Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading Republican presidential candidate, vowed to end birthright citizenship as a part of his immigration plan released Monday. “We will take action to end the idea …
And they think this guy isn't going to revoke their citizenship and send them to a concentration camp when Cuba won't have them back? Fools need to read history. All of this has happened before, and it ended very, very badly.
This is why I have a hard time respecting religion. People take irrational stances based on what they're taught as kids to never question.
The right to practice a religion ends when it smacks me in the face with its zealotry and steals bodily autonomy.
Single issue voting for a party that wants to deport your kind or put them in cages is so ridiculously short sighted, it's hard for me to even pretend to see their perspective.
He knows it will fail, but it gives him headlines with the racist, xenophobic base which is precisely what he needs in order to win the primary. He'll probably be screwed in the unlikely chance he even gets to general, but that's his problem.
Yeah, DeSantis is evil, not stupid. He has degrees from both Yale and Harvard. He knows full well what he's doing and how things work. It's all calculated evil.
And the irony is that the very same base likely does not understand what birthright citizenship even means and that abolishing it would negate their own citizenship.
It reminds me of back when I was in college and we had a guy on campus make a petition to end Women's Sufferage as a prank. There were actually women who signed the petition because "women are suffering!" and that was awful.
It's pretty much the playbook of all of DeSantis' "accomplishments."
Make a broad law banning or mandating some action.
Brag about how great, conservative, and anti-woke you are for passing this law.
Law gets struck down for being obviously and egregiously unconstitutional.
Either denounce "liberal activist judges who push the woke agenda" (ignoring that the judge was appointed by a Republican) or just ignore the ruling entirely and keep touting the law you passed regardless of the fact that it's been junked.
"They will effortlessly carve out any exception because it makes them exceptional... and what greater power is there than the ability to override to override truth?"
He almost certainly won't be able to make that happen, but it'd be a terrible idea. If birthright citizenship were ended, the first thing the corpos would do is replace as many US Citizen workers as they could with Immigrants, and increase the amount of immigrants until they could get a workforce of permanent non-citizens who cannot ever vote.
Smart people who hate immigration or who love democracy would realize that getting rid of birthright citizenship is a VERY bad thing. Our oligarchy would weaponize it real quick. The first people to be made obsolete would be the working class, including the White working class, ironically.
I would imagine that it would give everyone a VERY valid reason to start a civil war right there and then and my money is on the people since Americans possess more guns to population than the rest of the world. Oligarchy trying to push this is going to quickly realize how good they had it until they piss off enough people.
Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution - the 14th Amendment. DeSantis couldn't just have Congress pass a law repealing it. Now, he could have Congress try to pass a new Amendment removing it. That's possible, but extremely unlikely.
First, he would need to get two thirds of each chamber of Congress on board. Right now, the chambers are basically divided 50-50. DeSantis might get one or two right leaning Democrats to jump on board (Manchin), but there's no way he'd get enough to pass this hurdle.
Let's say he did, though. The Democrats suffer a mass outbreak of temporary insanity and wind up passing this. Now, it would go to the states. DeSantis would need three fourths of the states, or 38, to ratify it. 27 states voted for Trump so lets assume they immediately jump on board. Georgia was close and is run by Republicans so we'll give that to DeSantis also. This still leaves 10 states. He'd quickly run out of swing states and would need to convince some blue states to approve his amendment.
Is it possible that this happens? Yes, but it's also possible that I find a winning lottery ticket on my front lawn tomorrow. I wouldn't count on either one happening though.
The President doesn't get to decide on that any more than a regular citizen. The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution states quite clearly that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
If Congress and the States want to amend the Constitution, they can do so by following the procedures laid out in Article V, which requires a 2/3 majority of both houses of Congress OR 2/3 of state legislatures to propose the amendment, and then 3/4 approval of state legislatures to ratify it. The President has zero involvement in the process:
Once approved by Congress, the joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment does not require presidential approval before it goes out to the states. While Article I Section 7 provides that all federal legislation must, before becoming Law, be presented to the president for his or her signature or veto, Article V provides no such requirement for constitutional amendments approved by Congress, or by a federal convention. Thus the president has no official function in the process. In Hollingsworth v. Virginia (1798), the Supreme Court affirmed that it is not necessary to place constitutional amendments before the president for approval or veto.
Problem is, conservatives have been trying to have a constitutional convention for a while. It's a goal of theirs to get enough state legislatures to do it. Should that happen, we're in for a really bad time.
Theoretically you can amend the constitution at will if you control congress, the presidency, and one state legislature. You just carve up (for example) Texas to create another 150 states out of a rural area with each occupied by loyal party members. Then you admit them (only need a simple majority) and use them to push through any amendments you want. This would almost certainly trigger a civil war, but as far as I know it is legal.
So, see, here's the thing. Most countries don't do birthright citizenship (that is, you're automatically a citizen if you were born in the country). They trace it by pedigree; some combination of your parents, grandparents, and, possibly, great-grandparents have to have been citizens in order for you to be born a citizen.
THE PROBLEM IN AMERICA, tho, is that we had slavery for 200 years (as America). So when the slaves were freed, guess what? Their parents, grandparents, etc., were never citizens, says (mostly) The South. So sure, they're free, but they can't hold office or vote or anything, because they're not citizens. Ever heard the term "Grandfathered in" or "Grandfather clause"? That comes from the test that Jim Crow states used to determine who could vote (for free, or without jumping through hoops, or, in some cases, at all). If your grandpa could vote, you can vote. Guess whose grandpas couldn't vote? Yup.
So we had to drop a ban hammer on that in the form of writing birthright citizenship directly into the constitution. Because the people who were crying into their grits that they lost all their slaves just wouldn't get the fucking hint.
Do we necessarily need birthright citizenship anymore? Absolutely we do. 100%. Because as soon as the GOP decides to trash it, they'll come up with some Neo-Jim-Crow shit fucking immediately.
Past the second? They fucking hate the FIRST. Freedom of religion? Hell no. They'd impose Christianity on everyone if they had even the most remote opportunity.
Some of them don't even know how amendments work. They think the 2nd amendment was passed down by God on stone tablets.
I've argued with a person that didn't know amendments could change other amendments. Nor did he know how amendments were voted on. But he swore the amendments were perfect when written and couldn't possibly be changed.
In the article at least, De Santis hasn't explained how that works for the "good" Americans he wants to keep. Is every infant just not a citizen anymore until they can pass the test?
Don't even try to think about the downstream affects of that on healthcare and education.
“I have listened to people in D.C. for years and years and years, going back decades. Republicans and Democrats always chirping about this, and yet never actually bringing the issue to a conclusion,” DeSantis told a crowd in Eagleton, Texas, announcing the plan Monday.
-The guy chirping about it with a plan that wouldn't possibly bring it to a conclusion.
Any "policy" that requires a constitutional amendment isn't ever going to be implemented. This is grandstanding at its worst.
The immigration issue requires nuanced understanding problems and compromise. Those aren't earmarks of most of our politicians--especially not a blowhard like DeSantis.