Reply #72: Because there is no Citizen of the World possibility.

[politicat]

I'll agree with you when I can apply to the UN for a World Citizenship document that will allow me to have a UN passport. Until then, we must have citizenship by birthright.

Right now in several countries, a child is only a citizen if at least one of her parents is a citizen. In some cases, where the parents have been exiled or expelled (for being the wrong race, color, religion, gender, too liberal, too conservative, too whatever) and are living as refugees in a country they were not born in, the only way their child gets ANY citizenship is through right of birth. And if the country where the child is born doesn't recognize birthright as a qualification for citizenship, then the child is without a country. She can't get a passport from anywhere, so she cannot travel to a country that might grant her citizenship. She is likely to be unable to work, not being able to get a work permit. Is this what you want? A permanent class of people we can't get rid of because we have no where to send them, and can't employ because they don't have a legal status?

There is no international documentation that allows a person to be excused from the claiming a country rationale that every nation on the planet uses. So we need a change to international law. Good luck. And until then, the fact that my parents happened to be born in this country gives me no more rights than my peer whose parents were born in Vietnam and had her six weeks after they got off the boat in San Diego. We are both citizens.

If we have to mess with the Constitution, there are better things to change.