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Reconsidering US Immigration Reform: The Temporal Principle of Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2011

Elizabeth F. Cohen
Elizabeth F. Cohen
Affiliation:
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The uncertain political status of America's millions of undocumented immigrants and their children has exposed deep and ongoing disagreement about how US citizenship should be accorded to foreign-born persons. I identify the principle of jus temporis, a law of measured calendrical time, that has worked in concert with jus soli and consent to construct citizenship law since the nation's founding. Jus temporis translates measured durations of time such as “time in residence” or “time worked” into entitlement to rights and status. It creates temporal algorithms in which measured calendrical time plus additional variables (e.g., physical presence, education, or behavior) equals consent to citizenship. I explore recent scholarly references to temporal principles and trace the history of how jus temporis was invoked by the nation's first Supreme Court jurisprudence on citizenship and the first Congressional debates about immigration and naturalization. Scholarly convergence on the principle of jus temporis as well as its originalist pedigree imbue this principle with the potential to resolve contemporary disagreements about the rights and status of foreign-born persons in the US.

Type
Reflections
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 575 - 583
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2011

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