>Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
Any H1B related postings are a tiny fraction of the postings by recruiters and recruitment agencies trying to build up their databases, and companies wanting to look like they’re continuing to grow.
BLS says there are 140,000 of new job postings for sw engs annually. DOL stats show ~120,000 PERM applications (for which job postings are required - they're not required for H1Bs), of which probably only 20% are for software engineers. So 30,000 / 140,000 - ~21%. Pretty small fraction.
I am not a Trump supporter and I didn't vote for him, but the fact is that Biden's BLS numbers were always manipulated to portray the former president as successful. These statistics are unreliable, in addition, the underlying premise of relying on job postings was flawed from the start which was my initial argument.
Take a look at this, the previous administration hired hundreds of thousands of gov workers to inflate the employment numbers.
Doesn't pass the smell test since the chart for government employees clearly includes more than just Federal. The Federal workforce is about 3mm, but that graph shows 23mm [1], so it clearly can't just be Federal employees.
EDIT: here you go, just looking at Federal employees [2]:
Jan 2021: 2.89 million
Jan 2025: 3.02 million
The Federal government added ~130k employees over the four years that Biden was in office, an increase of about 4.4%.
During that exact same period, all private employment went from 121 million to 135 million, an increase of about 11%. So Federal employment grew slower under Biden than private employment did. [3]
Thanks for the additional information. The thing is the Trump administration is about to fire 200k probationary federal employees meaning they were hired within in the last year or so. These numbers don't add up either.
"A probationary employee is often a recent hire to the agency or *a long-serving employee who was moved or promoted into a new position*. They are put on a "probationary" period that typically lasts for one or two years, though it can be longer at some agencies. It's like a trial period during which the worker and their performance are under heightened scrutiny."
Yeah, I know FRED is a legit source, but I have absolutely horrible experiences everytime some internet rando is trying to interpret their charts. Just two random FRED charts with marker ink on them already was sending red flags.
I'm a part of the circus, and I don't think many of these have h1-b code smells to it. Companies just wanna hype up AI or whatever and make less people do more work.
If this has general ghost jobs caught in the crossfire too, that'd be amazing. Just don't waste my time on something you already know doesn't exist.
I mean, civil nuclear is the main topic that drew me to HN (that and cybersec), isn't this about civil nuclear safety? Or did I misread the article? Also, it reads like a Dilbert strip, which is pretty much on-tone with HN.
How is this propaganda? Please explain. The story is factual about what the government is doing and comes from a reputable source, corroborated by other journalists.
Strictly speaking anything can be demonized as propaganda by people that don't want to hear it. I don't love or hate Musk but this seems like a perfectly level-headed assessment of the issues with spending cuts at a federal level.
well, lets see. These events are previously unheard of, and therefore "new", and a "phenomenon" due to their significant impact, which therefore makes them "interesting".
So yeah, it fits.
thanks to Musk, there's about one of these every day, thus the number of HN posts
Here's why I find it hard to accept out of Africa (OOA).
Ancient Fossil Evidence Outside Africa – Fossil remains predating the supposed OOA migration (~60,000 years ago) have been found in China (Dali skull, 260,000 years old), Greece (Apidima 1, 210,000 years old), and the Levant (Misliya jaw, ~177,000 years old), suggesting Homo sapiens or proto-sapiens were present outside Africa long before the mainstream migration timeline.
Genetic Discrepancies – Some non-African populations (e.g., Australo-Melanesians and East Asians) possess archaic DNA from unknown hominins not found in Africans, implying deep regional continuity rather than a complete replacement by recent African migrants.
Multiple Ancestral Lineages – The discovery of distinct ancient hominin populations, such as the Denisovans and Red Deer Cave people, suggests a complex web of interbreeding rather than a single-origin replacement model.
Stone Tool Continuity in Asia – The presence of advanced stone tools in Asia (e.g., at Jwalapuram, India, ~74,000 years ago) suggests technological continuity rather than a disruption expected from an OOA replacement event.
MtDNA & Y-Chromosome Inconsistencies – While mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is often cited in support of OOA, recent studies indicate that some deep-rooted Y-chromosome lineages (e.g., haplogroup D found in Tibetans and Andamanese) show ancient divergence outside Africa, inconsistent with a recent African bottleneck.
Early Human Artifacts in the Americas – Artifacts and footprints in the Americas (e.g., White Sands, ~21,000–23,000 years ago) suggest a much earlier presence of humans, challenging the late migration model and implying deeper population history.
Human evolution and migration were likely far more complex than a single, recent dispersal from Africa. The evidence supports alternative models such as multiregional evolution or earlier, undocumented migrations.
It's been known for a very long time that there were earlier migrations out of Africa, specifically to the Levant. That happened at least a 100k years ago. From all evidence they simply didn't get any farther than that, and eventually died out (some of the same caves where remains were found were later occupied by Neanderthals).
We are of course fully aware of much earlier migrations of pre-Sapiens populations of Erectus and probably others. There's no controversy there, except in believing that these populations were ancestral to the current population.
That Australo-Melanesian and East Asian people possess a small amount of genes from archaic populations is also not controversial. They have genes from Denisovans, no issue there, most people outside of Africa also have a little Neanderthal DNA. There also seems to be remains of some unknown earlier homo, again that is in no way contradicting an African ancestry (out of Africa). It simply means that we don't know where or when all earlier homo species were.
Exactly when the "final" migration out of Africa happened is still not entirely clear. If it is 60000 (earlier suggestions have been 50k and even earlier, which was proved wrong) of somewhat earlier isn't yet set in stone. That doesn't change the actual pattern.
White Sands and what / when immigration to the Americas happened is in this context extremely late and is really irrelevant.
At this point the main hypothesis is that there was an Out of Africa event, and that the migrating people to some extent interbred with earlier migrations (specifically Neanderthals and Denisovans, and possibly some other yet unknown split from the ancestors of the two latter). That there was an acquisition of those extra genes is something new from the last few decades, but this really has zero to do with supporting a multi-regional hypothesis. If nothing else, the genetic evidence when looking at DNA from people from absolutely any place in the world is so overwhelming that there's no question at all. We even see the pre-migration genetic bottleneck - two people from opposite sides of the world have less genetic variation between them than the genetic variation between two chimpanzees from different sides of a river in a single forest.
>It's been known for a very long time that there were earlier migrations out of Africa, specifically to the Levant.
That is contradicted by the findings below.
Genetic Discrepancies – Some non-African populations (e.g., Australo-Melanesians and East Asians) possess archaic DNA from unknown hominins not found in Africans, implying deep regional continuity rather than a complete replacement by recent African migrants.
Multiple Ancestral Lineages – The discovery of distinct ancient hominin populations, such as the Denisovans and Red Deer Cave people, suggests a complex web of interbreeding rather than a single-origin replacement model.
MtDNA & Y-Chromosome Inconsistencies – While mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is often cited in support of OOA, recent studies indicate that some deep-rooted Y-chromosome lineages (e.g., haplogroup D found in Tibetans and Andamanese) show ancient divergence outside Africa, inconsistent with a recent African bottleneck.
I don't see why the early Levant migration should in any way be contradicted by what you list. As for the list, all of that is consistent with the accepted interbreeding with Neanderthals, Denisovans and possibly other (related or unrelated to N or D) earlier migrants. It's about acquiring some genes from those people, which in no way contradicts Out of Africa and the African bottleneck. How could acquiring some genes from earlier populations be inconsistent with an African bottleneck affecting Sapiens? BTW there were apparently more than one bottleneck, at different times.
The issue isn’t just interbreeding. It’s that the fossil and genetic evidence suggest a far more complex human history than the standard OOA model allows.
If Homo sapiens left Africa ~60,000 years ago, why do we find fossils in China that are 260,000 years old? In Greece we found 210,000 years old fossils, and the Levant at 177,000 years old? These predate the major OOA migration and suggest independent regional evolution.
Non-African populations, especially Australo-Melanesians, carry archaic DNA not found in Africans. Where did that archaic DNA originate? It was not Africa. Again, this shows a regional continuity rather than a simple migration-plus-interbreeding scenario.
If an African bottleneck occurred, why do we see deeply divergent lineages like Y-DNA haplogroup D in Tibetans and Andamanese? These suggest lineages of non-African ancestry survived bottlenecks.
Stone tools in India ~74,000 years ago show no signs of disruption, contradicting the idea that a major migration replaced existing populations.
The OOA model does not fully explain this evidence. A more nuanced model including persistent non-African lineages is the only thing that makes sense.
1 - Is there scientific consensus that there are 260,000 year old Homo Sapiens fossils in China? Other fossils, yes (after all, Erectus and possibly more left Africa nearly two million years ago)
2 - Are you saying that Australo-Melanesians carry DNA which is not just Denisovan and Neanderthal and not that other archaic unknown species suggested? Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA isn't found in Africa either, generally, but that statement of course just means that what makes Neanderthals and Denisovans _different_ from the originating African populations isn't found in Africa. Neanderthals and Denisovans are still considered an "Out of Africa" population.
I can't see anything in what you listed which is different from Out of Africa, plus a little intermixing with earlier migrations (e.g. Neanderthals and Denisovans, and potentially others). That would fully explain why you see some "old" DNA in some populations. It's still Out of Africa, again because 96-98 % of the DNA of any person on Earth is from a (relatively) recent exodus out of Africa. This is still extremely different from the older multi-regional hypotheses.
Exactly, too many people confuse investment (store of value) part of a currency with fungibility (medium of exchange) and debt (standard of deferred payment). Being good at one or even two of these things doesn't necessarily make it good at all three, good currencies balance all three to a greater or lesser degree.
> Exactly, too many people confuse investment (store of value) (...)
The "store of value" trait of money has nothing to do with the investment angle. It literally means value you store. It's the assurance that it retains it's value so to allow you to use it in the future to purchase something just like you could do today.
If the value of your coin only goes up in value, why would you use 1 bitcoin now to buy a pizza slice if you can use it 5-10 years from now to buy a house?
That's exactly the problem: People will (rationally!) limit their spending to bare necessities if they expect the currency they have on hand to strongly appreciate over time.
Imagine that, having the option of saving your money for things you really want instead of being forced to spend it on things you don't, or risk lending it out for essentially free to compensate for the continuous fall in value.
There are other ways to encourage spending though, like a wealth tax. Not that I necessarily support it, but that would be the more comprehensive solution to hoarding, since it couldn't be worked around by just exchanging fiat for other assets like gold.
Sure, my point was that there are many reasons someone might spend money today that might be better off saved for the future, however much it may increase in value.
I think crypto proponents in general share this inability to understand the fact that one of the most basic traits of money is stability of it's value, and anything that fails to meet this basic requirement is simply useless as a currency.
Bitcoiners understand it well. They realise that in order to stabilise in value and become a unit of account, it has to grow close to it's ultimate potential as a store of value first. Which in the case of bitcoin is potentially well over $100T market cap.
This is why El Salvador is likely willing to back down in the currency aspect for now and focus onto accumulating and holding bitcoin reserves.
deflation is fine for an economy. inflation is disastrous for an economy. the people in charge of the money printers are trying to keep you confused. don’t buy it.
Not arguing too hard but people do have to spend some money to live regardless… it could be said people are less careful with their money when they feel like it’s losing value, so they spend more and save less. Yes it results in more spending but on what?
I'm not trying to strawman the opposing side, but I always found it ironic that many of the cryptocurrency proponents I talk to think that starting a business is amazing and innovation is important, but also hate inflation, which encourages those two things.
> Not arguing too hard but people do have to spend some money to live regardless…
This isn't about a decision to buy bread and milk for your breakfast. It's about the decision on whether you invest in a grocery store vs let your money sit in a bank. If doing nothing is more profitable than doing something then society as a whole will gravitate towards generating no economic activity. This has disastrous consequences because the majority of people in a society do not have the luxury of having investments to live off their dividends.
> If doing nothing is more profitable than doing something then society as a whole will gravitate towards generating no economic activity.
You're operating off a false premise. Do you think all economic activity would be less profitable than the interest rate offered by deflation?
The whole point of investing in any business is to make a return. Giving businesses competition in the form of deflationary currencies will not eradicate businesses from being formed, and there's no evidence to suggest these businesses will be less profitable than holding a deflationary currency.
We see this in various cryptocurrencies claiming to be deflationary with the concept of 'yield', which shows investing to be a function of their wealth, interest, and expectation of return. Inflation does not need to be in the equation for this type of development.
That 'LOL' comes across as very arrogant for someone who seems to have a tentative grasp at best on what they're commenting on. We have already experienced stagflation which runs counter to a lot of Keynesian ideas about inflation. It turns out it doesn't always encourage spending and employment. Similarly there is no evidence deflation will lead to stagnation of productivity[1]. People will always want to spend more than is needed for survival and doing so in a deflationary environment makes people think harder on how money is spent.
computers have experienced rapid deflation in the previous decades. did that prevent people from buying computers? no, obviously not.
of course you are just trolling ("LOL") and you are incurious to any evidence or argument that contradicts your straight-from-cable-news talking points.
This isn't quite the same. Money that is deflating becomes literally more functionally useful the longer you hold it. Computers stay as functionally useful as you hold them and arguably degrade relative to the software you need to run on them. In your analogy you should be concerned with whether I want to sell my computer (analogous to spending my money). If a computer truly did become more functional with passing time then no, nobody would sell them unless they had to - illustrating the problem.
you're technically correct, yes it isn't exactly the same. good job! for an example that is exactly the same, look at the general monetary deflation in the united states during the majority of the 19th century. I know most people won't, so I used a similar example that everyone is familiar with.
Their argument isn't that it's not "exactly the same" (they were being polite), it's that it's functionally the opposite. And when you imagine a variation in which it's functionally the same, your argument clearly falls apart.
As far as deflation in the 1800s, are you referring to in 1818 after a credit collapse cratered England's economy and then spread to the US and put it into a recession; or maybe the Panic of 1837 which triggered a depression until the mid 1840s?; or do you mean the Panic of 1873 which triggered the Long Depression that lasted until 1899?
Which one of those are good examples we should look to?
The glorious periods of deflation that you're glamorizing are referred to in the historical record as panics and depressions. Because they were very unenjoyable.
It's of course not that bankers put this spin on it to give them an excuse to continuously print money (all the money in fact) out of thin air and charge interest on it.
Remind me, why is the target inflation rate 2-3% again? It couldn't be that it's the amount of money creation they can get away with without devaluing the currency so much that it destabilises into hyperinflation could it?
I'm just having fun - I'm sure I'm completely wrong
> Remind me, why is the target inflation rate 2-3% again?
Because empirically it seems to yield a pretty sustainable mixture of consumption, investment, and savings, while also not risking a wage-price spiral.
You tell me what the target inflation rate should be and point to some moments in history informing that target so I can go read about them.
It should be a negative, just as the value of consumables are over time. But that's not possible in a system heavily indebted and addicted to interest rates under the free market rate (only possible because banks create money effortlessly and hold it artificially low to enable a monopoly on "debt").
Such a policy would quickly collapse the current system as the value of the debt would increase over time instead of decrease, and so instead the banks inflate the value of the currency down to 0 which takes more time for the system to collapse (which fiat currencies always do and always will).
Starting again with a hard money, we would thrive, instead of being enslaved by a system that continuously stealthily, steals the value out of the fruits of our labour (at a rate of ~7% year) and gives it to the bankers and those closest to them.
Who cares? The "economy" is just people buying and selling things. If they choose not to and save instead, that's great. It's called freedom.
It's like saying - "if we have some money that keeps going up in value, we won't need to work anymore and unemployment figures will go up - that's terrible - we must not allow it to happen!"
Right, you'll spend the absolute bare minimum and proactively invest approximately never.
This is bad.
In fact, you'll only ever invest in highly speculative investments because they're the only things that might possibly justify the opportunity cost of your currency just accruing value.
By people in change of money printer, did you mean Giancarlo Devacini, who has printed hundred billion funny tokens in some non-extradition offshore with zero audit, and used those funny tokens to buy other tokens like BTC, ETH and others? Those people? Or he is fine, because you are directly benefiting from that token printer and doesn't care about others being swindled in the process?
Yeah, i really dislike bitcoin, but have to admit, it has been a very profitable investment for a lot of people (and still hasn't completely crashed like expected)...
... although as a form of currency (as opposed to an investment) for El Salvador, it looks like it's a failure
The risk that IMF would be concerned about is that the value of their holdings could go to 0 overnight by a wallet hack, data loss, an unscrupulous government employee, or the world running out of greater fools.
Yeah, that's my theory too on one reason it hasn't fully crashed (meaning "the world running out of greater fools"). Unlike tulip bulbs or the dot.com crash, bitcoin is a world-wide phenomenon so there is large supply of bitcoin buyers. Yeah, even the dot.com crash was done in the highly regulated US stock market.
Also thinking, since it's extremely difficult to regulate, was wondering if some very clever people with huge holdings have formed a cartel and are doing a lot of price manipulation to prevent it from fully collapsing (maybe even during a rise in price, causing it to drop early to prevent a major run up). But that's just a theory.
That is not a currency in the same manner that gold isn't a currency or barrels of oil isn't either. Or in other words, you don't use for buying a coffee or grocery.
Sure that you can always point some exotic and rare exceptions to prove differently but even yourself don't use it on normal daily financial operations, and no, Lightning isn't even bitcoin so please don't argue with that.
There are more things backing up the value rise for that old tech. Just please diversify into other areas so you don't come out empty handed in some years from now.
>I dont know what the future hodls but it’s looking pretty good for bitcoin so far
The future always looks good right before a crash. You really don't want a currency as unstable as bitcoin as your legal ledger. we would have had 2 crashes already in this decade alone: the obvious 2020 dip and the dip in 2023.
All the DOGE/Trump shennaigans + the investigation on the Hawk Tuah coin will probably crash it again late this year.
I don't think DOGE/Trump are real bitcoin advocates. I think they're using it as a financial weapon to exploit its vulnerability to crash and break things they don't want to exist.
What are you talking about? The NIH funded the research through Ecohealth alliance. It was funded from the US and created in the Wuhan lab. We've known the virus was created in a lab and not natural since early 2020.
The furin cleavage site in the virus was synthetic. The peak prosperity guy blew the lid off of this in early 2020. I guess that was a "conspiracy theory" though?
I wouldn't. The wording of the 14th Amendment is ambiguous and was arguably misinterpreted by the courts.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, AND (capitalized for emphasis) subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
If they can get the SCOTUS to reconsider United States v. Wong Kim Ark from 1898 it could go either way - the court is conservative and public sentiment has shifted.
I still think it's extremely unlikely. In other immigration contexts, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" has been interpreted to exclude only diplomats and those not subject to the laws of the U.S. even though they are in the U.S. So children born in the U.S. to diplomats aren't considered citizens at birth.
The same is true for people born into war zones not fully under US control. I still wouldn't write this off. All it takes is a compelling argument for a new interpretation of "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
It's pretty easy to make a compelling argument.
The 14th Amendment was intended to address the citizenship status of freed slaves and their descendants post-Civil War. It was not meant to apply to the children of immigrants, particularly those who were not legally present or had not pledged allegiance to the U.S.
A stricter interpretation of "subject to the jurisdiction." means it should require complete, exclusive allegiance to the U.S., which might not apply to children of undocumented immigrants due to their parents' legal status or nationality.
You could also argue that the current interpretation dilutes national sovereignty by automatically bestowing citizenship without a clear reciprocal pledge of allegiance from the parents.
The fact that children of diplomats do not automatically gain citizenship due to not being "subject to the jurisdiction" in the fullest sense could be expanded to include children of undocumented immigrants, arguing that these parents, too, are outside full U.S. jurisdiction.
Finally, United States v. Wong Kim Ark was decided under different circumstances. The socio-political context has changed. This could be used to justify revisiting the original interpretation.
Are you seriously suggesting that undocumented immigrants are immune from US jurisdiction in some respect? This sounds like a reverse version of the odd legal theories proffered by sovereign citizens as to why they should not be subject to judgements in US courts.
What does “subject to the jurisdiction of” mean? Everyone seems to be equating that with diplomatic immunity, but that seems to arise from the state department’s historical interpretation of the term in determining citizenship of children of foreign diplomats.
Wong Kim Ark doesn’t answer the question, because it doesn’t even try to interpret the term. Instead it assumes that the framers of the 14th amendment meant to incorporate English common law of citizenship. Maybe that’s true, but that’s not what the Court thought the term meant in the Slaughterhouse Cases two decades before that.
Justice Harlan also had a well reasoned dissent in that case, noting that English common law on citizenship arose out of feudalism and wasn’t necessarily an appropriate source on the question.
I think it’s unlikely this will get overturned, but it’s not a frivolous argument.
Wong Kim Ark cites, at length, Marshall's discourse on jurisdiction in Schooner Exchange v McFaddon, which turns entirely on this question. It also notes the language change between the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment, where the revision clarified precisely this issue. It's a frivolous argument. Would you like to put some money on this? I'd give you favorable odds at 7-2, assuming the court composition remains as it is now.
It’s not clear to me that “jurisdiction” is being used in the same context in the 14th amendment as in Schooner Exchange.
Regardless, I wouldn’t call an argument supported by clear dicta in one Supreme Court case and a solid dissent in another “frivolous.” But I’d put the odds of the Supreme Court ruling in Trump’s favor substantially below 10%. You lose 100% of the shots you don’t take, though.
I feel we could usefully keep in mind another observation of Marshall's quoted in Wong Kim Ark, seperate from his writings in Schooner Exchange mentioned above:
"It is a maxim not to be disregarded that general expressions in every opinion are to be taken in connection with the case in which those expressions are used. If they go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is presented for decision. The reason of this maxim is obvious. The question actually before the court* is investigated with care, and considered in its full extent. Other principles which may serve to illustrate it are considered in their relation to the case decided, but their possible bearing on all other cases is seldom completely investigated."
* The question in Slaughterhouse cases being on the topic of whether the 14th Amendment automatically subsumed the legislative authority of states in important respects, rather than the eligibility of children of foreign nationals for US citizenship.
Sure, maybe the Slaughterhouse Cases dicta was just wrong. But maybe there is something in the historical use of “jurisdiction” that sheds more light on what “subject to the jurisdiction” means. I haven’t done the deep dive myself, I’m just unpersuaded by the common law argument in Wong Kim Ark unless that really is all the historical record leaves us to go on.
It's not murky, I just picked the most official source. There's no real enforcement of selective service, except that if you don't sign up for it likely bars from subsequent employment by the Federal government unless you can get a waiver.
In practice, immigrants aren't conscripted during a draft.
We haven't had a draft since the 1970s. It's unclear how many draftees were immigrants back then (and the legal definitions around immigration have changed in the meantime) but historically conscription of immigrants has been the norm, not the exception.
Voting, Jury Service, Employment Authorization, and Driver's licenses.
These seem like things from which undocumented immigrants are excluded (by law!), not immunized. Why you think this is an argument in favor of your legal theory is beyond me.
The correct legal term is "illegal aliens" not "undocumented immigrants".
My argument is that the phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" may be interpreted to mean that individuals must be under the complete, allegiance-owing jurisdiction of the United States, and because they may not be for a host of reasons, the SCOTUS may reevaluate US v Wong Kim Ark and reinterpret the 14th amendment.
There's also this 1866 Congressional document discussing the 14th after it was passed detailing "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". It reads "This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of embassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but it will include every other class of persons." https://x.com/pepesgrandma/status/1057514062899277824/photo/...
> A stricter interpretation of "subject to the jurisdiction." means it should require complete, exclusive allegiance to the U.S., which might not apply to children of undocumented immigrants due to their parents' legal status or nationality.
This would imply that neither jus soli nor jus sanguinis citizenship would be applied to the children of US citizens who hold dual citizenship, that wouldn't fly at all, given that it would leave such folks entirely stateless.
> The socio-political context has changed.
This does not matter to a textualist reading of the constitution, which the majority of members of the current court claim to apply.
> The fact that children of diplomats do not automatically gain citizenship due to not being "subject to the jurisdiction" in the fullest sense could be expanded to include children of undocumented immigrants, arguing that these parents, too, are outside full U.S. jurisdiction.
The counter to this is that undocumented immigrants would be totally outside of the jurisdiction of any US legal enforcement except for deportation. The local police cannot arrest or detain someone who is outside of their jurisdiction. If a parent is outside of the US jurisdiction, they have some equivalent of diplomatic immunity. You can't say "you're under jurisdiction of the US for law enforcement purposes, but not for immigration purposes".
I am not an immigration lawyer, but I am very interested in immigration law and the effort to overturn this precedent in particular, an interest whch goes back more than 15 years; so I have done a lot of reading on this argument.
The whole phrase about 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' refers to the fact that foreign diplomats (and often, their families) are not subject to the jurisdiction of their countries of residence, a concept known as diplomatic immunity. This sometimes leads to people with diplomatic privileges avoiding legal consequences that would otherwise result in fines or custodial sentences, as in this recent case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn
Regular, not-diplomatic people of foreign origin who are in the US are subject to the jurisdiction of US courts like anyone else. I have never found any legal justification for the opposite view other than the intense desire of the proponent for things to be different. Usually people who want to sweep aside this precedent rely on an 18th century book called The Law of Nations by Swiss legal theorist Emer Vattel, which opts for a concept of de jure (naturalized) citizenship rather than jus soli (of the soil) citizenship as exists here and in some other countries. They argue that it was a very popular book in its day and that Washington, Jefferson, and other founders of the US had certainly read it. when asked why they didn't just write this into the Constitution you usually get a hand-wavey answer about how it was so obvious they didn't see any need (at best) or the person just stops responding or gets mad (at worst).
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
> The first observation we have to make on this clause is that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.
As has been noted in other responses to you: Dicta are just that, dicta. Moreover, the Reconstruction-era Slaughterhouse Cases arose in the context of the defeated South's often-violent, century-long attempts to preserve "states' rights" (read: white supremacy). Limiting the reach of the 14th Amendment was one facet of that project; Louisiana's lawyer in the case was a prominent opponent of Reconstruction. The Court's 5-4 judgment has long since been shitcanned [0]; in the modern era it's palpably frivolous to cite its dicta as support.
In any event: Longstanding actual practice has followed the conventional interpretation of "subject to the jurisdiction"; see, e.g., former British prime minister Boris Johnson, who was born in NYC to British citizens and thus had to pay U.S.-citizen taxes until he renounced his citizenship. [1]
Finally, as has also been noted: No sane person would assert with a straight face that a suspected thief, murderer, or unsafe driver was immune from arrest and prosecution in the U.S., merely because s/he happened to be born in the U.S. to undocumented parents and therefore was supposedly not "subject to the jurisdiction."
The Slaughterhouse Cases were decided just five years after the enactment of the 14th amendment, and the judgment is obviously correct and has never been overruled. And the dissent was obviously nuts in suggesting that the 14th amendment protected butchers from state economic regulation.
I'll confess error in my wording above (and it's too late to edit it): The judgment (outcome) was arguably correct, as you say — state governments should indeed be able to do reasonable public-safety regulation.
(Whether Louisiana's action in granting a private monopoly on meat processing was a reasonable way to promote public safety was another question: The Court's opinion focused on the 14th Amendment and federal privileges and immunities vs. those under state law.)
The 5-4 majority's rationale went too far: As the opinion says, the Reconstruction Amendments (13 through 15) were intended to hem in state governments — notably but not exclusively those of the South, which by and large were dominated (often through murderous mob- and militia violence) by white, racist, recent- and still-aspiring enslavers — but the majority left the door too open to the possibility of states'-rights arguments. [0]
It's just the same old bullshit in a new wrapper. Cherry-picked quotes from Congressional debates, a bunch of cases in between the passage of teh amendment and Wong Kim Ark, and then it launches into handwaving with arguments like
The American Revolution was, by its inherent nature and through
its express principles, an effective throwing off of the common
law’s yoke of jus soli and its perpetual allegiance in favor of a
consent-based compact theory of government.
and a page later it's special pleading for Grotius, Emer Vattel, and compact theory. I gave up at that point. Perhaps there's some brilliant new theory buried in the last 1/3 of the article, but if you didn't think it worth reading in detail I'm not inclined to mine it for you!
To be honest, the fact that it's from the Heritage foundation and published in a very conservative journal of law and politics give it a double flavor of polemic rather than scholarship. One can construct eloquent arguments for anything, from reinstating dred Scott to invalidating the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent formation of the USA - and indeed in this age of LLMs I expect legal polemics further proliferate. But when you get down to the actual substantive arguments, this paper strikes me as just another of the 'we wish things were different' type, wishing that the US had built its jurisprudential edifice on a continental rather than a common law substrate. Perhaps if the proponents of this idea invested their efforts in amending the Constitution (or going the Conventional route) they might have more success in building the required consensus.
> To be honest, the fact that it's from the Heritage foundation and published in a very conservative journal of law and politics give it a double flavor of polemic rather than scholarship
I’ll respond to your other point, but 90% of legal academia thinks “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law. They’re wingnuts and kooks too. Nobody has the color of authority here. We gotta reconstruct the correct answer from first principles.
I'm (legitimately) curious: how does one square the concept of not being subject to US jurisdiction for citizenship purposes, with being subject to US jurisdiction for law enforcement purposes?
In all other exceptions to the 14th amendment, either you are dealing with an invading army, or you are dealing with people who have diplomatic immunity, all cases where they are not subject to American Civil law (and law enforcement). So how does the court thread the needle to allow law enforcement to interact with folks who it is claiming are not subject to US jurisdiction?
It’s not obvious to me that “jurisdiction” could only mean “law enforcement jurisdiction” in 1868.
Wong Kim Ark cited Schooner Exchange, which explained that nations have absolute jurisdiction over persons on their territory. It framed the cases you’re talking about, those having diplomatic immunity, as being a waiver of jurisdiction that was customary under international law.
Yep, it's pretty nonsensical. Presumably those that hold the view that children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States are not citizens also hold they view that they are immune to prosecution for crimes by the United States for the same reason, but they don't seem to talk about that much.
It is only ambiguous read in a vacuum. Read in the comtext of the US legal tradition in which it was written and the way the prior English common law tradition was incorporated into that tradition, it is...rather unambiguous. (Most notably, its exactly how the Supreme Court had applied the principles of English common law involved in multiple citizenship cases before the 14th Amendment establishing a uniform Constitutional rule for birthright citizenship was drafted and ratified. )
> If they can get the SCOTUS to reconsider United States v. Wong Kim Ark from 1898 it could go either way.
Sure, if they can get the court to ignore the clear meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the context in which it was written, it can go either way. But Wong Kim Ark isn't like Roe and the line of cases descended from it, its not controversial even within the kind of conservative legal tradition that dominates the court.
The Trump Administration could probably get such a case before the Court if it really wanted to, but even this court I can’t see splitting more favorably to overturning the status quo on this point than 8-1 against.
Before the bonkers immunity decision I would have agreed with this. Since then, though, I don't trust SCOTUS on any decision that involves conservative policy. This may come up sooner than expected; Trump has issued an EO attempting to nullify it: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prot...
There is nothing bonkers about it. Should Obama be subject to prosecution for murder for allowing the bombing of a US citizen in the Middle East? Or should he be immune because he was engaging in an official act as President to protect the US?
Neither, he should not be criminally liable for that, not because he has immunity invented by a Court in clear defiance of the Constitution, but because the act is, in fact, legal pursuant to the 9/11 AUMF.
That the decision is wrong is pretty clear from the Constitution itself: where it intends there to be a Constitutional legal immunity for official acts for Constitutional officers, it explicitly states it (e.g., the speech and debate clause in Article I.) The absence of any such statement for the President and the narrow one provided for members of Congress make it clear that creating a broad Presidential official act immunity ex nihilo for the President is contrary to and an inversion of the Constitutional design, putting a single actor above the law rather than bound by it.
No, you're wrong. No law from Congress can supersede the Constitution and Obama is not criminally liable because of the Constitution, not because of the law you state. You can't create a law that deprives an individual of his constitutional rights.
However, presidential immunity did give Obama the ability to launch a drone strike against him in the name of national security. He could basically execute the individual and was protected because of his presidential immunity.
Immunity is implied by the Constitution because of separation of powers, and it's been a long-held policy that the president has immunity so that he can do his duties without fear of criminal or civil prosecution, and this is a perfect example of this.
The only thing SCOTUS did was make it clear that the President does have immunity when conducting official acts. This was something that was long-held policy but never officially declared until last year.
The president is obviously immune for official acts! You think Georgia should now be able to prosecute Biden for recklessly causing the death of Laken Riley?
It’s not the Supreme Court’s fault that Jack Smith charged Trump based in part on his instructions to his own DOJ. A smart prosecutor would’ve written an indictment based purely on conduct that was obviously unofficial acts, which the Supreme Court held was not protected.
The distinction in the executive order is between "a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident" and everyone else, not just citizen vs. noncitizen or lawful vs. unlawful. As drafted, the children of other lawful immigrants (H-1, J-1, O-1, L-1, etc.) would also not receive birthright citizenship. I've quoted the exact language for the father. The language for the mother is different but seems almost equivalent, excluding "lawful but temporary" status.
I don't expect this to be upheld. Many tech workers will be affected if it somehow is, though.
