Birthright Citizens

Explains the origins of the Fourteenth Amendment's birthright citizenship provision, as a story of black Americans' pre-Civil War claims to belonging.

Undeserving citizens? -- A history of birthright citizenship -- Diminished citizenship

The first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, known as the Citizenship Clause, provides that [a]ll 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. This generally has been taken to mean that any person born in the United States automatically gains U.S. citizenship, regardless of the citizenship or immigration status of the persons parents, with limited exceptions such as children born to recognized foreign diplomats. The current rule is often called birthright citizenship. However, driven in part by concerns about unauthorized immigration, some have questioned this understanding of the Citizenship Clause, and in particular the meaning of subject to the jurisdiction [of the United States]. This book traces the history of birthright citizenship under U.S. law and discusses some of the legislation in recent Congresses intended to alter it.

The vast majority of the global population acquires citizenship purely by accidental circumstances of birth. There is little doubt that securing membership status in a given state bequeaths to some a world filled with opportunity and condemns others to a life with little hope. Gaining privileges by such arbitrary criteria as one’s birthplace is discredited in virtually all fields of public life, yet birthright entitlements still dominate our laws when it comes to allotting membership in a state. In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar argues that birthright citizenship in an affluent society can be thought of as a form of property inheritance: that is, a valuable entitlement transmitted by law to a restricted group of recipients under conditions that perpetuate the transfer of this prerogative to their heirs. She deploys this fresh perspective to establish that nations need to expand their membership boundaries beyond outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic. Located at the intersection of law, economics, and political philosophy, The Birthright Lottery further advocates redistributional obligations on those benefiting from the inheritance of membership, with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities.

The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power -- and how it transformed America. In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women's movement did not win the vote for most black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own. In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women's political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women -- Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more -- who were the vanguard of women's rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Over the last decade or so, concern about illegal immigration has sporadically led to a re-examination of a long-established tenet of U.S. citizenship, codified in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), that a person who is born in the U.S., is a citizen of the U.S. regardless of the race, ethnicity, or alienage of the parents. Some congressional Members have supported a revision of the Citizenship Clause or at least holding hearings for a serious consideration of it. Contents of this report: (1) Intro.; (2) Historical Development: Jus Soli Doctrine Before the 14th Amend.; The 14th Amend. and the Civil Rights Act of 1866; U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark and Elk v. Wilkins; (3) Legislative Proposals.

Birth-based citizenship is widely considered to be the most secure claim to political belonging. Despite the general belief that liberal democracies are formed through consent, in fact, most people are members of a political community by virtue of the circumstances of their birth. In Canadian Club, Lois Harder tracks the development of Canada’s Citizenship Act from its first iteration in 1947 to the provisions governing the citizenship of children born abroad to Canadian parents with the assistance of reproductive technologies. Reviewing a range of cases, Harder reveals how membership in the Canadian political community relies on norms surrounding gender, family, and sexuality, as well as presumptions regarding the constitution of "authentic" national identity, racial hierarchy, and the rightness of settler colonialism. Canadian Club concludes with a consideration of alternative approaches to forming political communities. Ultimately, it asks whether birth-based citizenship is the best we can do and what a more democratic and socially just alternative might look like.

News media and pundits too frequently perpetuate the notion that Latinos, particularly Mexicans, are an invading force bent on reconquering land once their own and destroying the American way of life. In this book, Leo R. Chavez contests this assumption's basic tenets, offering facts to counter the many fictions about the "Latino threat." With new discussion about anchor babies, the DREAM Act, and recent anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona and other states, this expanded second edition critically investigates the stories about recent immigrants to show how prejudices are used to malign an entire population—and to define what it means to be American.