Republicans want to end birthright citizenship in US territories

https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-want-end-birthright-citizenship-us-territories-12216785

21 points · 3 comments · view on lemmy.world

3 Comments

Bwaz@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 22d (1 reply)

So those people would become citizens of ..what? Of a territory? Doe a territory issue passports?

The various bills that have been introduced to try and end birthright citizenship don't remove it entirely, but limit it to children where at least one parent is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident. It is assumed that children who don't qualify would just inherit the parent's citizenship. I am not sure whether it is guaranteed that all countries would recognize a birth abroad like that, though. So it can be possible for someone to be born stateless, which definitely sucks.

Those territories are part of the US and their citizens are US citizens, they are just not citizens of any particular State.

dhork@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 22d

Interesting that the US citizens who live there don't get any say in this, isn't it? They don't send any representatives to Congress, yet they pay taxes. Didn't the founders have a direct opinion on that?

I would be in favor of all US citizens who do not reside in a State getting their own representation. Give them one Rep and two Senators, just like Wyoming. (Or, if you want to reinforce their non-State-ness, give them just one Senator, which would make the VP's tie breaking vote meaningless if the Senate is at full attendance).

This would also solve the representation problem with US ex-pats, who are technically represented from the last address they lived at in the US, but are not actually counted in the Census, so their representation isnt included in apportionment.

Think of the frequent flier miles that Rep would rack up to go back and forth from the USVI to Guam and back....