In 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.
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Paul_IPv6
In response to this post@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...
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Jernej Simončič �
In response to this post@mattblaze …which unfortunately is probably the whole point.
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Krzysztof Sakrejda
In response to this post@mattblaze that sounds like part of the plan!
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Matt Blaze
In response to this postOne 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.
@mattblaze I know a couple people who have had problems with that. They're absolutely citizens, but they have to prove it.
One is even harder - they're citizen-by-adoption-as-a-child. Their foreign-citizen father went back home after divorce with adoptive-mother-that-granted-citizenship. Adoptive mother doesn't want anything to do with them anymore, not even provide basic documentation needed for State Dept to acknowledge their citizenship.
by Ed Hurtley ;
@mattblaze just checked how and when registration laws were implemented in Germany, where we mainly have that "German is who is descendant of Germans" citizenship.. At the time of the empire, past 1871, there were only some regional laws, which have been unified and implemented for all of Germany in .. 1938
by Wolfgang ;
@mattblaze
Something like this occurred in the UK for post-war Caribbean immigrants and their descendants (the "Windrush scandal"). Decades later, the Conservatives introduced retrospective requirements for documentation to prove the right to stay. Something like three documents for every year, continuously since arrival. Many were deported or lost social security because they didn't have documents they were never told and couldn't know they would need. It was (and still is) disgusting.
by Boris Barbour ;
@mattblaze I read on the Bulwark today a theory that this may be the first test case to see if the Supreme Court will roll over on something that is clearly unconstitutional. I think that makes a lot of sense.
by Jennifer ;
@mattblaze it's going to be such a huge mess.
Does it apply only to people born after the order or retrospectively? If so, how many generations do you need to go back to prove citizenship? Are locals with generations of assumed citizenship less able to prove their citizenship now than some immigrant who's father has a certificate of naturalisation?
I guess that's the point. It'll only be used to wield chaos on those with the wrong name or skin colour.
by William ;
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Michael Helm
In response to this post@mattblaze Sounds like it could generate another 20 year saga of "Birth Real ID" legislation and compliance debate
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damon
In response to this post@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).
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