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Comment by Telemakhos | Hacker News Reader

The fourteenth amendment doesn't say "within the jurisdiction" but "subject to the jurisdiction": if you break a window as a tourist, you expect to be prosecuted because you committed a crime within that jurisdiction, but you do not expect to be conscripted into military service or to pay income tax, because you are not subject to the jurisdiction.

Birth tourism is definitely an issue for conservatives worried about China. Here's a 2019 ICE press release on prosecuting someone who was running a birth tourism ring to benefit Chinese government officials: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/chinese-national-pleads-gu... The right is concerned that Chinese-American dual citizens born in the US but raised in China might, upon reaching adulthood, act with impunity as US-citizen agents of the Chinese Communist Party.

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  > or to pay income tax

dont you have to pay income tax if you stayed and earned money?

[0] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/taxa...

Even better, Chinese anchor babies born in the USA are subject to pay income tax on income they earn in China. It’s not even clear they can get out of it by renouncing their citizenship when they turn 18 to take Chinese citizenship instead (when they have to decide). I think it’s more trouble than it’s worth now.

Sorry, that makes zero sense. Why are you picking conscription into military service or obligation to pay income tax as the defining jurisdiction? Why those two things, and not something else?

Specifically, of those two things you selected: the first would be horrendously problematic as the defining jurisdiction, since it would exclude persons ineligible for conscription (women, disabled persons, etc), and the second wouldn't even have the effect you are suggesting, since persons on non-immigrant visas sometimes _are_ subject to income tax. Heck, I don't even reside in the US, am not a citizen, and I do pay income tax on my RSUs. What gives?

As for the Chinese spy/saboteur/etc: treason will still be treason, and it's not like your country was above internment camps.

What if you're in the US on a work visa, so you do expect to pay income tax but don't expect to be conscripted into military service? What's the correct preposition for that case?

Still "subject to the jurisdiction of". US law doesn't currently have a law allowing them to be conscripted, and it would be very ill-advised to do so and it would cause a lot of diplomatic backlash, but it certainly could pass such a law if it chose to.

So people on a work visa are "subject to", specifically because of two criteria (income tax and conscription) which must both hold, at least hypothetically? What if the US passes a constitutional amendment explicitly saying that foreigners on work visas cannot be conscripted, would that, by removing the hypothetical, have the implicit effect of making such people no longer "subject to" its jurisdiction?

I think your take on this is overly complex and silly.

I think this take is overly complex and silly. If you're subject to the laws, that's that. As an exercise, go read the Federal code and put each law that might potentially be applicable to people on a work visa into a pile. I guarantee that pile will be taller than you are by the time you're done. It will certainly be larger than two random examples.

Yes. You are correct. You completely missed the point of what this subthread is about, but yes. It's clear what "subject to the laws" means to normal people.

The thread was about someone misunderstanding what "subject to the jurisdiction" meant. Someone suggested that it meant subject to US laws including conscription and income tax, another person said "what if the law in question doesn't mandate conscription of foreigners" and then Telemakhos gave a pretty confusing answer to that. At some point you dropped in to make a further confusing and argumentative comment in response to that, so I tried to clear it up. If you were just disagreeing with Telemakhos, then I apologize for misunderstanding.

I hope that's an accurate summary?

> The right is concerned that Chinese-American dual citizens born in the US but raised in China might, upon reaching adulthood, act with impunity as US-citizen agents of the Chinese Communist Party.

The US seems fully committed not to learn from its past. I suppose the expectations are for expulsions and/or west-coast internment camps for Chinese-Americans should there be a hot war between the US and China. It figures, since the MAGA is all for turning back the clock.

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