How is 14th amendment applicable to tourists and illegal immigrants? 14th amendment states "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States...". Given this wording how is it that foreign diplomats' children born in United States do not have birthright to US citizenship because they are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" and children of tourists and illegal immigrants do have the birthright to US citizenship? In other words, how is it that these two categories are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" and therefore their children have the right to US citizenship by birth? Edit: As mentioned below, according to United States v. Wong Kim Ark, Ark was granted citizenship by birth although his parents were foreign nationals and this is cited by many as a precedent for birthright citizenship for tourists and illegal immigrants. However, according to the same article, Ark's parents "were legally domiciled and resident" in United States at the time of his birth and tourists and illegal immigrants are not so can this decision really be used as legal precedent for birthright citizenship for tourists and illegal immigrants?
[C]an this decision really be used as legal precedent for birthright citizenship for tourists and illegal immigrants? Yes. If the case did not depend on the fact that they were lawfully resident in the US, then it would apply to those who are not lawfully present in the US. For the case to apply to some people but not others, there must be a distinguishing difference that is relevant to the analysis of the case. The question then is whether lawful residence is a distinguishing difference here, and it seems that no court has ruled on the question. Referring to current events, it would be possible for the executive branch to assert that the 14th amendment does not grant citizenship to one born in the US of parents who were not lawfully present. This would end up in court. For example, such a person could sue to compel the government to issue a passport, or, if the government sought to deport such a person, the person could assert US citizenship in deportation proceedings. At that point, the court would have to rule on the question, whereupon it would almost certainly rule that the 14th amendment does grant such citizenship. See, for example, Plyler v. Doe, in which the court ruled that illegal immigrants in a state are within its jurisdiction for the purpose of the equal protection clause. It would be odd indeed for the court to rule that the same word means something different in the previous sentence. Furthermore, in a footnote, the court writes [W]e have had occasion to examine the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that &quot;[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. . . .&quot; ... [N]o plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment &quot;jurisdiction&quot; can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful. You ask: [H]ow is it that foreign diplomats' children born in United States do not have birthright to US citizenship because they are not &quot;subject to the jurisdiction thereof&quot; and children of tourists and illegal immigrants do have the birthright to US citizenship? Consider what happens when an illegal immigrant commits a crime in the territory of a US state: the person is subject to trial and punishment in the state's criminal justice system. A foreign diplomat who commits a crime, on the other hand, or indeed the child or other family member of a foreign diplomat, is immune from prosecution. That is what distinguishes diplomats from illegal aliens such that the first sentence of the 14th amendment applies to the latter, but not the former.
What is one supposed to do if they want to take an extended trip somewhere? Or is one basically not allowed to take such trips if they are a US citizen eligible for Jury Duty? In the US you are not required to seek permission to travel, or prove your past whereabouts to the government if you happen to miss some civic duty. They generally call up way more people than they need for this sort of reason. The length of time you are gone or where you choose to travel is irrelevant. In my experience you are given about a month heads up. If you didn't receive the notice until you returned from out of town, and they send a follow up, simply inform them of the fact that you were gone and didn't receive the notice until you returned. Jury duty is an obligation to some extent, but it is also a right and a privilege. It isn't a criminal offence you are liable for if you didn't get the notice. If it were that important to verify your availability ahead of time the notification would be sent registered mail with a signature required.
The conservative argument that the Dreamers law is unconstitutional is that it ascribes equal protection to non-US citizens under the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment lays out clearly and explicitly that only US born or naturalized citizens have equal protection. If anyone makes that argument, it's an extreme fringe. The 14th Amendment does not prevent states from giving equal protection to non-citizens. In fact, in general, the 14th Amendment means states are required to give equal protection to non-citizens. See Graham v. Richardson: The Fourteenth Amendment provides, &quot;[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.&quot; It has long been settled, and it is not disputed here, that the term &quot;person&quot; in this context encompasses lawfully admitted resident aliens, as well as citizens of the United States, and entitles both citizens and aliens to the equal protection of the laws of the State in which they reside. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 118 U. S. 369 (1886); Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33, 239 U. S. 39 (1915); Takahashi v. Fish &amp; Game Comm'n, 334 U.S. at 334 U. S. 420. It's also settled that illegal immigrants are fully entitled to equal protection of the laws. See Plyler v. Doe: That a person's initial entry into a State, or into the United States, was unlawful, and that he may for that reason be expelled, cannot negate the simple fact of his presence within the State's territorial perimeter. Given such presence, he is subject to the full range of obligations imposed by the State's civil and criminal laws. And until he leaves the jurisdiction -- either voluntarily, or involuntarily in accordance with the Constitution and laws of the United States -- he is entitled to the equal protection of the laws that a State may choose to establish. The dissent to Plyler also agreed that illegal immigrants are entitled to equal protection of the laws: I have no quarrel with the conclusion that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to aliens who, after their illegal entry into this country, are indeed physically &quot;within the jurisdiction&quot; of a state. However, as the Court concedes, this &quot;only begins the inquiry.&quot; Equal protection does not mean people in different situations must be treated identically. States are limited in their ability to discriminate against lawful permanent residents (Richardson), but there are situations where discrimination is appropriate (Foley v. Connelie, which held that a state can require police officers to be citizens). It's often considered reasonable for states to discriminate against illegal immigrants, but Plyler held that it was unreasonable to deny children the right to attend school because they were illegal immigrants. At the federal level, Congress has broad authority to discriminate against non-citizens (one reason states are fairly limited here is so they don't interfere with federal authority). The question in the case mentioned in the comments, DHS v. Regents of the University of California, was whether the Trump administration's decision to end DACA was legal. One argument raised was that it violated the Equal Protection Clause because it disproportionately hurt Latinos and was motivated by prejudice against them. The Court held that the claims of a prejudicial motivation were weak and that the disproportionate effect was just because illegal immigrants are disproportionately Latino. The Court didn't explicitly say &quot;you can constitutionally make immigration policies that discriminate against illegal immigrants,&quot; but that's so obvious that no one seriously thinks otherwise. What the Supreme Court did not rule was that the Equal Protection Clause does not apply to illegal immigrants. They held that it didn't ban this particular policy change, but that's not particularly surprising. They certainly didn't hold that DACA was illegal because it violated the Equal Protection Clause by protecting non-citizens. No one even bothered to address that claim.
Yes From the American perspective: U.S. law does not mention dual nationality1 or require a person to choose one nationality or another. A U.S. citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to his or her U.S. citizenship. Source: U.S. Department of State — Bureau of Consular Affairs And from the British: Dual citizenship (also known as dual nationality) is allowed in the UK. This means you can be a British citizen and also a citizen of other countries. Source: Gov.Uk 1Section 101(a)(22) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) states that “the term ‘national of the United States’ means (A) a citizen of the United States, or (B) a person who, though not a citizen of the United States, owes permanent allegiance to the United States.” Therefore, U.S. citizens are also U.S. nationals. Non-citizen nationality status refers only individuals who were born either in American Samoa or on Swains Island to parents who are not citizens of the United States [Source: Dept of State, as above]
When the person has been naturalised, that is, when the US government officially recognises them as a US citizen. There are many pathways to citizenship and the ones on the linked page are pretty typical across the world although the details vary: residence for a period with or without marriage to a citizen service descent.
The 13th to 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution are called the &quot;civil war amendments&quot; as they were enacted in the fallout from the U.S. Civil War. The 15th Amendment specifically addresses racial discrimination in voting rights, which was emerging as an issue a federal occupation of Southern states was receding and the segregation regimes that persisted until the 1960s, almost a century later, replaced slavery (which was abolished, de jure, and to a great extent, in practice). The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, comes very close, because at the time that it was adopted, slavery was almost exclusively imposed on African-Americans (the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War was the proximate legal cause of ending slavery for most U.S. slaves, although it took a fair amount of time to be fully implemented because the U.S. did not control much of the territory it applied to at the time). The 14th Amendment was also race conscious, not by its express text, but by what is displaced. Section 1 removed the denial of citizenship for former slaves (an almost entirely African-American population), and expressly required the state to afford the new citizens equal protection of the laws and due process. Section 2 removed the three-fifths compromise from Congressional apportionment that had counted African-American slaves as less than a full person in the pre-14th Amendment status quo. Section 4 invalidated efforts to pay reparations to former slave owners. Specifically, they state: 13th Amendment Section 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. 14th Amendment Section 1 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section 4 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5 The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. 15th Amendment Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. When Justice Scalia meant said that: The Constitution explicitly protects racial minorities, that's what we fought a civil war about, and the fourteenth amendment prevents / forbids refusal to give equal protection of the laws in particular with respect to race. So my Constitution protects that explicitly. He is putting the equal protection clause of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment in the context of the rest of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which gave to former slaves citizenship (implicitly a race based change) that was fortified with provisions including the equal protection of the laws that they had been denied before it was adopted while all other adult men of those days had. More broadly, he is discussing this in the larger context of the Civil War Amendments and in the context of the legislation that was enacted by Congress pursuant to the enforcement clauses of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. What these amendments do to protect racial minorities is to give them equal treatment when prior to their enactment they were given unequal treatment. Brown v. Board of Education which he discusses in the same breath, furthermore gives the 14th Amendment its modern meaning overruling Plessy v. Ferguson whose &quot;separate but equal&quot; interpretation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment had facilitated the Jim Crow regimes of segregation in the South because after more than half a century it had become clear that separate was almost never actually equal in practice. As a footnote, the 14th Amendment Privileges and Immunities clause in Section 1 of that amendment was intended to be the greater of the Section 1 protections, but was gutted early on by the Slaughterhouse Cases that interpreted it in a manner that made it virtually irrelevant, continues to be good law. There is no Brown v. Board of Education counterpart overruling the Slaughterhouse cases the way that Brown repealed Plessy. Where is written in the 14th Amendment that race is a protected minority? The context and legislative history of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, as enforced by contemporaneous enforcement legislation adopted by Congress, was clear to all in its meaning (even to textualist leaning originalists like Justice Scalia) that it first and foremost applied to the discrimination based upon race and former condition of servitude that the 15th Amendment called out explicitly. The notion of a &quot;protected minority&quot; isn't a very clean or helpful way to think about what the 14th Amendment does, however. Instead, it prohibits de jure legal discrimination based upon race and upon other factors that have been determined to constitute impermissible means of making legal distinctions. The notion of the 14th Amendment and anti-discrimination laws as conferring special treatment on &quot;protected minorities&quot; has not been the story of American civil rights law, unlike the case in Canada, for example, which uses a legal theory framework of vindicating and benefiting oppressed minorities, rather than less ambitiously, merely aiming for racial equality in the law. Justice Scalia's choice of words in the quoted material reflects the cultural lean of conservative politicians in the U.S. who have often tried to frame anti-discrimination law in this way, contrary to most (but not quite all) U.S. civil rights law legal theory (voting rights have more of a anti-oppression model, in part, due to the relevant Congressionally enacted enforcement legislation, especially the Voting Rights Act).
Any country can certainly decide who it should grant citizenship status to. There is no international rule that I know of requiring that the recipient be currently a resident of the country granting citizenship. Any country may issue passports to its citizens.
Why do other countries, like America, not allow this? It is the way that U.S. courts have interpreted the constitutional amendment requirement and reflects a policy judgment that letting someone go free now and then is better than frequently forcing someone to be tried more than once. That value judgment flowed from concerns about and fear and skepticism of the British colonial criminal justice system and the Star Chamber in England with which they were familiar. The U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand didn't have an independence revolution in their history to create the same kind of deep distrust of authority, especially in the criminal justice area. The U.S. was founded by terrorists. Few other former British colonies were. Quoting Dale: &quot;As a constitutional protection, legislative change like this is not available in the United States.&quot; Is that really true and can someone expand on this? When the courts determine that the constitution requires something it can't be changed with ordinary legislation. Either the constitution needs to be amended to change it (which is very hard), or the courts can change their interpretation (which is unlikely in an area so settled in the law and which is relatively uncontroversial between liberals and conservatives in the U.S.). If it is, this is a big problem in my opinion. The powers that be in the U.S. don't agree. This kind of case is exceedingly rare. And, there are much bigger problems with the system that obscure that one. Also, the dual sovereignty doctrine allows federal prosecutions in some wrongful acquittals that really matter (e.g. for civil rights violations by law enforcement).