Among many problems with Trump's citizenship executive order (such as its obvious conflict with the constitution) is a practical one: birth certificates, which are currently the primary proof of citizenship for those born in the US, are issued by state and local authorities. These agencies do not (and aren't equipped to) determine or record the immigration status of the parents.
This means that citizenship would no longer be established with a US birth certificate or any other primary document.
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Fi 🏳️‍⚧️
In response to this post@mattblaze
ayup. Completely breaks the system.
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Matt Blaze
In response to this postIn practice, birth certificates would likely be accepted MOST of the time as establishing citizenship, but those listing parents with "foreign sounding" names would be subject to open-ended scrutiny and investigation. And years later, people born here whose parents are dead or unavailable might have no way to definitively prove that they're citizens.
@mattblaze
much like a legal system either having presumption of innocence or presumption of guilt, this is assuming that you're in the wrong and the burden of proof is on you to prove your legitimacy.
proving you are *not* in the wrong is always in favor of the state, not the individual. a "never bet against the house" situation...
by Paul_IPv6 ;
@mattblaze …which unfortunately is probably the whole point.
by Jernej SimoncĚŚiÄŤ ďż˝ ;
@mattblaze that sounds like part of the plan!
by Krzysztof Sakrejda ;
One of the issues is that for birthright citizenship (as opposed to naturalization), one is not "granted" citizenship through a formal process or application, but rather simply has it from the moment of birth. The first time a person born here has to interact with the federal government to prove citizenship might be years later (e.g., applying for a passport), if at all.
by Matt Blaze ;
@mattblaze Sounds like it could generate another 20 year saga of "Birth Real ID" legislation and compliance debate
by Michael Helm ;
@mattblaze As an election nerd you might appreciate this weird fact: In Australia only Australian citizens can enroll and vote but it’s almost impossible for the election management body to definitely establish someone is an Australian citizen because of some weird edge cases where you can be born in Australia to legally permanent resident parents but not gain citizenship yourself. Basically an Australian birth certificate doesn’t definitely prove citizenship, only a citizenship certificate does. The way they get around this is… pretend it isn’t a problem, (because it mostly isn’t).
by damon ;
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Berkubernetus
In response to this post@mattblaze that sounds like that's their goal.
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Antonio Páez 🇲🇽🇨🇦
In response to this post@mattblaze @Lazarou
It's simple
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