I’m hearing that The Donald is proposing putting an end to it. That’s too bad, because I think it’s a good idea that will now be tainted by the source. Here’s what I wrote about it almost exactly five years ago:
if it were my choice, I’d much rather grant citizenship to someone who was willing to brave a desert and river crossing to get to this nation, learn the language and the civics, and work for a living, than someone born here who takes the nation for granted and refused to accept those responsibilities. Who is more deserving of the vote — the immigrant who has worked for it, or the native who spurns its requirements and demands public largesse? Or worse yet, a native who gangs with others to prey on his own neighbors? Why should someone, regardless of their behavior and level of social responsibility, be a citizen of this great nation through the sheer luck of having been born here, when many other true Americans who weren’t born here but “got here as fast as they can” are not?
Note that this isn’t about civil rights, at least not the traditional negative rights as stated in the Bill of Rights. Both citizens and civilians would have rights to free speech, rights to fair trials, even rights to bear arms if they’re not felonious, but voting is not and should not be a right — it should be a privilege, because, as noted above, it’s one that many will otherwise abuse to the detriment of their fellow residents, should they not be responsible and willing to pull their own weight, choosing instead to rob them at the ballot box.
Immigrants in fact tend to be harder working and more grateful to be here, though the Latin-American influx may be different because they aren’t necessarily coming to stay.
[Update a while later]
This isn’t exactly the same, but it would have much the same effect: Tom Tancredo is once again proposing that voters pass the same test that one must to become a citizen.
Works for me. And I have become long-inured to falsely being called a racist.
Have the questions chosen randomly by a computer and judged impartially, likewise — and the Jim Crow-inspired objections will still be raised for the same reason free voter IDs are still somehow “voter suppression.”
I think maybe we need it codified that anyone who feels his right to vote is “suppressed” by being expected to meet the same standards everyone else (including most members of his “community”) meets with hardly a shrug, is absolutely welcome to self-disenfrachise for the betterment of society at large.
I think ol Donald has confused 20th century immigrants with the modern subsidized by the state variety. As a California resident, every third person I meet was not born in this country and a significant percentage are here by virtue of the the free stuff. Not surprisingly, they and their grown children are voting to keep it coming. People, native and immigrant, who are sucking the life’s blood from the native middle class tend to rationalize that they aren’t being dishonest – they are owed something by the racist natives of this hate filled country and any attempt to slow or cut the flow is greeted as vindication of that hate.
“I’d much rather grant citizenship to someone who was willing to brave a desert and river crossing to get to this nation, learn the language and the civics,”
Yeah, but those people aren’t the problem. It’s the ones who stopped at the first comma.
I’m an absolutist about trying to learn the language, but I know it’s tougher for adults, which is why my feelings on that are “if you at least show you’re making an honest attempt, that’s probably good enough.” I want people to at least be able to say “here’s a twenty” when they’re buying something and to understand what “your change is seven twenty-three” means.
I have worked with immigrants from several countries and have respect for almost all of them. The vast majority of the problems with immigration in this country are self inflicted via free stuff and weird criminal enforcement.
My base crew (all both of them) is from Mexico, and I will stand up for them against self righteous free loaders any day. Same for alleged patriots that can’t be bothered to learn the truth issues they are advocating. (Obama shut down NASA, Democrats are commies etc…)
If we stop birthright citizenship, we will presumably be ready to send people born here back where their parents came from. If the parents came from different nations, will we have to dismember some of the children? Would we hear a judge say “Divide the living child in two…”?
Planned arenthood (not a deliberate typo, but I’ll keep it) might approve but I don’t.
The alternative is to drown our society under a tide of anchor babies and all their extended families. You can’t bring tens of millions of people from there to here all at once without turning here into there.
India, which has developed sufficiently over the past several decades that they’re beginning to have some of the same kind of border problems we are, has rejected birthright citizenship in favor of blood-right citizenship. No one, I have noted, denounces them as “racist” or “xenophobic.”
haha.. if you don’t think Indians are racist, you should definitely visit sometime (or read more).
Did .European immigration turn us into Europe?
We started out being European….
If we stop birthright citizenship, we will presumably be ready to send people born here back where their parents came from.
That is an unfounded presumption.
In other words, we can have a law but not have to enforce it.
Has the dextrosphere been taken over leftists? That would explain why they think there can be such a thing as “unfair” competition in a capitalist system.
Nobody is talking about deporting people born in the USA. The suggestion is that full citizenship, including the privilege to vote, should be afforded only to those who demonstrate citizenship.
Trump may want to make it retroactive, but serious people don’t — and don’t imagine that other serious people do.
The problem I’ve always had with a Heinlein style division between “citizens” and “civilians”: Unless you do this very carefully, how do you keep the “citizens” from using the power of government (that they have a monopoly over) to enslave/exploit the “civilians”?
Have there been any stable successful examples in history where one faction within a nation controlled the government over another disenfranchised faction, and faction B didn’t end up in some kind of serfdom/slavery/tenancy relationship to faction A?
That’s one thread of criticism of the current state of affairs! We have a massive group of Mexican immigrants who, due to their illegal status, have no claim on legal protections and no political power. They become a serf underclass to a wealthy government-connected over-class and drive the middle class out of business.
How would the situation change if we had some other citizenship arrangement where you have one group of people disenfranchised, either by a test or any other method, and another group of people running the government and filling all the positions?
Actually the illegal aliens have vast political power. They have a President who’s so beholden to them, due to the votes they (illegally, not that anyone cares) cast for him and his party that he’s abusing the power of his office, ordering the Border Patrol and INS not to enforce laws passed by Congress. They’ve got the courts giving them special “hatecrime” protections and saying it’s perfectly legal for them to sign up for El Guelfare. They’ve got the entire Republican party tippy-toeing around the truth, terrified of offending them, terrified to speak the truth about them.
“No political power?” From where I stand they appear to have vastly more political power than legitimate citizens by birth.
I’m not a history major. The only example of a “test-controlled” society that I can think of are the mandarins in Imperial China. Of course, the tests were designed by those who passed the test to screen out all but the smallest fraction of the most obsequious towards the current rulers (and people who had a photographic memory for Confucian poetry).
A necessary element for a division between Citizens and Civilians to not be abused is strong rule of law, the 2 groups being held to the same law for nearly everything outside of voting. And that must include freedom of speech and right to self defense.
Another element of the Starship Troopers society is a means for determined civilians to demonstrate their worth to society and obtain citizenship. Those with the potential to organize a meaningful revolt had a viable means to become part of governing society. My favored method for this is being a net tax payer, removing net beneficiaries from the voter pool.
I think the best solution for imigration is to let everyone in, but in order to be a citizen your lifetime total of (taxes-receipts from government) must be more than 1/2 of the national median of that value.
Honestly, I think a perfect government would have 2 houses. Everyone votes for the members of the first house, which decides cultural issues – what is legal/illegal, etc. The first house cannot tax, appropriate or spend any money, however. The second house is voted for only by those that pass the above test, and that house is solely responsible for spending and taxes.
They are different functions, that optimize for different people.
I think the best solution for immigration is to bring the US military home from all foreign bases and foreign deployments worldwide. Let the South Koreans and the Afghans worry about their own borders. Redeploy them on the border with Mexico to protect our border and our sovereignty. Root out all the illegal aliens and ship them back whence they came. Punish business owners who hire them and anyone else found aiding and abetting the invaders–with prison time, not fines. This is what any other nation-state in history would have done when faced with foreign invasion.
Why not try to stabilize the DeToqueville social-safety-net failure-mode by doing the following:
Either A) Only the people who pay net taxes can vote
Or B) (Far more responsive to the will of the voters, and more stable, but potentially more complicated and able to be gamed in some way I am not seeing):
Congress can create *programs* that can be funded by tax money, and they can set a tax *rate*, but they cannot allocate funding.
People have to meet their tax rate if they want to be allowed to vote. They can do this one of two ways: They can select the programs that they want their money contributed towards. People who want to fund the military can mark their tax contribution towards that. People who want to fund a social safety net towards that. Congress could even create competing agencies to do the same thing: NASA A and NASA B, which would compete for funding. End of the culture wars.
The other way is if, in the event that Congress tries to game the system by providing only unpalatable programs to the voter, the voter can burn their tax contribution in protest. (Money is posted, but goes nowhere. It is nullified. No one can use it. The citizen can vote for better representation.)
To me, such a system seems stable against a runaway welfare state. It seems immune to vote-buying. It seems like it would cool down the war to capture the government.
I think the best solution for imigration is to let everyone in,
We can’t afford to let in everyone who wants to come to America. This is the kind of thinking that is causing immigrants to swarm into England and other EU countries. No country has limitless resources to house, feed, and subsidize unlimited immigration, not even the US. Contrary to what some people of the libertarian persuasion seem to believe, illegal immigration doesn’t pay its own way. Sure, there are many illegal immigrants who’re working (illegally), but there are also a lot of them who’re breaking laws such as identity theft to do so.
My wife is a legal immigrant and so are many of our friends. They played by the rules, which in today’s society means they’re chumps. My wife easily passed that citizenship test. It’s simple enough that any bright 5th grader could pass it.
What people always miss about immigration is that (for the most part) income equals expenditures. So for every dollar “stolen” by those evil hard working immigrants, another dollar of spending is added to the US economy. And since we live in a capitalist society of free exchange, every free exchange benefits both parties. So the more exchanges that occur (more people=more exchanges), the better off everyone is. The problem is just that the immigrants “stealing” their income is readily apparent, while the money they put back into the economy is not.
They don’t send enough of their total income to other countries to make any difference – and even that, if you follow the paths long enough, ends up reinvested in the USA. (Otherwise the dollars would have no value outside the US).
Immigrants of all types tend to send a lot of money back home to help their extended families. That money does little to expand the US economy. When illegals work under the table, they get paid in cash so they don’t pay any taxes, but their families are entitled to welfare benefits, education, etc. to the tune of many thousand dollars each year. Add to that the people who lose their jobs to illegals who’re willing to work under the table. Those people, often at the poorer ends of the American job force, often end up needing welfare benefits themselves.
“What people always miss about immigration is that (for the most part) income equals expenditures. So for every dollar “stolen” by those evil hard working immigrants, another dollar of spending is added to the US economy. ”
Firstly, you use the word “immigration”. LEGAL immigration is supposed to be metered/calibrated to the employment needs. Can’t be done perfectly of course.
Of far far more importance, you fall for the Classic Broken Window fallacy. If we have unemployment (and we do) then those who are unemployed are on government assistance. Where does that money come from? If illegals take their jobs, then it’s a net loss.
If we have 10 jobs available and (say) 15 unemployed American citizens and 10 of them get the jobs, then we have to help out the other 50. What you are SUPPOSED to do is reduce LEGAL immigration so that when 5 more jobs become available, American citizens get them.
But if you have 10 jobs, 15 American Citizens unemployed and 12 illegals coming in and getting those 10 jobs then you are paying for 15 unemployed American citizens and 2 illegals out of government funds.
It’s a net loss. Well to everyone except the corporations and government flunkies and politicians who use the crisis to farm votes.
Government funds = my money which I would have used in a much more beneficial way.
And please don’t even THINK of trying to argue that Americans won’t do those jobs. That’s insulting.
So for every dollar “stolen” by those evil hard working immigrants, another dollar of spending is added to the US economy.
I disagree. Whether or not the money returns to the economy is irrelevant (imho). Corporations are unfairly using visas to attract tech workers from overseas for cheaper labor. Americans are losing on the job front. The whole STEM degree shortage is a myth. When we actually have a labor shortage is when we should be discussing the need for immigrant labor.
As an aside, the refugee program is a scam. There is no government oversight as this is an agreement between the UN and the State Dept. This is an end run around legal immigration.
http://www.dickmorris.com/u-s-is-drowning-in-refugees-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/
the refugee program is a scam
Yep. There isn’t even a formal definition of what the word means. It’s not just the media that throws the word around as it chooses, politicians, and the government (in formal communications), does the same thing. The word means whatever its user at the time wants it to mean. Whatever they think will elicit the proper emotion.
A total f-ing mess.
Corporations are unfairly using visas to attract tech workers from overseas for cheaper labor.
It is not simply unfair, it is quite abusive. These companies love the visa situation because they can demand more from those employees on threat of firing meaning deportation. The left and good libertarians argue this could be fixed by open borders and yes it could. But the politicians don’t want that either. The companies abusing these people are major financiers to campaigns.
And there is no shortage of STEM employees. I know, because my company is letting them go by the thousands. This after I left NASA along with thousands. While not all are US citizens, the percentage is much more than just a majority. I also don’t think it much a stretch to claim the average experience is over 10 years, so we are not talking about new grad STEMs that couldn’t cut it.
Just keep the birthright but stipulate one of the parents has to be a citizen of the USA. Cracks down on fraud and doesnt require crazy societal changes.
The problem is not birthright citizenship, but the current immigration laws which strongly favor family members of citizens over other applicants. Get rid of that provision and you get rid of the strong incentive for anchor babies.
Anchor babies are not covered by the 14th amendment.
Let’s hear from the co-sponsor of the amendment:
“Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.”
–Senator Jacob Howard, circa 1866, on the intent behind the 14th Amendment
The provision is, that ‘all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.’ That means ‘subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.’ What do we mean by ‘complete jurisdiction thereof?’ Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.
Mamacita – a Guatamalan citizen is not subject to their [the States] jurisdiction nor is her kid. They have no standing to claim citizenship for the baby.
It would be interesting to see a Robert’s Court argue against intent.