The birthright citizenship fight isn’t quite over
DOJ senior official Colin McDonald issued a department-wide memo directing federal prosecutors to prioritize investigations and criminal charges against people who travel to the United States under false pretenses to give birth. The potential charges include visa fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and wire fraud.
“The Department of Justice will zealously protect the sanctity of United States citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system,” McDonald wrote in the memo, which he posted publicly on social media.
That’s all very well and good when Republicans are in charge. But if Democrats win, faggetaboutit. Of course, that’s true of a lot of things.
In the past, the fraud has worked in this way:
Back in 2019, Chinese national Dongyuan Li ran a company called You Win USA Vacation Services, which helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States to give birth. Li claimed to have served more than 500 customers, charging each between $40,000 and $80,000, and she received $3 million in wire transfers from China over two years. Li coached clients to lie on visa applications and at U.S. consulate interviews in China, claiming a two-week stay while planning to stay up to three months, and trained them to conceal their pregnancies from customs officials. …
You Win USA marketed the service by promising children “13 years of free education,” “less pollution,” “an easier way for the whole family to immigrate to the United States,” and “priority for jobs in U.S. government, public companies, and large corporations.” Citizenship as a premium package, complete with step-by-step coaching on how to fool the U.S. government.
Li pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2019.
In the future, though, they might become more subtle about it.
During the present administration, the flow of illegal aliens into this country has been much reduced. This helps deal with one aspect of the problem – although again, that will change if Democrats get back in charge.
And then there’s Congress. I don’t think the amendment effort can possibly end up getting 3/4 of the states to support it. but it needs to be tried.
But really, if birth tourism is reduced greatly and if illegal immigration is much reduced as well, that would take care of the bulk of the problem. Thing is, it’s only a temporary fix.
Yesterday’s case is the new Roe. It will take decades to fix, but it eventually will.
I still can’t get over ACB. I think reading the dissents would have caused her to switch her vote. I’m afraid ACB is going to end up like John Paul Stevens or that guy from N.H.
Mrs No Notes was a blank slate?
Another vetting fail?
It seems to me it used to be that consular officials were more like bankers lending money: the default response was always “no,” unless the borrower could prove that they had the ability (and the good character) to repay the money borrowed.
Nowadays those same consular officials view their jobs more as that of a customer service representative, or worse, like loan officers during the lead up to the 2008/2009 mortgage meltdown, being pressured from up above not to say “no,” as long as the borrower had a pulse. Not coincidentally, back then the government was pressuring lending institutions to especially make loans to favored minority constituencies.
Mrs. No Notes was a blank slate?
Another vetting fail?
Neo, read Jeff Childers’ Coffee & Covid column today. He thinks all signs point to Congress being able to pass a law defining “jurisdiction “ in a way that appeases 5 votes on SCOTUS.
Sounds plausible to me, and passing Save America Act would also be very useful.
ACB is compromised I believe ,but it always seemed odd she had to go to Haiti to adopt black kids,, have we run out of American black adoptees ?
It might be a self-healing problem. If the Democrat Socialists win the midterms, and finish off the country by winning in 2028, who’s gonna want to come to the U.S. to drop a kid?
Has the assassination attempt on Judge Bret Kavanaugh or the leaking of arguments before a decision last year (?) made Mrs. No Notes fearful of progressive wet workers?
@Cap’n Rusty:If the Democrat Socialists win the midterms, and finish off the country by winning in 2028, who’s gonna want to come to the U.S. to drop a kid?
Pretty much all the same people. Same reason all the seals crowd onto one ice floe, same reason shipwreck survivors swamp the lifeboats. There is a deal of ruin in a nation, and ours is still one of the highest above water. However crappy the US is at that point it will be better than where they were.
Cornhead: The guy from NH was David Souter, nominated by Bush Sr.
And I just assumed he was Associate Justice Voldermort.
At least Souter left the SCOTUS. But then RBG did the country a favor of hanging around until The Great Orange Whale arrived, an unintended consequence when The Hildabeast lost.
The Lightbringer was denied his legacy.
And FJB has his legacy in Ketanji Brown Jackson, a dim bulb in a black robe.
It is a sad state when a point of anxiety is whether Kagan, Soramayor, Roberts, or one of the decent justices will leave the court first.
How is the DSA going to “finish off” the country. Most of what they want is total fantasy. Kindergarten stuff. Children playing sim city. Arrogant poorly educated miserable people who haven’t the slightest clue.
DSA: We think America is irredeemable, support seizing the means of production, want to abolish police/prisons, and plan to destroy the entire societal structure to redistribute wealth.
Red-pilled normies: We will kill you all.
Well if the DSA can free the extremely violent offenders and not incarcerate the violent criminals they will have their own cadre of violent shock troops to take the “revolution” to the normies and to cow the “undecideds.” Those who don’t care and just want to be left alone.
Of course the DSA may find
the violent criminals may turn on them, a tragic case of deserved hubris.
The Soviets used the violent criminals in the gulag to control the other zeks IIRC.
The extremely violent criminals will be killed without trial or mercy. See Bonnie and Clyde. Unlike commie roosha, Americans are armed to the teeth. Plenty of people in this country can introduce you to Mr. .338 Lapua at 1000 yards plus. I once had a mild mannered project manager that revealed to me that she and her husband had a .50 Barrett rifle. I immediately thought of Bert and Heather Gummer.
The blue states are the first targets to topple, gun control, docile populations, government already on side. Moving beyond the blue states requires flipping the armed forces.
I’m a little tired of the hackery and the attacks against Barrett because she’s ruled against Trumpers preferences a few times. It’s ridiculous.
A justice who voted to overturn Roe is not “going native” in DC. A justice who voted to strike down a ban on conversion therapy is not “going native” in DC. A justice who voted to end racially gerrymandered Congressional districts under the VRA is not “going native” in DC. A justice who voted to end independent execute agencies is not “going native” in DC.
And all of those but one were just in this term.
Trumpism scrambled the perception of what sorts of judicial decisions are “on the right” or “on the left.” If you went back to 2015 and tried to explain to a lawyer or well-informed non-lawyer on the right that in 2026, some on the right would expect “conservative” justices to vote to uphold Trump’s unilateral executive tariffs and to vote to reverse 125+ years of understanding of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, that person would look at you like you had two heads.
Two things. First, it takes a long, long time to change the direction of the judiciary. We’re living right now through the turning on the right that was initiated by Ed Meese and the others who founded of the Federalist Society in the 1980’s. So MAGA is playing now with the justices who were largely formed by a movement spearheaded by Ronald Reagan’s AG who was born in 1931! If you want MAGA justices who vote the way that MAGA wants, you’re going to have to come up with your own judicial philosophy and start educating and forming young lawyers to rule the way you want. If you’re MAGA, you’re playing with someone else’s team right now and expecting the band to play according to your brand new tune. Sorry. That’s not how it works.
Second, MAGA is going to struggle to come up with a MAGA judicial philosophy. What is MAGA judicial philosophy? Traditional conservative judicial philosophy is faithful to the text and original meaning of the Constitution and frowns on judge-made exceptions to and glosses on existing law. MAGA is for what? Reflexively pro-immigration enforcement and deferential to executive power, but only when a Republican is president? Can you see the problem? One of those things is a judicial philosophy and the other is a political agenda. We already have the left whose political philosophy is a lightly-disguised political agenda. The chances of another gaining a majority on SCOTUS are slim and none.
And getting control of National Guard assets in blue states to suppress non urban “blue” subjects first.
Bauxite is tired of hackery? Self loathing has set in.
Except that babies born from non citizens weren’t freed slaves. The 5 just made things up. Why Mrs. No Notes went along Bauxite hasn’t got around to ranting about. But he can rant about MAGA. Typical.
How many ex military in this country? They are no longer under command but know how to do it all. And I’d bet a significant percentage of them still honor their oath to defend the Constitution against enemies both foreign AND domestic. That’s a pretty big army right there.
This may upset some people, but I’m compelled to point out that Roberts and Coney Barrett are both Roman Catholics and both opposed eliminating birthright citizenship as well as supported eliminating the chimeric “constitutional right” to abortion. These positions are consistent with the Pope’s (perhaps not strictly ex cathedra, but still very public) pronouncements on these issues. We are all, to one degree or another, products of the environments in which we dwell, so it seems to me not unexpected to find these two jurists coming down on these issues as they did. I’m pretty sure they hear homilies on these subjects in the churches they attend. It also seems to me that this explains their jurisprudence better than the lame attempt to paint them as “institutionalists,” as the mostly atheist/ignorant “court observers” have done. Before anyone gets the idea that I’m some kind of Know-Nothing bigot, I am the product of a Catholic family and twelve (sixteen, if you count university) years of RC education, so I know a bit about the institution and its adherents. But on the other hand, Kavanaugh, Alito and Thomas were more inclined to follow the Constitution rather than their religion, so who knows? And don’t even ask me about Sotomayor, whose leftist positions are more in line with radical “liberation theology” than traditional Roman Catholicism.
“I’m pretty sure they hear homilies on these subjects in the churches they attend.”
Steve (Retired/Recovering Lawyer) – I’m not sure about the masses that the justices attend in DC, but out in flyover country, the homilies avoid political topics like the plague. I can recall exactly one homily in the last ten years that even hinted at a position on either immigration or abortion. YMMV.
And, frankly, you’re also flirting with anti-Catholic calumny. A retired lawyer surely knows just as well as I do that a conservative legal temperament and philosophy is more than a sufficient explanation for how Barrett and Kavanaugh rule. That’s absolutely no need to insinuate that they are taking orders from the pope. As one who was raised Catholic, you surely know as well as I do how long that particular line has been an anti-Catholic smear.
The case for Roe as a matter of law was somewhere between weak and non-existent. And the case for re-interpreting the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment was no slam dunk under a textualist or originalist point of view. Suggesting that Kavanaugh and Barrett are taking orders from the pope on these cases is just insulting, not to mention factually weak. (I’m sure the Pope wasn’t quite as enthused about how Barrett and Kavanaugh voted in Mullin, for example, and again, that’s just this term.)
We’ve seen plenty of instances over the decades of Republican-appointed judges “evolving” in office (Brennan, Souter, Stevens, Kennedy). We’ve also seen plenty of cases where judges have flaked out for political reasons (e.g., Roberts in Sebelius).
That’s not what we’re seeing here. What we’re seeing here is that MAGA wants political results that conservative judicial philosophy was never going to be able to deliver. And now MAGA is throwing a temper tantrum.
I have no sympathy.
Bauxite, I didn’t read Steve’s comment as “they are taking orders from the Pope.” Rather, I read it as, they live in and therefore consider the mainstream Roman Catholic point-of-view. And, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I worry much more about the atheists.
Bauxite uses MAGA as a straw man. The dissent in this case is THE conservative position. (It happens also to be the MAGA position,)
CC™-R is particularly enraged that President Trump tried to end birth-right citizenship and that people have noticed that Mrs. No Notes is shifty, not a stalwart like Justice Clarence Thomas.
Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Sotomayor are all Roman Catholic. That isn’t the “problem.”
Thanks for your comment, Steve (Retired/recovering lawyer). It’s interesting that seven out of nine justices are Catholic!
Correction:
Roberts is Roman Catholic. Gorsuch is Episcopalian. Brown Jackson is unspecified Protestant. Kagan is Jewish.
So six of nine are Roman Catholic.
No Buddhists, Hindu, Sunni, Shia, Zoroastrians, where is the justice in that? (sarc)
A conservative church in which unlimited abortion is not mentioned in the pulpit more than once in ten years would be unusual.
Democrats/ Socialists get back in charge it will be a wide opening
Chases Eagles, even my little AR15 has a 95% hit rate at 500 meters, let alone the lapua 338. How many tens of millions of those are in citizen hands? Not all on our side, but I’d wager a heavy preponderance.
I don’t see the military as it is currently constituted (i.e. the Trump-Hegseth recruited/promoted military) opposing those of us wishing to fight for our country if necessary.
On the other hand, Obama and Biden were destroying our warrior military in favor of DEI kiss asses so they could be counted on to defend those trying to destroy us.
If it comes to that, and I wouldn’t have thought it possible before Obama’s treachery, it will be a door to door, neighbors against neighbors thing, no B1s involved, sorry Sleepy Joe.