Posted on 11/14/2019 7:08:53 PM PST by Morgana
Birthright Citizenship for Children of Foreign Diplomats?
Limiting Language in the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause Has No Practical Effect
By Jon Feere on July 11, 2011
Jon Feere is the Legal Policy Analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The intended scope of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has been hotly debated in the context of children born to illegal immigrants. While it appears unlikely that the intent of those who authored the 14th Amendment was to ensure automatic citizenship for children born to illegal and temporary immigrants, some argue that the amendment protects such grants of citizenship.
Amid this debate, however, there is one area of solid agreement among advocates on all sides of the debate: In the least, children born to foreign diplomats are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are therefore not to be granted U.S. citizenship.
But even that low standard is not being met.
A lack of direction from Congress has resulted in children born to foreign diplomats on U.S. soil receiving U.S. birth certificates and Social Security numbers (SSNs) — effectively becoming U.S. citizens — despite the limiting language within the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Among the findings:
-Despite Congress’s clear intent to not create a completely universal and automatic birthright citizenship policy, the current application of the Citizenship Clause is so lax that the United States has a de facto universal birthright citizenship policy that denies U.S. citizenship by birth to no one.
-There is no federal requirement that hospitals ask new parents if they are foreign diplomatic staff. State agencies do not instruct hospitals to differentiate between children born to diplomatic staff and those born to U.S. citizens or temporary or illegal aliens. Hospitals issue the same birth certificates to all newborns.
-The Social Security Administration (SSA) does not investigate whether SSN requests are for children of foreign diplomats. Although the agency does recognize that U.S.-born children of foreign diplomats are not eligible to receive SSNs, there is no mechanism in place for preventing such issuance.
-The State Department is currently rewriting the agency’s guidelines on birthright citizenship, signaling a possibly significant departure from current 14th Amendment jurisprudence. The agency claims that children born to foreign diplomats are “entitled to birth certificates.”
-Children of diplomats who receive U.S. birth certificates and SSNs have greater rights and protections than the average U.S. citizen because they can enjoy all of the benefits of U.S. citizenship, but also invoke diplomatic immunity if they break a law. A lack of direction from Congress has created what one might consider a “super citizen” who is above the law.
-In order to end the practice of granting automatic U.S. citizenship to children of foreign diplomats, Congress could author regulations requiring declaration of parental diplomatic status on birth certificate request forms. As an alternative, Congress could require parents to have SSNs before a U.S. birth certificate or SSN is issued to a newborn. While this latter proposal might create better results and be more easily administered, it would have the effect of ending automatic birthright citizenship not just for children of diplomats, but also for children of illegal aliens and temporary aliens — an outcome that is more aligned with the intended scope of the 14th Amendment than the outcome created by current practices.
[Excerpt] See:
https://cis.org/Report/Birthright-Citizenship-Children-Foreign-Diplomats
The 14th Amendment has the clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. That clause has no meaning unless it refers to children born to foreign diplomats. Liberals believe that’s its only meaning.
Such exemptions are also universal in international treaties that govern diplomats.
Won’t mean much for anchors, dreamers, BO or birthright citizenship.
Case was decided on very narrow grounds. Her father was an ambassador stationed here. Any children born to foreign ambassadors while they are stationed here do NOT gain US Citizenship (perhaps because embassies themselves are regarded as foreign territory). Won’t affect anyone else unless their dad was likewise an ambassador.
This has been part of an international agreement since there have been diplomats. If the US had said that she was a citizen every country in the world would be justified in pulling their diplomats out of the US. It would be a horrible breach of law and custom.
It is to prevent other nations from being able to put pressure on the diplomats of another nation by threatening their families.
If she had been born after he had left diplomatic service it would have been another thing but she wasn't.
In fact she never should have been issued a US passport.
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