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[Reelya]

It's important however because the birthright law prevents the creation of a stateless underclass of resident non-citizens. if someone wants to sneak fascism in, then that would be the way to do it.

There are about 10 million stateless people around the world currently. If the USA ended Jus Soli citizenship, then that number would start to balloon out, since the USA is the third largest nation on Earth in terms of population. You already have registered US citizens being denied passports along the border. Those people are not recognized as Mexican citizens. If Jus Soli is abolished, then these people's children become stateless residents of the USA, not Mexican citizens. It would be impossible to deport them since no other nation recognizes them as citizens, but they'd be denied all constitutional rights within the USA, in a permanent and hereditary way. It wouldn't take a whole lot of tweaks to the system for you to end up with a ruling class where citizenship is a privilege, and a growing mass of a "serf" class who lack basic democratic rights.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-is-denying-passports-to-americans-along-the-border-throwing-their-citizenship-into-question/2018/08/29/1d630e84-a0da-11e8-a3dd-2a1991f075d5_story.html?utm_term=.39ea4a885150

[Maximum Spin]

It's important however because the birthright law prevents the creation of a stateless underclass of resident non-citizens. if someone wants to sneak fascism in, then that would be the way to do it.

It sure prevented that super well, huh?

[Reelya]

Sure USA isn't perfect, but there's plenty of room for it to be far worse. Having a permanent legally-mandated non-citizen class would be one way for things to be far worse.

[SalmonGod]

While I strongly dislike Trump's racially biased reasoning for challenging the birthright to citizenship, I find that I actually agree with the idea.
The piece of land a person is born on has absolutely no influence on who they become as a person, and should never be used as reasoning for what rights they are or are not entitled to. This is an archaic rule with illogical reasoning, and by all rights it should be abolished or at the very least altered.

I agree.  The idea of nations and borders is stupid, and we should get rid of them

[Folly]

I agree.  The idea of nations and borders is stupid, and we should get rid of them

I have no outstanding objections to national borders...my issue is simply with classifying people based on which side of the border a person happens to be born on. Someone could be born in the USA, immediately removed and grow up somewhere else, then return one day and be legally considered as American as anyone else. Alternatively, someone could be born just outside the border, be immediately brought in and live their entire life in the US, and then as an adult one day be unceremoniously deported because they have no legal right to be in there.
A more reasonable metric would be to determine that a significant majority of a person's formative years have been spent within the borders to make them eligible for automatic citizenship.

[JoshuaFH]

I agree.  The idea of nations and borders is stupid, and we should get rid of them

I have no outstanding objections to national borders...my issue is simply with classifying people based on which side of the border a person happens to be born on. Someone could be born in the USA, immediately removed and grow up somewhere else, then return one day and be legally considered as American as anyone else. Alternatively, someone could be born just outside the border, be immediately brought in and live their entire life in the US, and then as an adult one day be unceremoniously deported because they have no legal right to be in there.
A more reasonable metric would be to determine that a significant majority of a person's formative years have been spent within the borders to make them eligible for automatic citizenship.

But that still relies on an assumption: that propinquity to a country implies loyalty to that country. Which I think is a fallacy to say the least.

Having such hard and fast, but fallacious, rules does have an advantage in that it erases ambiguity, and just makes the bureaucratic portion of government slightly less maddening. Otherwise, I think that the natural logical conclusion would be something along the lines of:

"Countries have clearly delineated domains, and if you live there then you must pay the specified taxes. Merely living in, working in, being born in, or paying taxes doesn't make one a citizen. Citizenship, and the rights that go along with it, requires conscientious, willing, and diligent service to that country, in either military or non-military positions."

Naturally, this would lead to most people being nationless non-citizens, but free to live and work where they like granted they follow the laws and pay the taxes of whatever plot of soil they happen to occupy; and then a minority of people that choose to tie themselves to their nation and become citizens, and have the rights that that entails: voting, being electable, etcetera.

That's the logical conclusion that I jumped to, atleast.

[Folly]

Loyalty to a country could mean literally anything. If you wanted to burn every inch of the country until nothing but ashes remain because you genuinely believe that the country would be better off that way, that could be considered loyalty.
In any country where the laws are subject to change at the whims of frequently changing leadership, expecting everyone to like the way things currently are is entirely unreasonable.

[wobbly]

I agree.  The idea of nations and borders is stupid, and we should get rid of them

I have no outstanding objections to national borders...my issue is simply with classifying people based on which side of the border a person happens to be born on. Someone could be born in the USA, immediately removed and grow up somewhere else, then return one day and be legally considered as American as anyone else. Alternatively, someone could be born just outside the border, be immediately brought in and live their entire life in the US, and then as an adult one day be unceremoniously deported because they have no legal right to be in there.
A more reasonable metric would be to determine that a significant majority of a person's formative years have been spent within the borders to make them eligible for automatic citizenship.

A lot of this come down to the system needing to be consistent across borders. If the USA declares someone Mexican and Mexico declares them American you end up with a problem. My understanding is these inconsistencies still sometimes exist but the current rules in the USA are a better match for international standards then a change would be. Someone who knows more on the subject will likely clarify.

[Kagus]

It's a question of what's worse: Anchor babies or Airport babies.

Why can't they all just be Unborn babies, which are objectively the best kind?

[wierd]

It's a question of what's worse: Anchor babies or Airport babies.

Why can't they all just be Unborn babies, which are objectively the best kind?

[SaberToothTiger]

I prefer deep-fried babies. Airport food always made me queasy.

[Trekkin]

"Countries have clearly delineated domains, and if you live there then you must pay the specified taxes. Merely living in, working in, being born in, or paying taxes doesn't make one a citizen. Citizenship, and the rights that go along with it, requires conscientious, willing, and diligent service to that country, in either military or non-military positions."

Naturally, this would lead to most people being nationless non-citizens, but free to live and work where they like granted they follow the laws and pay the taxes of whatever plot of soil they happen to occupy; and then a minority of people that choose to tie themselves to their nation and become citizens, and have the rights that that entails: voting, being electable, etcetera.

That's the logical conclusion that I jumped to, atleast.

Service Guarantees Citizenship!
Would you like to know more?

In all seriousness, though, that has problems with what gets defined as "service" and effectively weighting the political power of different public organizations by how many people they employ, so there's now an incentive to do things like enlist everybody the military can get their hands on just to create more military-friendly voters. After all, it's not like the "real citizens" are paying for most of it. Then every other department does the same and now everybody's employed in a largely useless service role and we're back to the status quo but with a bigger underclass of nonpersons.

[Hanslanda]

"Countries have clearly delineated domains, and if you live there then you must pay the specified taxes. Merely living in, working in, being born in, or paying taxes doesn't make one a citizen. Citizenship, and the rights that go along with it, requires conscientious, willing, and diligent service to that country, in either military or non-military positions."

Naturally, this would lead to most people being nationless non-citizens, but free to live and work where they like granted they follow the laws and pay the taxes of whatever plot of soil they happen to occupy; and then a minority of people that choose to tie themselves to their nation and become citizens, and have the rights that that entails: voting, being electable, etcetera.

That's the logical conclusion that I jumped to, atleast.

Service Guarantees Citizenship!
Would you like to know more?

This was my first thought also.

[Starver]

I agree.  The idea of nations and borders is stupid, and we should get rid of them

What do salmon know about borders. They don't even take hints from cascading waterfalls that clearly indicate an exit, not an entryway, to a water system. Their caravan still advances!

And salmon gods are likely even worse!

[misko27]

While I strongly dislike Trump's racially biased reasoning for challenging the birthright to citizenship, I find that I actually agree with the idea.
The piece of land a person is born on has absolutely no influence on who they become as a person, and should never be used as reasoning for what rights they are or are not entitled to. This is an archaic rule with illogical reasoning, and by all rights it should be abolished or at the very least altered.

I could not disagree more.

The idea of birthright citizenship is to avoid a long-term dispossessed class of people. There are many people in many countries who've lived in a place - for generations! - without having rights. These people become a sort of permanent stateless underclass who are disenfranchised and live with in perpetual fear. And they always live with the specter of the Jews, or for a modern example, the Rohingya. The specter of the statelessness crisis haunted the 20th century; I would rather that that ghost remain to haunt the past rather than the present.

I have no outstanding objections to national borders...my issue is simply with classifying people based on which side of the border a person happens to be born on. Someone could be born in the USA, immediately removed and grow up somewhere else, then return one day and be legally considered as American as anyone else.

The point is that it doesn't actually matter what you sympathize with and care about. Your formative years are irrelevant because being a citizenship doesn't mean you like your government, it means your government is obligated to you. The simple fact is the less automatic someone's rights are, the more we can assume that those rights will be curtailed. It's happened with voting, god help us if it happens to citizenship.

The point of birthplace citizenship is that everyone (or at least the vast majority of people) are born somewhere, and jus solis means that at least some state on this earth will be responsible for them. If people have to apply for their rights like in this unintentional dystopia you've created, there will be many people who have no rights, most likely because a state will say they don't want them. And if the two countries a person grew up in don't want them, then what? You'll say "well there'll be laws to avoid this", to which I say there will be no international legal obligation to make sure that no one falls through the cracks, meaning people will.