

re: anchor babies

First, I consider this issue to be a 'yuge' distraction. The rest of the plan is great WITHOUT that provision.

Fine. Lets move on to the inane idea that

1. Building a massive wall between the US and Mexico will do any good
2. Trump will be able to force the Mexican government to pay for its construction

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the over whelming majority of illegal immigrants enter the US legally and then overstay their visas. Building a wall is at best a distraction and at worst and amazing waste of resources.

The mechanisms that Trump claims that he will use to compel the Mexican government to pay violate numerous existing treaties and trade accords.

The entire plan is a delusional distraction.

[Winstonm]

blackshoe, on 2015-August-23, 02:24, said:

All of my views are personal views. As are yours. So what? Your post is a non-sequitur as far as I can see.

Just passing along some personal history FWIW. I found in my forties that life was less stressful once I abandoned absolutist thinking and became aware that the quality of being equally human was all that was needed to restore a positive self-image.

[awm]

I don't understand this hostility to immigrants. Virtually all Americans have ancestors who were immigrants. Most of these immigrants were not well educated, were from ethnic groups which people discriminated against at the time they came over, were accused of being criminals or taking jobs from "real Americans" -- and nonetheless they turned out okay. Many of our greatest citizens (in all fields of accomplishment) were immigrants or the children of immigrants. The words on the statue of liberty are "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" -- not "give me your best and brightest, all others need not apply."

The vast majority of people crossing the US border are here to make a better life for themselves or their families. They come because there's work here, or because they have relatives here, or because they are oppressed or mistreated in their home country. This is the reason my great grandparents came, and the reason most Americans' ancestors came.
Recently illegal immigration has been net zero for a number of years. Nonetheless we have cases where parents of American-born children are deported -- having a US citizen baby does not prevent deportation, and one of my wife's (US citizen) students recently had her mom threatened with deportation.

The unemployment rate has been falling for a long time now, and Americans don't want jobs picking vegetables in the fields for minimum wage anyway. Immigrants do the awful jobs that need to be done to maintain standard of living for the rest of us, and they do them because it's better than what they had in their home country, and because they want a better life for their children. For the most part they are hard-working people that we should respect and help out where we can. Yes, there are a few criminals in every group, but we catch them and punish them... and some of the petty crime would be reduced if we let these folks out of the shadows to make a living legitimately.

Further, "welfare" has not existed in this country since the nineties. We have one of the stingiest welfare states of any major nation on earth. If people wanted to immigrate so they could "live on welfare" they would go to Canada (or Europe, or heck, Cuba... virtually every major country has a stronger welfare state than us). Sure, we have SNAP benefits but do we really want to be in the business of starving children to death? Even if they are children with Mexican parents? Seriously? The other major "welfare" program is the earned income tax credit, which of course undocumented people are ineligible for (because they lack a taxpayer ID).

As for world population, this has not been a real issue for a long time, since the population growth rate has gone down and our ability to grow crops efficiently has gone up. China has near-zero growth, the US is slightly positive, Europe and Japan are negative. The best way to reduce population growth is to improve education (especially for women) and availability of birth control -- the lack of such things is why population in India and Africa is still increasing rapidly. Guess which politician's party is opposed to planned parenthood?

Our country faces many problems. We need to do something about climate change. We need to make education more affordable. We need to make it easier to start a business, and stop writing different rules for big companies than apply to small startups. We need to make sure the benefits of increased automation and international trade are shared by all, instead of just a few at the top. We need to make sure there isn't another big economic crash. We need to do something about police forces that shoot unarmed African Americans while letting the bankers who almost crashed the world economy walk free. We need to cut trillions in military spending that the armed forces don't want, for weapons systems that won't work in a modern war... while making sure not to crater the economy in small towns built around a military base or plant. We need to do something about our infrastructure. Immigration is pretty far down the list, and if we do want to address it, why not create more legal visas so people with jobs and relatives waiting for them in the US can walk over instead of sneaking over a wall that the Mexican government isn't really going to pay for?