Pedro Gerson

things are getting shaky in atlanta @ShakyKneesFest

.@JoshuaSteinman has submitted a national security-related amicus brief in the pending birthright citizenship case before SCOTUS. This is a critical angle that has gone largely ignored in discussion of the case. He writes in part: "With a round-trip plane ticket, a malign actor can send an expecting mother to the United States, receive mother and baby on return, indoctrinate and train the child, and then send the individual back to the United States to engage in espionage activity. That mechanism, for instance, stymies major advances in digital surveillance and biometric technologies that make it harder for undercover agents to remain anonymous and operate in the target country under a false identity." "...Thus, with an extremely modest financial investment and the passage of time, a foreign adversary can use geographically derived birthright citizenship to create a nearly undetectable human intelligence asset with no bonds of affection for his country of birth and carte blanche access to the United States. And as the example of Russia’s 'Illegals Program' shows, malign foreign actors are perfectly willing to make such long-term plays."