Has Richard Posner Become a Know-Nothing?
This week’s Becker-Posner exchange is on the topic of illegal immigration, not an issue high on my agenda.
But two of Posner’s three proposals are astounding:
1. Children born in the United States … are automatically entitled to U.S. citizenship. … The rule is thought by many legal experts to be grounded in the Constitution, but this arguably is incorrect; and if it is correct, the Constitution could be amended to change the rule. …2. [A] combination of electrical fences, electronic sensors, and stationing border patrol personnel right along the border, to prevent the entry of illegal immigrants in the first place. …
3. A national biometric identity card, required of all U.S. citizens and issued only upon convincing proof of citizenship, would reduce the incentive for illegal immigration by increasing the likelihood of an illegal immigrant’s being caught and deported.
I’m referring, of course, to #1 and #3. The propriety of a paleo-conservative “Great Wall of Mexico” is an idea that I remain uninterested in.
I’ve addressed the citizenship-stripping argument previously. The practice of automatically conferring citizenship to all born here is not as “arguably incorrect” as many would like to believe. It requires a bizarre and strained reading of the Constitution to conclude that children of noncitizens born in the country are not in fact citizens themselves.
As for a national ID card, once again Posner — who unapologetically endorses omnipresent data mining because “a government computer is not really the government” — sees only the benefits (i.e., reduced illegal immigration) and not the costs (i.e., eviscerated privacy rights). There is a fundamental reason why people oppose national ID cards, especially biometric national ID cards: because we know — we know — that they would not just be used for employment verification (see. e.g., “War on Terror”). We, unlike Posner, know that sometimes the price is just too high.
But that’s just us. Posner, meanwhile, describes his proposals as “modest.” Go figure. (Go back to Proposal #1. Since when is amending the Constitution ever “modest”?!?)
One hundred fifty years ago, a group of hyper-nationalists formed the American Party, better known as the Know-Nothing Party, the platform of which was that the immigration of undesirables (back then, Irish Catholics) was to be prevented at all costs, including compromising many of the core American ideals that the Know-Nothings claimed to be defending. Any even marginally effective program to reduce the number of “wrong” immigrants was, by definition, a good idea. No price was too high.
Posner commits the same analytical flaw. To him the only criterion is effectiveness, not cost-effectiveness relative to our principles. If it works, go for it.
How frightening.
Similar Posts:
- Arizona’s Voter ID Law May Go Too Far
- More on Posner on Illegal Immigration
- House Members Call for Unconstitutional Citizenship-Stripping
- “The Border Crossed Us”?
- On Illegal Immigration and Its Malcontents
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"Know nothing" = smear. I'm sure most of your readers can see the difference between the KN's and what B-P are discussing. And, I'm sure that doesn't help your credibility.
You can't "strip" someone of something that they never received because they weren't entitled to it. Unless you're being dishonest and trying to imply that stopping automatic citizenship would be retroactive.
Last but not least, my link has the truth about the 14th Amendment.
[Kip replies: We agree on one thing -- I have tremendous confidence in my readers. Well, most of them. And the term "stripping" refers to the constitutional process, not to those who already have citizenship. And your website simply parrots the same incorrect interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The "jurisdiction thereof" provision has always -- always -- meant children of diplomats and only children of diplomats. One stray quote from a long dead Senator does not a constitutional argument make.]
And to further Kip's 14th Amendment argument, I'd point out that in 1866, even though just about every (former) slave alive was born in the United States, many people of the day still considered them "Africans" aka "foreigners". To ascribe to Senator Howard's interpretation would have rendered the 14th Amendment meaningless in unequivocally conferring citizenship upon the newly freed slaves. I agree entirely with Kip in his previous post and post script in the comments on the jurisdiction subclause. Illegal aliens in the United States are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. If an illegal alien commits murder in the U.S., is the U.S. powerless to prosecute that person? To be tried for murder, a court must first have jurisdiction.
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I am inclined to agree with Criag on this issue too. I recall learning about Senator Hiram Revels, the first Black Senator post Reconstruction. The Supreme Court tried to say that the Fourteenth Amendement didn't apply to him and he hadn't been a citizen long enough in the US to serve as a senator. He was able to get over by pointing the nay sayers to his White ancestry, and since his White ancestors were citizens, that is how he convinced folk that he met the requirements to be a Senator.
The Constitution doesn't say that people born in the US to foreign or illegal parents cannot be citizens! Are we invoking partus sequitur ventrum? Good post KipEsquire:)