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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

Very few countries have birthright citizenship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli). I still find it to be a strange concept. It seems like in the US, birthright citizenship isn’t granted in the constitution or laws directly but was the result of a court ruling, which is extra strange. I’m not sure if this is the right way to go about it, but I think removing it is the right direction to have a sense of sovereignty and make citizenship meaningful.

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> Very few countries have birthright citizenship

Very few countries have a huge statue at the entrance of a major port with a big bronze plaque bearing the message "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free (...)".

The 14th Amendment was a direct rebuttal of a court case: Dred Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott ruled that Black people could not be citizens, because they were property not people, including a "free negro" because they descended from property. The Citizenship Clause intentionally rebuts the ruling. There is no other way to interpret the Clause.

The United States has a lot of unique traits that few other countries have (American exceptionalism), birthright citizenship being just one characteristic. I'd think an executive order is just testing the water, but to change it definitively requires a constitutional amendment.

Or a Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution however they'd like it to be.

It’s most of the Americas; 3 dozen or so in total. Saying “very few” is cover for Trump to lie that it’s “only one”.

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