by liberal japonicus
I had been trying to write an email concerning this Ezra Klein podcast, with Matt Yglesias and Dara Lind, dealing with their discussion of birthright citizenship. I've not been able to pull it together, so I'm just posting my draft here.
Klein and Lind (Yglesias didn't have much to say about it) spent a bit of time wondering about how such a practice could be allowed to take place, with Lind suggesting that there were 'resorts' where people have their children. Here is a chatgpt cleaned up transcript, with some parts emphasized (it's important to note that these aren't the actual quotes, but I think they convey the meaning)
Lind: The birthright citizenship order declares that anyone born after February 19th of this year is not a U.S. citizen by birth if their mother does not have legal status or is on a temporary visa, and their father is neither a U.S. citizen nor a green card holder. The executive order defends a novel legal theory that attempts to change the 14th Amendment's interpretation via executive action.
Klein: The birthright citizenship debate has two parts. One is about children born to people without legal status, which was expected. But they also included children born to people on legal visas like student or H-1B visas, which is surprising. This has been called a "Harris provision," and while it hasn’t been controversial before, it was added here. Matt, what’s your take?
Yglesias: Part of this is about redefining certain groups, like those with Temporary Protected Status or asylum applicants, as "illegal immigrants." While these individuals aren't legally classified as such, the intent seems to be to expand the definition. The order even includes people on routine, non-controversial visas. Trump previously expressed support for the H-1B program, so this broad inclusion is surprising. It signals a deeper hostility toward immigrants from some policymakers.
Klein: Are they including this extreme position so it can be removed later, leaving only the focus on unauthorized immigrants?
Lind: I don’t think so. While there hasn’t been much controversy about student visa holders having children, there has been concern about "birth tourism" — where people travel to the U.S. on a tourist visa to give birth. The practice of getting a tourist visa spending that time at a resort for the purpose having a child during the time has been targeted by the more extreme anti-immigration wing for years.
Klein: Doesn’t birth tourism reveal an overly broad interpretation of birthright citizenship? Even as a pro-immigrant person, I see that as an abuse of the rules.
Lind: It’s surprising this hasn’t been addressed more aggressively. The State Department has the discretion to deny visas and could enforce stricter policies to curb birth tourism without changing the law. This seems more like a policy problem than a constitutional one.
Klein: True, but they aren’t pushing for a narrow fix; they want a broader debate about citizenship itself. This taps into a long-standing shift in Democratic rhetoric. In the past, illegal immigration was treated as a problem to solve, but now unauthorized immigrants are more often seen as a group to protect. This order forces Democrats to clarify their stance on this issue.
Yglesias: Trump has largely won that argument, though Greg Abbott has been key in shifting the debate. Even Biden has acknowledged concerns about unchecked immigration. While this executive order is overly broad, it lets Republicans frame the debate while Democrats push back on the extreme parts. In the end, I think this will lose in court because the constitutional argument is weak.
Klein: Normally, I’d expect cynicism about the courts, but you seem confident here.
Yglesias: This topic has been litigated repeatedly, and the argument that these individuals aren’t "subject to U.S. laws" is legally untenable. Illegal immigrants are subject to U.S. jurisdiction, and the idea that they have some sort of immunity is simply false.
Back when Michele Malkin was a thing, she and her ilk were complaining about Mexican/Central/South Americans pregnant women coming, virtually as they were in labor, to deliver their children in the US and was tied up in the construct of 'anchor babies'. Here is the Politifact discussion when it came up.
Now, three commenters on the liberal side seem to accept the framing that was off in the weeds of right wing fever dreams a few years ago. What happened?
It seems to me that the first thing is that this is intersecting with the first of medical tourism. Wealthy familes want access to the medical technology available in the US. If their kid happens to get a passport out of it, that's great, it gave them more options in a future where you didn't have Trump considering a three front war of Canada, Greenland and Panama.
The second thing is tied to that, which is that parents want to give their kids an advantage. As the polifact discussion notes: "Most of the benefits of citizenship accrue over the much longer term. The child will be able to work here legally once he or she is old enough, said Roberto Suro, a communications and journalism professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in Hispanic issues, and when they're ready for college, they'll qualify for in-state tuition at most public colleges. "It is a hell of a lot of deferred gratification at best," he said."
The last thing is that people tend to create relationships and given that the US has housed such a large, and durable, population of undocumented immigrants, all the better to do the scut jobs that need to be done, it is totally unsurprising that some of them choose to have a family.
It baffles me that the liberals here and apparently a lot of others fail to understand a parent's desire to give their children opportunities. And how they have come to thing that urge, rather than being something that is laudable and made the US an envied society, is something that needs to be squashed. God help us.
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