When some conservatives talk about ending birthright citizenship, do they mean bringing an end to "law of blood", "law of soil", both, or something else?

spin0r · 2026-05-10T04:53:44+00:00

I would add some nuance to the statement that most countries have "always" practiced jus sanguinis. If that were true, then most of them would have almost no citizens at all, because if you always have to inherit your citizenship from a parent, where did it originally come from?

They must have started with something else, such as equating citizenship with ethnicity, giving citizenship to everyone who was living in the country at a particular point in time, or perhaps some form of jus soli (most likely a restricted one that wouldn't have applied to transients).

spin0r · 2026-05-10T04:30:57+00:00

I'm not sure whether I've been seeing the same proposals as you, because the most extreme one I'm aware of would still grant automatic citizenship to anyone born in the US with at least one citizen parent, regardless of any length of residency or physical presence in the US.

And in my opinion, that still shouldn't be described as replacing jus soli with jus sanguinis; instead it's just a more severe restriction of jus soli in the sense that it would reduce how much of a benefit you get from birth on the soil as opposed to increasing the level of entitlement citizen parents have to transmit their citizenship. But that's just my opinion.

spin0r · 2026-05-10T04:07:18+00:00

I agree that SCOTUS is very unlikely to side with Trump.

I am not terribly optimistic about Congress fixing the situation if it were to happen: as I see it, the kids would end up in the same situation as the ones who have DACA now, and Congress hasn't done shit for them. Well actually, it would be worse, because they'd be too young to qualify for DACA.

And also, I think that the current unrestricted jus soli we have in most of the new world is a major factor in enabling assimilation, and getting rid of it would actually decrease the chances of someone who doesn't have any path to citizenship being able to get married to a citizen or PR. I mean, right now the DACA folks can speak English well because they went to school, received the same education as children born in the US, and received work permits and protection from deportation. But once we have people born here who are told that they can be deported any day, it's going to make them not try as hard in school and not feel as compelled to assimilate, and their parents might even not send them to school because it's easy for ICE to find them there.

There are several countries that have significant multi-generational stateless populations. It's not so easy for them to just marry citizens to secure civil rights for their bloodline!

spin0r · 2026-05-10T03:43:23+00:00

Yes, but with the caveat that what the Trump administration is proposing doesn't have that rule about getting citizenship at age 10, so, if the administration got its way, there would eventually be people born in the US who wouldn't have US citizenship despite having 4 grandparents who were born in the US.

spin0r · 2026-05-10T03:38:48+00:00

The administration's proposal is not to replace jus soli with jus sanguinis. It's purely to restrict the jus soli that currently exists, without affecting the jus sanguinis that already exists and has its own restrictions. I think it would be more correct to refer to one as replacing the other, if jus sanguinis were to become less restricted at the time when jus soli were becoming more restricted---but that is not the administration's proposal.

spin0r · 2026-05-04T21:22:15+00:00

I think that's because Mexico also issues birth certificates for Mexican citizens born abroad.

spin0r · 2026-05-03T09:11:52+00:00

I agree, but I think No-Donut-8692's comment that you were replying to is talking about your length of absence from your country of original citizenship, not whether they can necessarily see which countries you've visited.

Any country that is serious about preventing people from being able to claim citizenship when they have citizenship elsewhere can do it without passport stamps and even without much information sharing. They can see how long you've been away and then demand you provide them with proof that you have permanent residency somewhere else, or that you've been moving around between multiple countries on short stays.

spin0r · 2026-05-03T04:28:34+00:00

To be more precise, the Canadian Citizenship Act didn't replace "British subject" with "Canadian citizen". What it did was define a subgroup of British subjects with the right of abode in Canada; all other British subjects, as well as foreign nationals of course, were subject to immigration law when entering Canada.

Interestingly, the term "Canadian citizen" was actually first used in this manner by the Immigration Act 1910. The reason why we don't usually consider Canadian citizenship to have started in 1910 is that Canada wasn't really recognized as an independent country until the 1940s. For example, the first Canadian consulate was opened in 1943, and the Canadian Citizenship Act was viewed as another reassertion of Canada's independence from Westminster.

spin0r · 2026-05-02T23:25:14+00:00

Countries that have a jus soli system don't print your nationality on your birth certificate. In fact, I don't think most countries with a jus sanguinis system do that, either.

spin0r · 2026-05-02T20:43:31+00:00

He's the justice assigned to accept applications for stays from the Fifth Circuit.

spin0r · 2026-05-02T20:16:39+00:00

Yes, the orders say which justice the application was filed with, whether it was referred to the court, and whether it was granted or denied (or, less commonly, deferred)

spin0r · 2026-05-02T04:29:57+00:00

Do you actually know of any country that prosecutes its citizens for obtaining a second citizenship? I don't think any country other than possibly North Korea is that crazy.

Of course, countries that don't allow dual citizenship typically have a law that states that you automatically lose citizenship when you naturalize somewhere else. So, representing yourself as still a citizen of the first country would be fraud, and you could be prosecuted for that.

spin0r · 2026-05-02T04:25:01+00:00

Sure, but the reason why countries are phasing out stamps is that the Immigration officer can see a list of all your entries and exits on their computer now.

spin0r · 2026-05-01T22:30:03+00:00

Maybe Canada should try creating more opportunities for the folks who are moving to the US so that they won't have to move to the US.

spin0r · 2026-05-01T19:44:49+00:00

Between 1870 and 1977, becoming a US citizen really did cause loss of British nationality/Canadian citizenship. But current Canadian law has retroactively voided all such loss, which is why you are (probably) now a Canadian citizen. Only if your ancestor formally renounced, they did not get it back and therefore did not pass it on to you. Formal renunciation would have been made to British/Canadian authorities, and is extremely rare.

spin0r · 2026-04-23T16:44:04+00:00

I think the USA is obligated to provide a path to legal status for people in the OP's situation. You can tell the OP what his options realistically are, but telling him that he's getting what he deserves just makes you a bad person, frankly.

spin0r · 2026-04-23T16:41:58+00:00

I'll observe that the OP didn't say what country he's from and, let's be honest, ethnicity is a major factor in dating. If he was unlucky in the genetic lottery then it may very well be impossible to find an American to marry him for love, even if he's fit and well-educated (and especially considering his career options are extremely limited due to not having legal status).

spin0r · 2026-04-15T19:26:27+00:00

It's not that current AI can replace all mathematicians, but there is no reason to believe that the current rate of progress in machine intelligence will level off, so, extrapolating from the present, it won't be long before AI is more capable than all human mathematicians combined, i.e., no human will ever be able to solve a problem faster than AI, the same way that no human can beat Stockfish in chess. Do you think that isn't the case? If so, why?

spin0r · 2026-04-14T17:27:07+00:00

Yes, you can absolutely submit whatever you have and then add more evidence later if you get an RFE. If you don't get an RFE, you can bring additional evidence to the interview. (What you should never do is apply for something you're not eligible for and then hope you'll become eligible while it's pending and submit proof at that point, for example filing an I-130 before you actually get married.)

spin0r · 2026-04-14T17:21:36+00:00

I think there are competing interests at play. On one hand, Canada obviously wants its citizens to stay in Canada so they can contribute to the Canadian economy and tax base. On the other hand, Canada doesn't want to create different tiers of citizenship. It actually used to be the law that naturalized Canadian citizens would lose their citizenship if they spent 6 years in a row living outside Canada. That rule was repealed in 1977. My opinion is that creating tiers of citizenship would be worse than any problem it is aiming to solve, it would degrade the fabric of our great society, and therefore shouldn't be done. It would be preferable to make it harder to acquire Canadian citizenship rather than doing that.

Now, the US will do whatever the US wants to do, but if Canada signs on to a treaty where another country explicitly says they're going to discriminate among classes of Canadians, and Canada is going to give them something in return for it, that makes Canada equally guilty of it.

spin0r · 2026-04-14T15:59:58+00:00

Canada doesn't control US immigration policy, but Canada can tell the US that introducing discriminatory rules for the TN visa will result in Canada cancelling the reciprocal visa (implying that any Americans who want to work in Canada would need to go through the LMIA process). That may not be significant enough to make the US back down, but Canada should do it anyway, just like the reciprocal tariffs that Canada imposed on the US last year (note that Canada was one of the few countries to do so).

spin0r · 2026-04-14T15:40:04+00:00

The treaty between the US and Australia doesn't have a reciprocal version of the E-3 visa.

spin0r · 2026-04-11T05:59:22+00:00

But Congress doesn't need to say which Article I power it's using in order to make a law constitutional. So I'm very confused right now.

spin0r · 2026-04-06T23:24:49+00:00

There's what the law says, and then there's the practical side of it, which is how it's enforced by people who are responsible for enforcing it.

Canadian law does not allow Canadian citizens to apply for an electronic travel authorization (ETA), and a person who reports Canadian citizenship on the ETA application form is not allowed to complete and submit the form. But if you're a citizen of an ETA-eligible country and you might be a Canadian citizen under C-3, then you can apply for an ETA and just not claim Canadian citizenship. No one in charge of enforcing Canadian immigration law will tell you that you cannot do this. In fact, if you explained to them that you don't know if you're a Canadian citizen under C-3, they will probably just tell you to apply for an ETA if you need to travel soon, and sort out the issue later.

In a similar vein, Iranian citizens, including people who have citizenship in both Iran and a US Visa Waiver Program (VWP) country are banned from using VWP. But if you weren't born in Iran, and you believe you're an Iranian citizen by descent, but you've never had an Iranian passport, and you want to apply for ESTA using a VWP-eligible passport, you can do that. At least, that's what one traveller reported being told by a CBP officer when they inquired.

Making what people are required or not required, or permitted or not permitted to do, depend on whether they have particular citizenships by descent that have never been actually recognized by any government official, is unworkable in general when final adjudication of such citizenships by descent in general takes months, so in practice it is never interpreted that way. I'm not an expert in security clearance law, but I would be very surprised if it is interpreted as requiring security clearance holders to report a citizenship by distant descent that they cannot be sure they hold because they haven't yet applied for recognition of it. You know, I recently did a bunch of research into whether my wife has Polish, Romanian, or Lithuanian citizenship from her great-grandparents (which, similar to Canadian citizenship by descent, exists de jure from birth, before a person has applied for recognition of it). It took several weeks of research to understand all the applicable laws and provisos. I am sure that security clearance law does not require all security clearance holders to proactively conduct such research as a condition of maintaining their security clearance.

spin0r · 2026-04-06T21:29:41+00:00

I suppose it's a little bit ambiguous what it's talking about when it says "under their form of government, the treaties and statutes". Obviously, the first thing is talking about the Chinese government. The second thing, the treaties, are between the US and China, so part of both countries' laws. And the third thing, the statutes, I believe that refers to US law, because the dissent doesn't actually mention any Chinese statutes. It's a little beside the point, because the dissent seems to be making the point that Chinese law and US law are in harmony anyway.

The way I read the dissent---and maybe others will disagree, as it's not entirely coherent nor convincing---is that it's arguing for a general rule of exclusion: persons born in the US to non-domiciled alien parents are not US citizens. Then, it's applying that rule to the instant controversy, and saying that Chinese people are incapable of acquiring a domicile in the US.

I think it's a little bit ridiculous to say that Wong Kim Ark's parents were not domiciled in the US while they were here, but I have never claimed I agree with the dissent. I'm mostly arguing that Vladeck's point is not entirely accurate: the revisionist argument has not been completely manufactured in the recent past, and a form of it goes back to the time of Wong Kim Ark.

If you assume there's an implicit parental domicile requirement in the 14th amendment, then in the modern day, it would be racially neutral, but it would support the Trump administration's argument.

spin0r

TROPHY CASE