You’d have to go against a precedent set in the 19th century, for an amendment made to help guarantee citizenship for freed slaves after the South failed to block the Civil Rights Act and Johnson had to step in and veto it. At this point, recodifying the jurisdiction phrase could very well require a new amendment, since the current Court is pretty divided on revisiting precedent from that long ago. And a new amendment would be a real long shot. Maybe possible depending on how next mid-terms go? But America seems stuck in a back-and-forth singsong dance when it comes to who wins Presidential elections and who does well in the following midterms.
Also, the example highlighted here about someone being born here and then moving to the country of their parents right after is just not common enough to swing electoral college votes, and a requirement for parents to have been citizens is not at all interpretable from the 14th - you would need a constitutional amendment. And it would need to address all sorts of edge cases like what happens when one parent is waiting on their green card but the other parent is a citizen with citizenship going back multiple generations.
Even though it’s a long shot, an amendment is more likely than movement purely from the courts, especially if what you want to stop is foreigners birthing children on American soil, those children spending all their lives in America, subject to her jurisdictions, and enjoying citizenship.
I have flown to Asia many times over the years and EVERY flight has had MANY new-born (days old) babies with their parents flying home. If that is happening on nearly every flight, dozens or more flights a day for decades......
Then it still doesn’t equal even a single electoral vote’s worth unless they are all eventually registered to vote in the same state, in which case it would most likely be through a major population center on a seaboard that was already going to go reliably blue. Even on a red wave like this, there is a limit to the amount of political capital you can spend, and like others and I have said, SCOTUS is not likely to go back on a precedent set in the 19th century. So the only way to snag this loophole is through a constitutional amendment, which would be a longshot no matter the issue due to how divided the country is on literally everything, and there’s gotta be something way more impactful you can use with your one Hail Mary shot than stopping New York or Seattle from becoming bluer than it already is.
I think you’re misunderstanding. The point of the jurisdiction clause was to allow citizenship to slaves who were not born in the United States, but born into the Confederated States, a short-lived but separate nation. Because during the Northern-inflicted horrors of Reconstruction, Southern states were using any loophole or gotcha possible to maintain the social order of slavery, even if the economic benefits were no longer possible.
It had less to do with being born of slaves, and more an awkward work-around to make sure anyone born on US territory, even if it was briefly not US territory at the time, would not be denied citizenship. You gotta remember, this was the awkward middle point between not needing a large influx of cheap immigrant labor due to having a forced labor population maintained by human trafficking, and now needing cheap immigrant labor to maintain a positive capital flow while building infrastructure across the newly conquered West.
And while on paper it seems like it would be easier to just say “born within the borders” or something like that, the hundreds of sovereign micronations within America’s borders made that legally impossible, due to the already oft-violated Article VI. So instead we got the “subject to her jurisdiction” clause, which was reinterpreted about 30 years later specifically to allow American-born children of diplomats long-term stationed here to be citizens, as the economic necessities caused by no longer having slave labor meant we had to break from our long-term stance of Isolationism and embrace foreign expansionism. And this was a hundred years before the Supreme Court started feeing real comfortable with stipulating “This is only for this one specific case and cannot be taken as precedent going forward.”
You’d have to go against a precedent set in the 19th century, for an amendment made to help guarantee citizenship for freed slaves after the South failed to block the Civil Rights Act and Johnson had to step in and veto it. At this point, recodifying the jurisdiction phrase could very well require a new amendment, since the current Court is pretty divided on revisiting precedent from that long ago. And a new amendment would be a real long shot. Maybe possible depending on how next mid-terms go? But America seems stuck in a back-and-forth singsong dance when it comes to who wins Presidential elections and who does well in the following midterms.
Also, the example highlighted here about someone being born here and then moving to the country of their parents right after is just not common enough to swing electoral college votes, and a requirement for parents to have been citizens is not at all interpretable from the 14th - you would need a constitutional amendment. And it would need to address all sorts of edge cases like what happens when one parent is waiting on their green card but the other parent is a citizen with citizenship going back multiple generations.
Even though it’s a long shot, an amendment is more likely than movement purely from the courts, especially if what you want to stop is foreigners birthing children on American soil, those children spending all their lives in America, subject to her jurisdictions, and enjoying citizenship.
I have flown to Asia many times over the years and EVERY flight has had MANY new-born (days old) babies with their parents flying home. If that is happening on nearly every flight, dozens or more flights a day for decades......
Then it still doesn’t equal even a single electoral vote’s worth unless they are all eventually registered to vote in the same state, in which case it would most likely be through a major population center on a seaboard that was already going to go reliably blue. Even on a red wave like this, there is a limit to the amount of political capital you can spend, and like others and I have said, SCOTUS is not likely to go back on a precedent set in the 19th century. So the only way to snag this loophole is through a constitutional amendment, which would be a longshot no matter the issue due to how divided the country is on literally everything, and there’s gotta be something way more impactful you can use with your one Hail Mary shot than stopping New York or Seattle from becoming bluer than it already is.
Okokok…any children born of slaves in the USA can apply for citizenship.
I think you’re misunderstanding. The point of the jurisdiction clause was to allow citizenship to slaves who were not born in the United States, but born into the Confederated States, a short-lived but separate nation. Because during the Northern-inflicted horrors of Reconstruction, Southern states were using any loophole or gotcha possible to maintain the social order of slavery, even if the economic benefits were no longer possible.
It had less to do with being born of slaves, and more an awkward work-around to make sure anyone born on US territory, even if it was briefly not US territory at the time, would not be denied citizenship. You gotta remember, this was the awkward middle point between not needing a large influx of cheap immigrant labor due to having a forced labor population maintained by human trafficking, and now needing cheap immigrant labor to maintain a positive capital flow while building infrastructure across the newly conquered West.
And while on paper it seems like it would be easier to just say “born within the borders” or something like that, the hundreds of sovereign micronations within America’s borders made that legally impossible, due to the already oft-violated Article VI. So instead we got the “subject to her jurisdiction” clause, which was reinterpreted about 30 years later specifically to allow American-born children of diplomats long-term stationed here to be citizens, as the economic necessities caused by no longer having slave labor meant we had to break from our long-term stance of Isolationism and embrace foreign expansionism. And this was a hundred years before the Supreme Court started feeing real comfortable with stipulating “This is only for this one specific case and cannot be taken as precedent going forward.”
History is awkward and fascinating!
Agreed. Such a long standing court precedence would not be an easy fix and the current court is unlikely to redefine.