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I'm honestly a bit frightened by this one. I don't find most of Trump's stuff all that worrisome but this seems potentially pretty society altering.
My parents were illegal immigrants. They had me here in the late 70s so I had citizenship by birth. My parents have since received amnesty and even applied for citizenship and received it as well. But I think if the EO holds I don't see why they could not apply this retroactively. If it makes sense to do it for the future it makes sense to do it for the past too.
My parents would have more standing to stay in the US than I would.
Would be kind of funny to have to pack up and start a new life in the old country though in middle age.
It genuinely should be done. Amnesty was a mistake, generously; more cynically, it was treachery. Birthright citizenship is insane, and rewarding illegals for bleeding on our magic soil is deeply infuriating.
Framing citizenship as a "reward" is completely nonsensical. Citizenship is the codified form of the chains of responsibility and liberty that bind individuals and their communities together. Whether someone is born to illegal parents has no bearing on whether they dutifully maintain those chains. You're correct that dirt isn't magic, but you're completely ignoring the fact that blood isn't either-- citizens by Jus Sanguis don't have an intrinsically stronger claim. Rather, it's mundane, ordinary, sweat that ultimately cements the body politic together, and the children of illegal immigrants donate plenty of theirs. Understanding that, America grants them their citizenship without regard for the the sins of their fathers. And that would be the right, and just, and honorable way to do things even if illegal immigrants and their children weren't an economic net positive.
(I could accept the argument that America shouldn't extend citizenship to people who don't work or pay taxes in america. But only if you apply it globally and say that at the minimum America should ban dual citizenship for everyone, and at maximum all expats should be given nansen passports.)
It doesn't matter how anyone on the internet frames it. Illegal immigrants (quite rationally) do treat first world citizenship as a prize and lie and cheat their way to getting it. They do it for the same reason young third world men risk their lives coming across the sea on rubber dinghies and why rich foreigners quite literally buy it.
Even if I were to accept that description of illegal immigrants as being accurate, it still fails to describe the children of illegal immigrants. Babies are not rewarded by citizenship, they are entitled to it.
I'm not arguing that birthright citizenship doesn't exist. It obviously does and these children legally are entitled to it. I'm saying that they shouldn't be.
And even if having a citizen child had no benefit for the parents (clearly false, having a citizen child makes it easier for illegal immigrants to stay), that doesn't make it any less of a prize. Parents obviously do things that are good for their children. And a system that incentivises parents to commit crimes by rewarding their children is a bad one.
I think you believe that citizenship is an entitlement that belongs to the parent, rather than the child, and that they distribute it according to their will. In that model, it would make sense to say that, mechanically, "giving a child citizenship" is equivalent to "giving their parent the right to make their children citizens." Consequently, you perceive birthright citizenship as a reward to illegal immigrant parents.
Is that accurate?
This was the original meaning of citizenship, incidentally- it would be recognizable to an Athenian that one of the perks of citizenship status is the right to make citizen babies.
I'm aware of that-- pending confirmation that I actually understood Crowstep's position and we weren't just talking past each other, I planned to argue that assigning people special hereditary rights is fundamentally incompatible with democratic civilization and the notion that "all men are created equal".
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