12 thoughts on “April 29 2015 U.S. CONGRESSIONAL HEARING: BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP: IS IT THE RIGHT POLICY FOR AMERICA?”

1. Do you feel that “birthright citizenship” should be imposed on people without their consent?

2. The article at the Hill that I just referenced in the ‘current articles’ post, discusses this.
   http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/240191-failed-argument-about-a-fundamental-american-right

3. Of course the article does not present US citizenship as being IMPOSED on anyone, but rather debates whether or not US should be so generous as to grant birthright citizenship. The comments so far indicate that homelanders feel US citizenship is too precious to be given to those whose only connection to the USA is birth on its soil.

4. @Dreamer:

   “The comments so far indicate that homelanders feel US citizenship is too precious to be given to those whose only connection to the USA is birth on its soil.”

   Birth on US soil conferring US Citizenship is just fine. Nothing wrong with that IMO.
   However, usurping the right to tax people simply because they have been born on US soil is criminal and against the Constitution. To tax implies there is something to tax, some sort of vehicle by which the taxing authority deems they have the right to tax. And THEREIN lies the problem. Not birth. OR Citizenship. Citizenship is a right. NOT a responsibility tied to ability to tax. No matter where people go in the world , where they were born is and always be special. It does not give entities the right to usurp that fact with some excuse to tax. Not just tax, but penalize. Without provocation, without warrant, without any excuse whatsoever. As Rand Paul says ” It is against the Constitution and various amendments” to tax people the way the IRS has undertaken to tax around the world.
   The problem is NOT place of birth it is trying to tax people who do not live or work in the US. Those who cram the southern border and are being allowed in without all the checks and balances normally undertaken for the security of the country all want to come to the country because they see a better life. IF they come legally, all the more reason to accept them. For they also will contribute to the tax base of the country and will have services for which they will be paying by their tax dollars.
   It is no more right to tax US citizens who have lived overseas for many many years paying their taxes in their country of residence than it is to overtax US citizens at home to pay for illegals who will be given all the benefits at the expense of legal US Citizens and Naturalized Citizens in the country.

5. @FuriousAC, You are preaching to the choir.

6. I would love the opportunity to say a few things about *Pick and Choose* — as in who the US subjects acquired US citizenship to AND in who the US would like to restrict acquired US citizenship by birth in the US to. And ask the reasons.

   However, I see by the contact form, I must live in the US to correspond with Representative Trey Gowdy. His ears are not open to those who live abroad, especially someone who has officially renounced US citizenship. I could, as some would suggest, make up and give a US South Carolina location to correspond, but I won’t correspond in any but my real identity, my real location and my real problem — having a son who cannot renounce US citizenship that the US conveyed upon him, which he cannot renounce because of lack of requisite mental capacity and I cannot act on his behalf, even with a court order.

   To my family and others like mine, the pick and choose of who acquires citizenship is another of the great USA hypocrisies.

7. The whole problem could be solved simply by asking the parents: “here’s a list of the rights & duties of US citizenship, do you want citizenship for your kids?”, with a presumption that the answer was “yes” if you’re still living in the US at age 18. But of course the US doesn’t want anyone to have a choice in the matter either way, so they insist on a braindead one-size-fits-all rule. It’s the same problem with totalization agreements: the US doesn’t want to give individuals, who know their own situation best (e.g. whether they plan to live abroad only temporarily or permanently), the right to decide which country’s social security system to join.

   http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v51n9/v51n9p4.pdf

   An Italian citizen or dual national who would be covered by both countries may elect either U.S. or Italian coverage. This provision is the only exception to the general rule that U.S. agreements assign coverage to one country or the other without offering an option to the employer or employee.

8. The US seems to believe that it can fix all its citizenship problems by making fewer people US citizens, lol! Be careful of what you wish for, I say.

   @Eric

   Furious AC argues that those responsibilities imposed upon US citizens are in fact misplaced, stating:

   …”Citizens have NO ‘responsibilities’. They have RIGHTS. It is the RESPONSIBILITY of the government from whom they are given a mandate to govern FROM the citizen to govern as dictated BY the electorate ( the citizen).If a citizen is considered to have a ‘responsibility’ it is to see to it that the taxes that are collected are spent in ways that are to the benefit of all citizens IN the country. It is astounding that politicians consider the citizen to be chattel to be used in any way their career aspirations dictate instead of understanding they are there for the purpose to REPRESENT the citizen to do what they want done. NOT the other way around!”…

   http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2015/04/16/we-delivered-monumental-submission-to-senate-finance-committee-fight-cbt/comment-page-5/#comment-5995485

   I take that to mean that the US’s has got it all backwards by practicing “taxation-based citizenship”.

9. While researching something completely different, I came across this. It seems to fit well in this discussion.

   https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/3694878-115647457

   Andrew Grossman:

   The IRS once tried to go after persons whose U.S. nationality was revoked and later restored by the Sup. Court. But see Rev. Rul 75-357, PLR 8138071; compare Rev. Rul. 92-109, 1992 C.B.3. In general acknowledging that no state may in the modern era impose its nationality without consent at any time except birth or adoption, transfer of territory (or, perhaps, marriage), the IRS averred it wouldn’t impose tax on those who, having citizenship administratively revoked, never thereafter used an attribute of U.S. citizenship.

10. I’m enraged. Having said that, I believe people have the right to choose regardless of what their choices are. The United States Government has been making bad choices for a long time, not to mention the choice our own Canadian Government made when they subordinated our sovereignty to a foreign power. So…this is where I stand:

    I choose not to be a citizen or a citizen for tax-paying purposes of the United States of America. But I choose to love the countryside and most folks there, and the country that my dad went to fight for during WWII. But when the undertook concerted efforts to colonize countries, like Vietnam and Iraq, and when its national army fired upon and killed its own citizens at Kent State, when many of their police forces disgrace the streets of it cities by killing blacks, and when it (as only the second world government that taxes expats – the first is a dictatorship) decided to attack people’s pocketbook where it really hurts when they have only a birth connection to it, period!, I choose not to be citizen of the United States of America.

    That’s my choice, and I don’t need to file any documents or pay any fees or pay then any money to help them advance their government’s agenda for anything disconcerting. My hope is that 60″s thinking and action returns, en mass.

11. I believe that what all those who are born on American soil should be granted at birth is not American “citizenship” but American “nationality”. I am writing from memory so someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but nationality is what the Samoans, for example, receive at birth in an American territory. They are entitled to an American passport but are not required to file US tax returns.

    I believe passionately that anyone born in America, or any other country on earth, should have the right to return to that country at any time either to visit or to take up residence. It is a basic law of nature which the UN Declaration of Human Rights upholds. This was the relationship with America that I thought I possessed until four years ago when I learned differently.

12. Questions: Why isn’t CBC or other national news networks all over this issue, especially when the Canadian Government subordinated our Canadian sovergnity to the Americans? Why are we not in the streets over this? Anyone? Please?