The second amendment is “very clearly” spelled out in the Constitution yet many roadblocks to gun ownership are thrown up in various states and people STILL make tired arguments about how the amendment “should” be interpreted. For example, the old argument that the founding fathers could have never conceived of AR-15s and thus their legality under the second amendment is debatable.
Likewise, in 1868 the writers of the fourteenth amendment probably couldn’t conceive of rapid international travel and the possibility that pregnant women could just show up weeks before their due date and their newborn child should “obviously” be an American citizen.
The amendment was quite obviously targeted at Native Americans and slaves, not any and all pregnant women the world over who manage to reach the US before giving birth. But as you’re noticing, there’s multiple ways people can interpret laws. It’s rarely as cut and dry as “this is obviously against the law!!!”
> Likewise, in 1868 the writers of the fourteenth amendment probably couldn’t conceive of rapid international travel and the possibility that pregnant women could just show up weeks before their due date and their newborn child should “obviously” be an American citizen.
This is a better point than you realize, and in the opposite direction you intend.
Immigration in the 1800s was a… cursory process. Not only would those kids be citizens, but their parents would have had little trouble staying around.
> It imposed a head tax on non-citizens of the United States who came to American ports and restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America, including criminals, the insane, or "any person unable to take care of him or herself." The act created what is recognized as the first federal immigration bureaucracy and laid the foundation for more regulations on immigration, such as the Immigration Act of 1891.
The quotas you describe didn’t come until the 1920s. Well after the amendment.
> “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
So, I assume that you know that's a poem by someone who was engaged in pro-immigrant propaganda? And the entire reason that Lazarus was engaged in pro-immigrant propaganda was because she was advocating for Jewish refugees from Russia...who weren't exactly welcomed.
Basically, your proposition that it was era of free immigration is historical revisionism. There's a whole island out in front of the Statue of Liberty where the primary purpose was finding reasons to turn immigrants away.
(Castle Garden was established in the 1850s, and the history extends way before the nativist laws you're referring to in sibling comments [1])
Yes, and? I'm not debating the legality of whatever the current administration is doing. I'm just telling you that you have the history wrong, and that there's a deep irony in quoting Lazarus as some kind of "good old days", when she wrote the poem as a form of advocacy for immigrants.
> Nope. Wrong. That's the new facility. Castle Garden started in the 1850s
That's not "a whole island out in front of the Statue of Liberty" (it's in Battery Park, Manhattan), and performed a significantly different role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1882 "restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America, including criminals, the insane, or 'any person unable to take care of him or herself.'… [creating] what is recognized as the first federal immigration bureaucracy and laid the foundation for more regulations on immigration"
The 14th Amendment, having been approved decades before we had that first of immigration laws on the books, was approved in a historical context where "illegal immigration" was essentially not a thing.
> I'm not debating the legality of whatever the current administration is doing.
Perhaps don't jump into a thread about the legal basis of it, then. This particular bit is discussing the claim made at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44400640, where another user claims the drafters of the Amendment would've opposed "anchor babies".
"Consistent with the views of the clause's author, Senator Jacob M. Howard, the Supreme Court held that because Indian reservations are not under the federal government's jurisdiction, Native Americans born on such land are not entitled to birthright citizenship. The 1887 Dawes Act offered citizenship to Native Americans who accepted private property as part of cultural assimilation, while the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act offered citizenship to all Native Americans born within the nation's territorial limits."
SCOTUS did rule on the anchor babies thing, in 1898.
Indeed, how terrible! Those kids who then grow up in other countries outside the US will eventually be adults who have to pay taxes without sucking up any physical resources of said United States, whatever will we do about this huge drain on our resources? </sarcasm>
Why am I supposed to be mad about people doing this, exactly? Because of hazy "rules are rules" talk?
Well, that's very cynical and maybe you'll be right, but for now the California AG agrees with me. Per a quote in the WSJ [1]:
> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining: Red states, which sought universal injunctions to stymie Biden administration policies, would encounter obstacles pursuing that strategy under a future Democratic president, he said.
Call me a crazy, glass-half-full centrist, but I prefer to look at this as a clawing back of extremely broad powers from rather partisan judges. It's been maddening that circuit court judges in a few hyper-partisan districts basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.
> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining…
Sure, and Susan Collins thinks Trump "learned his lesson" with his first impeachment. Looking for the silver lining is what we sometimes call "cope". He lost. As a politician, he's obliged to put some spin on it.
> It's been rather maddening that circuit court judges basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.
It is. This sort of thing should've died before ever becoming an EO, and at every level of the judiciary as clearly unconstitutional. That it didn't is a big problem.
Well, if we're predicting the future, here's mine: since they're already basically telegraphing it (and also because it's pretty clear-cut), I predict that they'll overturn the whole thing in a future case, and then the left will be crowing about how mean-ol Mr. Trump was taught a lesson in capital-D Democracy by our powerful system of government.
> There's nothing that binds any Supreme Court to do anything at all.
We agree. So your remark about “nothing in the ruling says. . .” was actually irrelevant to the broader point. From a lacuna in a decision we can conclude nothing.
You're right, though, it is different; birthright citizenship is spelled out, very clearly, in the Constitution. It's an even plainer wrong.
It's Calvinball.