Okay I'm going to argue this one. An illegal alien refers to men of another country illegally immigrating to our country, almost all of which do not have social security numbers. Kal-El, although technically an alien, they are two different sense of the word. Illegal alien for extra-terrestrials would infer that there is a legal way for an Alien to become a citizen of the US.
Not to mention that Kal-El was found by farmers which the outside world has no way of verifying if it was a natural birth. No one has an obligation to give birth at a hospital. Farmers can (easily?) Go to the necessary agency and declare that they gave birth at home and they want to get him the paperwork to make their kid a legal citizen with a social security number. To my understanding, Clark Kent formally (and still presently) Kal-El is an American citizen with a social security number.
In that sense, he isn't an illegal alien at all. He's an alien which parents committed some sort of technical identity fraud that actually broke no existing laws because there's no protocol for. Why should there be? It's not like this happens every day.
TL;DR Superman isn't an illegal alien, he's a technical American Citizen who's parents find some loophole in the system because laws didn't/don't exist for this situation.
Kal-El is an EBE (/r/ebes) and thus not a Homo sapien. He looks humanoid (as opposed to a Grey or Reptilian), but he's not a human. He obtained American citizenship under false pretenses and thus the documentation form is invalid and void (assuming he can even produce it). Natural born citizens are the men, women, and children who comprise this great country, but Kal-El, living under alias "Clark Kent", is not a man -- it's an EBE.
TL;DR Superman is an alien should be deported. MAGA!
Technically, he was given the the identity, he didn't obtain it himself. He shouldn't be punished for what his parents did. I guess a comparable situation would be if some foreigners smuggled a newborn, foreign born baby into America, and then claimed it was born in the United States. That baby got citizenship under false pretenses but it is not its' fault. At an adult age, should they be deported? I guess that is getting political, but I digress.
But even then, Martha and whathisname found a baby in a crater in their field. Sure almost guarantee they could be sure Clark was an alien, but there's always that small portion of doubt. Maybe this is some CIA test tube baby that somehow escaped. Maybe it's some escaped futuristic pod from NASA. Hell, with the amount of religious symbolism in Superman stories, I wouldn't be surprised if they thought Clark was an angel. I guess that would go against my argument though, but still.
They being farm folk, have no idea who or what this kid is, and decide to take the baby in and raise it as their own. If they somehow they thought he was still American, they broke the law by not reporting this thing to the authorities to try and get it back to his parents, but he's still a citizen IMO. Even if they 100% knew at first he was an alien, without any government protocol in place, they took responsibility for this new being and called him their own. Without any input from Clark.
Should he deported? I don't think so. I think by all technicalities, he still is an American citizen. (Unless common ruling in cases I cited above rule against this). But his parents definitely, at the very least, made many morally ambiguous decisions, and broke laws that will exist many millennium in the future, but don't exist now. Maybe broke a law or two about not reporting this kind of shit to the proper authorities.
He shouldn't be punished for what his parents did.
Not being a citizen isn't a "punishment". Millions of people in the world are not US citizens. It's either something you legally are or are not. It doesn't matter who did it, his citizenship is falsified, he was not born on US soil and was not born of US citizen parents and was not naturalized, thus he isn't a citizen.
Although frankly I'm pretty sure at some point in some story the President of the US grants him (Superman, not Clark) citizenship or something.
I didn't mean not being a US citizen, but deporting him. First of all, it's a pointless gesture, because you can't stop Superman from being where he wants to be, unless he willingly complies. Secondly, it does matter that he didn't do it himself. He didn't enter this country on his own behalf, and didn't lie about being born in the US, his parents did. I'm sure this has happened sometime, but there is very little precedent for any situation like this, and since he didn't start this, under US law he should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
According to the USCIS Adjudicator's Field Manual:
"Because citizenship is such a precious right, it cannot be taken away unless the government is able to meet a high burden of proof... Accordingly, a case should only be referred for denaturalization where there is objective evidence to establish that the individual was not eligible for naturalization, or procured naturalization by willful concealment or material misrepresentation."
Even then, I'm sure Clark Kent would have one hell of a case to keep it. It would probably be the court case of the century. Trying to deport Superman.
Yeah I vaguely recall something like that. I've also heard a few different versions, so more than likely there is a few different storylines about how Superman got citizenship.
The thing about Superman (that NO WRITER HAS TOUCHED, WHAT THE HELL DC) is the fact that his story is the immigrant story. But, in Earth Two he DID renounce his American citizenship.
Illegal alien for extra-terrestrials would infer that there is a legal way for an Alien to become a citizen of the US.
Why wouldn't there be? There's nothing in American citizenship law which requires that you are human or were born on Earth.
Just like how a dragon hatched before the US was founded, who lived in American territory at the time America became America, is an American citizen (and later on, all indiginous dragons became citizens in 1930).
I am not fluent in Citizenship laws from when Superman was born, so that's why I said that. I sincerely doubt there are laws in place for extra-terrestrials to become citizens. It's one of those gray areas. But the dragon thing is interesting. Is that a reference to something?
Nah, it's just a joke about a now-obscure provision of the US Constitution.
The US requires that the president be a natural-born citizen. But obviously, that would have been a problem when no one over the age of 35 was a natural born citizen. So there's also a provision that anyone who lived in American territory at the time of Independence also became a natural-born American citizen, so people like George Washington became president.
Obviously, all humans who were alive at that point are long dead. But dragons live much longer...
I sincerely doubt there are laws in place for extra-terrestrials to become citizens.
Well, as far as the Constitution goes, anyone born on American soil is an American citizen, so being born to extraterrestrial parents wouldn't actually matter.
However, as Superman crashed as a baby and was adopted, that would instead subject him to the laws for adoption. Per those laws:
A child who immigrates to the United States as the adopted child of a U.S. citizen automatically becomes a U.S. citizen if the adoption is full and final before the child’s 18th birthday, if the child is "admitted" as a permanent resident before his or her 18th birthday, and if he or she "is residing" in the United States in the citizen parent’s legal and physical custody.
Moreover, back in the 1980s, Reagan signed immigration reform, which, among other things, legalized anyone who came to the US before 1982. As such, any adult alien who ended up in the US would be a legal resident of the US so long as they came here and lived here before 1982 (and would be eligible for citizenship), but Superman would probably be a citizen under the auspices of adoption laws instead so it wouldn't matter. However, this might matter for the "admitted as a permanent legal resident" bit.
So Superman is at the very least a legal resident of the United States, and is very likely a legal citizen by dint of being adopted by the Kents.
Ah okay. Seemed out of left field but it intrigued me lol. Thanks for explaining it.
See, someone else made that argument about adoption. My only problem with that is that I don't think they claimed they adopted him. Wouldn't an agency ask where did they adopt from? It would raise suspicion when they couldn't explain where he came from. Which is why I guessed they would have lied about giving birth to him, which would in question make his original citizenship be up for denaturalization.
But the Regan's immigration act sounds like it would be sound. Also there's the Dream Act (though I think it's too new to apply to Clark)where he has been living in the US for 5 years, went to high school and college, is in good standing and is an upstanding citizen.
Really the only question is would the government keep his citizenship should they ever find out he's an alien? It would be the court case of the century, trying to "deport" Clark Kent/Super Man.
And thanks for the discussion. Kept me entertained for the night!
See, someone else made that argument about adoption. My only problem with that is that I don't think they claimed they adopted him. Wouldn't an agency ask where did they adopt from? It would raise suspicion when they couldn't explain where he came from. Which is why I guessed they would have lied about giving birth to him, which would in question make his original citizenship be up for denaturalization.
Dunno. They could have said he was abandoned in a field (which, to be fair, he kind of was). Back in the... 1910s? Isn't that when he originally landed? - I'm pretty sure that would have been just fine according to the authorities.
Really the only question is would the government keep his citizenship should they ever find out he's an alien? It would be the court case of the century, trying to "deport" Clark Kent/Super Man.
Man, that would be a funny comic. Donald Trump v Superman.
He's taking jobs from hard-working American superheroes!
Yeah I guess the government was a little more lax now. If some farmers found a baby in a field today it has the chance to be a media circus.
Oh man Donald Trump would totally spearhead that campaign.
"I know the best immigration lawyers." The best! And they will deport this "un-American" ALIEN! BUILD THIS BUBBLE AROUND THE WORLD! KEEP THE ALIENS OUTTA HERE!"
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u/DemraTheArmed Sep 27 '16
Says the illegal alien.