Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[mggaviles]

I would be interested to hear more from the blog authors on the anti-commandeering doctrine and the federal government's repeated attempts to withhold funds from states and local governments for not enforcing federal immigration laws.

[MarkJawz]

More like "withhold funds from states and local governments for actively interfering with the federal government's enforcement of federal immigration laws."

[not guilty]

I ran across an interesting article on slate.com regarding birthright citizenship. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/supreme-court-analysis-precedents-birthright-citizenship-case.html (It may be hidden behind a paywall. I don't know.)

The sum and substance of the article is:

Just after World War II, the U.S. government started to implement the provisions of the Nationality Act of 1940 that allowed the federal government to deprive Americans—native-born and naturalized alike—of their citizenship for reasons like voting in a foreign election, joining a foreign army, remaining for six months or longer within any foreign state of which they or either of their parents have been a national, or for evading the draft. Starting in 1945 and continuing until 1967, between 1,000 and 8,000 Americans were stripped of their nationality each year. This practice only ended when the Supreme Court declared these provisions unconstitutional in the 1967 case Afroyim v. Rusk.

Of those stripped of citizenship before that ruling—totaling more than 120,000—a majority were native-born. Some of those affected challenged their loss of citizenship by appealing to the courts. Nine such cases reached the Supreme Court between 1955 and 1967. . . .

On March 31, 1958, the court announced its decision regarding three denationalization cases: Trop [v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958),] Nishikawa [v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 129 (1958),] and Perez [v. Brownell, 356 U.S. 44 (1958), overruled in Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967).] . . .

Two of the three defendants whose cases were considered that day—Mitsugi Nishikawa and Clemente Perez—were born in the United States to foreign parents.

Why do these long-forgotten cases matter today? Because the highly divided court was unanimous on one point: Being born in the United States meant being a native-born American, regardless of the status of one’s foreign parents. This unanimous interpretation of the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment was echoed in two subsequent cases—Gonzales [ v. Landon, 350 U.S. 920] in 1955 and [Kennedy v.] Mendoza-Martinez[, 372 U.S. 144] in 1962—involving the deprivation of citizenship of children of immigrants.

The import of these cases involving plaintiffs born in the United States to foreign national parents is that these plaintiffs' citizenship, though later revoked, was conferred at birth, irrespective of their parents' citizenship or national origin.

Mitsugi Nishikawa, born in California to Japanese parents, went to Japan to study, and he was conscripted into the Japanese military in early 1941. After the end of the war, Nishikawa was informed by US officials that he had lost his citizenship because he had served in a foreign army. His case was eventually reviewed by the Supreme Court, which decided that the burden of proof must be on the government to prove that Nishikawa's Japanese military service was undertaken voluntarily before he could be stripped of his citizenship.

Clemente Martinez Perez was born in El Paso, Texas, on March 17, 1909. He resided in the United States until 1919 or 1920, when his parents took him to Mexico. In 1928, he was informed that he had been born in the state of Texas.

During World War II, he applied for admission and was admitted into the United States as a Mexican alien railroad worker. His application for such entry contained his recitation that he was a native-born citizen of Mexico. By 1947, however, Perez had returned to Mexico, and in that year, he applied for admission to the United States as a citizen of the United States. Upon his arrival, he was charged with failing to register under the Selective Service Laws of the United States during the war.

Under oath, Perez admitted that between 1944 and 1947, he had remained outside the United States to avoid military service and had voted in an election in Mexico in 1946.

On May 15, 1953, he surrendered to immigration authorities in San Francisco as an alien unlawfully in the United States but claimed that he was a citizen of the United States by birth and thereby entitled to remain. The US District Court, however, found that Perez had lost his American citizenship, a decision that was affirmed by the court of appeals.

The courts held that Congress can attach loss of citizenship only as a consequence of conduct engaged in voluntarily even if there was no intent or desire to lose citizenship.

Francisco Mendoza-Martinez was born in this country in 1922, and therefore acquired American citizenship by birth. By reason of his parentage, he also, under Mexican law, gained Mexican citizenship, thereby possessing dual nationality. In 1942, he departed from this country and went to Mexico, solely, as he admits, for the purpose of evading military service in our armed forces. He concedes that he remained there for that sole purpose until November, 1946, when he voluntarily returned to this country. In 1947, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, he pleaded guilty to and was convicted of evasion of his service obligations in violation of § 11 of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. [Footnote 2] He served the imposed sentence of a year and a day. For all that appears in the record, he was, upon his release, allowed to reside undisturbed in this country until 1953, when, after a lapse of five years, he was served with a warrant of arrest in deportation proceedings. This was premised on the assertion that, by remaining outside the United States to avoid military service after September 27, 1944, when § 401(j) took effect, he had lost his American citizenship. Following hearing, the Attorney General's special inquiry officer sustained the warrant and ordered that Mendoza-Martinez be deported as an alien.

If these litigants -- each born in the united States to foreign national parents -- had not acquired American citizenship at birth, there would never have been any citizenship to revoke the first place.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The constitution is not a suicide pack.

End of discussion.

[David Nieporent]

Dr. Ed is going to pretend that he knew the word was "pact" and that Apple somehow changed that correct one to the wrong one. He's wrong on the merits too, of course.

[mggaviles]

How is 'jus soli,' a rule followed by more than 30 countries worldwide and by almost all nations in the Americas, a "suicide"?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Ask the Romans……

[MarkJawz]

Bccause the U.S. is the only one that's not a shithole, and has a steady stream of low-quality third worlders trying to enter.

[Martinned]

Ausweis, bitte

Question: Thank you. Madam Secretary, perhaps to follow up, why are we seeing Americans being asked on the street to provide proof of citizenship in Minnesota? Is that targeted enforcement? And are you advising Americans to carry proof of citizenship?

Kristi Noem: In every situation, we're doing targeted enforcement. If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they're there and having them validate their identity. That's what we've always done, in asking people who they are so that we know who's in those surroundings.

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-briefing-kristi-noem-the-white-house-january-15-2026/

[Commenter_XY]

Eurotrash, the US has a long way to go, to go down to your level.

[OpinionsVary]

Papers please.

[hobie]

You know, you don't have to be a dick every day, XY.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Would someone please explain why tactics have been used for over a quarter century to address under age drinking and OUI shouldn’t also be used to address illegal alienship???

All of the constitutional issues, civil rights issues, human rights issues, and everything else that people are attempting to raise now should have been raised back in the 90s. It’s too damn late now.

[David Nieporent]

Nobody knows what "tactics" you're talking about, or who was supposed to raise these issues, or when, or why, or how someone who wasn't born in the 1990s could have raised them then, or how it can ever be "too late" to argue that a governmental action is unconstitutional.

[hobie]

Was nice of the Venezuelan lady to offer the peace prize that she risked her life to achieve. But I think it's pretty classless to have accepted it. Is like a little girl gives up the only photo she has of her dead mother. A normal recipient would thank the girl but hand it right back...and be the hero for doing so.