GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Friday he would deport the children of undocumented immigrants with their families, despite them already being U.S. citizens.

“There are legally contested questions under the 14th Amendment of whether the child of an illegal immigrant is indeed a child who enjoys birthright citizenship or not,” Ramaswamy said after a town hall in Iowa.

Ramaswamy is not the only GOP candidate to question U.S. citizenship rules. Former President Trump announced in late May that on his first day back in office, he would seek to end birthright citizenship by way of an executive order.

  • anthoniix@lemmy.world
    26·
    2 years ago

    I think the birthright citizenship is the way to go. If you’re born in the US I think that should be the point where we go “Okay, you’re a citizen”. We could have a situation where a group of people are perpetually denied citizenship for some reason that’s advantageous to another group, and that ensures their children can’t becomes citizens either.

    • kitonthenet@kbin.social
      18·
      2 years ago

      We could have a situation where a group of people are perpetually denied citizenship for some reason that’s advantageous to another group, and that ensures their children can’t becomes citizens either

      We did! It was slavery, slaves and their descendants were not citizens, and if it were not for birthright citizenship from the 14th amendment, would not be citizens today

      • Gork@lemm.ee
        141·
        2 years ago

        But the same can be said in the other direction: allowing automatic birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and is advantageous to Democrats because minorities tend to skew heavily left when they become of voting age.

        Hmmm I wonder why that is 🤔🤔🤔

        It sucks for the kids, but that’s the parents’ fault, not the US government.

        This isn’t the kids’ fault, why should they be punished by being denied citizenship? Their parent’s country is not guaranteed to give them citizenship if they are born abroad. Also if we start making things like this legal then, for example, what’s to stop debt from being legally able to be transferred from parents to children upon death? It’s their parents fault they are in debt the first place, sucks for the kids but that debt has gotta be paid somehow, ya know?

      • a_statistician@lemmy.mlEnglish
        9·
        2 years ago

        Allowing them and the descendants to establish citizenship and give those who would otherwise be denied lawful residency is one of the biggest incentives for illegal immigration in the first place.

        Citation needed. Economic uncertainties and climate change are pretty big reasons for illegal immigration, afaik, and those are much more short-term survival considerations… it’s not necessarily a plot to have anchor babies in most cases.

      • kitonthenet@kbin.social
        114·
        2 years ago

        If both parents are here illegally, then the child shouldn’t be granted US citizenship (at least until at least one parent establishes lawful residency in the US). Neither should the descendants

        This is insane and cruel and a just society would punish you by stripping your citizenship

          • kitonthenet@kbin.social
            122·
            2 years ago

            Since you decided to delete your comment before I posted it mine appeared up thread, I’m reposting it here

            You do realize that birthright citizenship is almost entirely nonexistent in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Austrailia, right?

            at no point in the history of america has “but yurop does it” been a suitable justification for a policy. We are specifically trying to do better than europe