| ▲ | trgn 2 days ago |
| I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship. The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places. Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits. I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too. |
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| ▲ | galleywest200 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government. The change would require 2/3 of all states to approve a constitutional amendment. It won't ever pass. Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule. My family came here in the early 1700s and fought in the revolution. It would be a disgrace for me to do anything other than support immigrants. |
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| ▲ | runako a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule. This understates the situation. All of us who are not naturalized citizens are citizens only because of the birthright clause in the Constitution. The US does not have any other way for a person born here to become a citizen. If the birthright clause of the Constitution stops being enforced, Congress (or more likely in our current iteration, the President) will have to create a brand-new set of rules determining which of us natural-born citizens get to retain our citizenship and which do not. There is no existing law to guide them, so they can make it up out of whole cloth. More plainly: if we choose to eliminate birthright citizenship, whoever is running the country at that time gets to determine whether you are still a citizen. | |
| ▲ | pfannkuchen 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Serious question - would your ancestors from the 1700s agree that you should support the immigrants you are supporting? Or have you been taught that your ancestors were wrong and evil and that you should honor them by doing the opposite of what they believed? | | |
| ▲ | achenet 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not the person you're answering to but the way I interpret their statement is "my ancestors came here as immigrants in search of a better life 300 years ago. I honor that by helping those doing the same today." Being American, especially back in 1776 (250 years ago!), was not about ethnicity, but about an ideal - a group of men on the North American continent decided that " that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." [0], and then literally put their lives on the line to protect that ideal. America is, and has always been, a nation of immigrants. What unites it are the common values - in theory, the idea that everyone there has the right to live free and pursue their happiness, as opposed to the idea that everyone should serve the king because that is the will of God, which was the dominant idea in Europe in the 1700s. With that view, I can see that supporting people who come to the US so they can be free as continuing what the original poster's ancestors started 300 years ago. [0] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip... | |
| ▲ | wat10000 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're allowed to pick and choose, and indeed should. We can honor and propagate their noble ideas about immigration in general, while rejecting their ideas about race and slavery and all that. |
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| ▲ | richwater 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This doesn't stop our politicians from completely ignoring the 2nd amendment so whats the difference | |
| ▲ | cheonc720 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government. And we can amend constitutional rights. It most definitely will happen in our lifetimes. > Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule. And? You think the world in 2026 is exactly the same as in 1776? What about slavery? Good idea in 1776 therefore good idea in 2026? |
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| ▲ | anon84873628 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The administration has never justified immigration policy on economic terms, only keeping out criminals. If it were really part of a coherent anti-inflation, pro-housing strategy, then, well, a lot of other policies would be different... (Including signing the ROAD act, not starting trade wars, or driving up the price of oil) |
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| ▲ | zzrrt 2 days ago | parent [-] | | FWIW the Road ACT became law anyway without his signature, but yeah if he wanted to demonstrate he cared about such things he would have signed it promptly and proudly. |
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| ▲ | vharuck a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. Many immigrants come to America to work and start businesses. That creates jobs. Even the day-laborers buy food, clothing, tools. If we cracked down on businesses that used illegally immigrated workers, that would be a much more targeted way to fight wage suppression. How could inflation come from illegal immigration? Are the immigrants bringing in crazy amounts of money? Does the existence of more workers competing for an open position drive up the going wage? If we want to reduce the price of housing, we need to build more houses. That's the key. The trouble is how to tackle the financial and regulatory hurdles that discourage building houses. Clamping down on immigration from poorer countries hurts the construction industry, which employs a lot of immigrants. >Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits. If we cared about people with foreign allegiances participating in our politics, we'd ban dual citizenship. If we cared enough about welfare costs to do unpopular things, we'd ban smoking and high-sugar foods. That would save a lot more in welfare costs, and our citizens would be healthier. On my list of priorities for reducing welfare costs, taking money from poor people who don't actually qualify ranks low. It's a mistake or crime that feeds people and gets money circulating in local economies. Not efficient, but not world-ending and probably not common. If you really want to find people receiving benefits despite not actually qualifying, look for senior citizens hiding their wealth as cash in their house. >I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too. Trump stated immigrants poison the blood of our nation. I'm going to accept that as his actual belief and reasoning. |
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| ▲ | UncleOxidant 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Our birthrate has been below replacement for several years now. We need immigrants to mitigate that. |
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| ▲ | onetimeusename a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't get this argument. We skip over fixing the birthrate and instead rely on immigration. There's a whole bunch of reasons people give for why we can't fix it like costs, jobs, housing, etc. Ok, so then first wouldn't immigrants also have the same problem once they get here or do they have a way of bypassing our low birthrate somehow but then we were told we can't bypass it, it exists because of the costs, jobs. etc. So the immigrants end up with the same birth rate and then we have to bring in more immigrants. So there would have to be a constant source of excess people somewhere else for this to be sustainable. So it gets to a point where I wonder if this is really the plan. | | |
| ▲ | UncleOxidant a day ago | parent [-] | | > We skip over fixing the birthrate You're assuming the birthrate can be "fixed". Japan has an even worse demographic problem. They've tried "fixing" it and nothing much works. Similar for South Korea. Japan would certainly benefit from opening up to more immigration. Countries that can attract more immigration are going to benefit economically as the birthrates continue to decline globally. Why not be attractive to immigrants instead of wanting to repel them? | | |
| ▲ | strenholme a day ago | parent | next [-] | | It is very much possible to use government force to solve the birthrate problem. Romania did it in the 1960s. Mind you, this would cause a lot of misery and suffering but it has been done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770 | |
| ▲ | account42 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | You can definitely fix it. You might not like what it takes but others don't like their culture being replaced either. | | |
| ▲ | tuesdaynight a day ago | parent | next [-] | | So tell us what it takes, I'm curious | | |
| ▲ | strenholme a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Make abortion and contraception illegal, and strongly enforce those laws. It worked with Romania in the 1960s and 1970s. Mind you, it caused a bunch of other problems to crop up, but Romania did solve their low birth rate problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770 | | |
| ▲ | mrguyorama 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That very link shows it did not work Primarily, because : https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/ | | |
| ▲ | strenholme 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Depends on what you mean by “work”. It worked: The birth rate exceeded the rate of deaths until Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in 1989. There was some level of circumvention in the 1970s and 1980s, but birth rates continued to outpace death rates up until the day Ceausescu was overthrown and Decree 770 was made null and void. (If you have a different definition of “work” than “it increased fertility”, please let me know what that definition is) Mind you, as I said before, there were a lot of undesirable, shall we say, side effects because of this decree, but it did solve the fertility problem. {Snark tag: Obviously, I do not endorse doing something as Orwellian as having a government like the Romania of the 1960s and 1970s, and the unwanted kids caused a huge amount of intergenerational trauma. To get back to the issue of fertility collapse, fertility collapse is an issue which will last only one generation: The people who have kids will have worldviews which encourage having more children} | | |
| ▲ | strenholme 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Talking to myself: I enjoyed the novelette at https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/ It’s probably a bad prediction of the future, but having an exaggerated dystopian view of the future is a classic trick used in golden age science fiction (e.g. Decision at Doona from 1969 had a grossly overpopulated Earth) so one I was able to accept while reading the story. It definitely has a bias; it doesn’t mention the stories of women regretting abortions at all, except (minor spoiler) mentioning that Asenath Smith didn’t want an abortion. As someone who has had multiple women confide their abortion stories to me, it’s quite common for women to deeply regret having them. I understand why a story as political as this one doesn’t want to get in to the nuance of the trauma abortion can cause, because it’s written in the same year Roe vs. Wade was overturn, so it’s a story of how much women need access to pregnancy tests and to abortion. [1] [1] I personally believe in the right to an abortion, for the simple reason that, when a woman has a miscarriage or a baby which just isn’t viable, the medical treatment she gets should be a decision doctors make, not a decision people with guns and cages make. |
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| ▲ | tuesdaynight 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I want to know if that is the proposed solution or if we finally found some libertarian idea that I'm unknown about | | |
| ▲ | strenholme 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | The “proposed solutions” are very misogynistic. They include repealing the 19th amendment (not letting women vote), repealing sex discrimination laws, and enforcing “patriarchy”. See, for example https://archive.ph/20260624060135/https://nitter.net/Schtal2... for the kind of nonsense these kinds of people are proposing, based on lies and fabrications. | | |
| ▲ | tuesdaynight 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | I know what some X users say about that, and I know that some people here have these same ideas. I was just wondering if that is the supposed solution that the person suggested | | |
| ▲ | strenholme 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | You’ll have to ask @account42, but I will bet you it’s the same answer I came up with: Take away people’s freedoms and have a hard, strongly enforced (i.e. Orwellian levels of enforcement) ban on contraception and abortions. Both @account42 and myself agree this isn’t a particularly good solution, and I’m not worried about the fertility collapse myself: It is an issue which will last for only one generation. | | |
| ▲ | tuesdaynight 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure if they agree with you that is not a good solution, though. I don't even consider it a solution the same way that I don't consider slavery a solution for lack of workers. | | |
| ▲ | strenholme 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Here is what they said: “You can definitely fix it. You might not like what it takes but others don't like their culture being replaced either.” I think he’s implying he has some pretty, shall we say, interesting views on the matter. As someone who has been in an interracial marriage and multiple interracial relationships, I probably don’t agree with those particular views. It would be nice to know what he’s advocating for, but he’s gotten pretty mum after I pointed out it could be done, but only with Orwellian levels of suppression. |
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| ▲ | 15feetOfclay a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Teenage pregnancy, limited rights for unmarried women, heavily surveilled birth-control usage, all that good stuff. So long as the culture is preserved! There are 14 words that basically sum it all up |
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| ▲ | bad_haircut72 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, the only way to preserve USAs culture of freedom of the individual is to dissuade/force women from making choices that dont benefit the group. Else we will fall to communism!! | | |
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| ▲ | sensanaty 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or, crazy idea, we make life livable for the locals and then we incentivize them to have kids of their own? And before you say it, I'm an immigrant from the 3rd world myself. I'm not anti-immigratiom, but the birth rate talking point is a very poor one. Not to mention how unsustainable it is anyways, what happens a few years down the line when the immigrants stop having kids? There isn't an infinite ocean of people you can import on a whim, and definitely not forever. | | |
| ▲ | tuesdaynight a day ago | parent [-] | | I don't care about US immigration, but remember that people don't want to have more children. There's nothing related with costs or whatever. Norway have a lot of incentives and people still prefer to have less kids than USA. If these "livable conditions" were a true argument, rich countries would not need to incentivize people, because they would have more children willingly. Life is way more livable in a rich country than a poor country |
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| ▲ | account42 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | No, you need to encourage your existing population to reproduce instead of treating them as replaceable cogs. | | |
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| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just how many people are being born through birth tourism and end up claiming more in welfare than they pay in taxes? |
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| ▲ | zzrrt 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I think birth tourism is an overblown fear, but I suppose their answer is that poor welfare sponges and rich-ish passport collectors are both threats, for different reasons. | |
| ▲ | strenholme 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Very few. 0.5% to 0.7% of all births. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9nz5qwl8jo | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Note that this is an expansive estimate from an anti-immigration think tank that attempts to count all births to non-citizen mothers who were no longer in the US at some vague point in time afterwards. It does not distinguish between birth tourists attempting to get citizenship for their baby, non-resident mothers who just happened to be here when they gave birth but had no specific intent to get citizenship for their baby, and residents who moved away. And that is an estimate of the total number of birth tourists, so the number who end up claiming more welfare than they pay into the system is going to be some fraction of that. |
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| ▲ | budman1 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Minimal. In the hundreds vs H1b with the tens of thousands. | |
| ▲ | unselect5917 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Many don't bother coming back but the ones the do are almost always very expensive. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 a day ago | parent [-] | | How many, how expensive, and how much is this offset by others who come back and pay taxes? I have seen a lot of freakouts about birth tourism since the recent SCOTUS ruling and I haven’t seen anyone give even the most cursory overview of the actual scale of the supposed problem. It’s purely an emotional reaction. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 a day ago | parent [-] | | Usually birth tourism is done by wealthier foreigners but that foreign wealth is not visible to the government so they end up qualifying for welfare. | | |
| ▲ | zzrrt a day ago | parent | next [-] | | What kind of welfare? Do you have stats or stories? I'm skeptical someone wealthy would slum it for the peanuts they could get from welfare fraud. Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 a day ago | parent [-] | | Hard for Americans to hide their assets in america. Land ownership is usually public. | | |
| ▲ | zzrrt a day ago | parent [-] | | They can do whatever you presume the rich birth tourist does, like deposit in foreign banks, not own US land, obfuscate land ownership through trusts or straw owners. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Most Americans like owning their home. | | |
| ▲ | zzrrt 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | One of my ideas was a way to fraudulently get most of the benefits of home ownership while hiding it; why wouldn't a rich dishonest Real American do that? Pride? So you think all children of wealthy birth tourists have no pride? It appears your argument is that foreigners are greedy, lazy, fraudulent, exploitative, and shameless, but Real Americans never stoop that low. Again, do you have statistics on this, or is just kind of a feeling? | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's just not viable if you have a mortgage and insurance. There's also FinCEN reporting though temporarily suspended. I get the feeling you dont have any experience dealing with these bureaucracies. Otherwise you wouldn't be so flippant. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | How do these wealthy welfare queen birth tourism beneficiaries manage it? | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | By having their assets overseas. You're going in circles now. | | |
| ▲ | zzrrt 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Both classes of people are American citizens, subject to the same laws and reporting. Why would one be able to hide assets overseas and the other not? If your answer is dual citizenship giving them access to banks abroad, a wealthy American can buy another citizenship. There is nothing to stop them from just not owning a mortgage or house, since that is the thing you say will catch them. |
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| ▲ | aveao 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Are wealthy foreigners really coming to the US and deciding to live a lifestyle of food stamps and welfare checks, rather than utilizing said wealth? | | |
| ▲ | zzrrt 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This conversation is reminding me of arguments about non-citizens voting, or assaults committed by trans fakers in bathrooms. Both have probably happened, as some weird wealthy dual citizen has probably decided to live on food stamps at least once. But I'd bet all of them are so rare they round to zero compared to the general rates of election tampering, sexual assaults, and welfare fraud, which are perpetrated by any other group than the minority being accused in each case. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | If people can’t tell me how prevalent it is, then I’ll assume it’s pretty much nothing. |
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| ▲ | throwaway85825 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Of course, everyone likes free stuff. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | That doesn’t answer my questions at all. |
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| ▲ | ausbah 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| straight up lying and doomer boomer mentality, sad and gross. very consistent correlations between migrants being net positive economic providers, more law abiding then native citizens, and just straight up regurgitating racist myths mass deportations won’t solve anything economic when it’s the same admin hamstringing prices and rates with tariffs, war, and defacto support of the oligopoly i really wish basement dwellers like you though of something original now and then |
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