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I'm going to be honest, I'm not a fan of birthright citizenship either. I believe a person born in the US should need at least one parent to be a citizen or lawful permanent resident in order to obtain citizenship, and the system as currently set up is routinely abused (See the Chinese tourist industry as an example). But my personal opinion directly conflicts with the Constitution, and guess which one matters?
There's absolutely no ambiguity here. The Constitution clearly states that any person born on US soil is a US citizen, full stop. There are no disqualifiers listed. Doesn't matter where your parents came from. Doesn't matter if they just showed up in the US 5 minutes ago. If they were born on US soil, they are a US citizen. Any change to that requires a Constitutional amendment. And the chances of that happening any time in the foreseeable future are less than zero.
EDIT: I just want to point out that requirements that at least one parent is a citizen and/or has established long term residency in the country is the standard in the UK, Austrailia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Spain, and several other countries.
I think the birthright citizenship is the way to go. If you're born in the US I think that should be the point where we go "Okay, you're a citizen". We could have a situation where a group of people are perpetually denied citizenship for some reason that's advantageous to another group, and that ensures their children can't becomes citizens either.
But that's kind of the point, isn't it?
If the child has at least one parent that's a citizen or permanent resident, they're a citizen. So there would be no issues there.
If both of the child's parents are from a foreign country and are just here temporarily, they'd still be citizens of their parents' home country. There's no reason to extend US citizenship to a child who won't be here for long.
If one or both of the parents establish permanent residency in the US, they can establish the same for the child as well, giving the child and the descendants a path to citizenship.
If both parents are here illegally, then the child shouldn't be granted US citizenship (at least until at least one parent establishes lawful residency in the US). Neither should the descendants. Allowing them and the descendants to establish citizenship and give those who would otherwise be denied lawful residency is one of the biggest incentives for illegal immigration in the first place. These would be the only people affected by removal of birthright citizenship in the first place.
There wouldn't be any ambiguity. It's very simple. Was the child born on US Soil? If so, does the child have at least one parent that is a citizen/lawful resident? If the answer to either one of those questions is yes, the child is automatically a citizen. Yes, there are those who could abuse the situation as you described, but those people would do that no matter what. And no matter what your personal position is on birthright citizenship, both sides can say that the other side can be used for political advantage; eliminating birthright citizenship could lead to cases as you described above, where people try to deny others of lawful citizenship for political purposes. But the same can be said in the other direction: allowing automatic birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and is advantageous to Democrats because minorities tend to skew heavily left when they become of voting age.
Regardless of politics, I just don't think that people should be rewarded for doing illegally what they couldn't or did not want to do legally. It sucks for the kids, but that's the parents' fault, not the US government.
Citation needed. Economic uncertainties and climate change are pretty big reasons for illegal immigration, afaik, and those are much more short-term survival considerations... it's not necessarily a plot to have anchor babies in most cases.