By your definition, they're rights of citizens. By the definition used in American law (see, e.g., 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983), under which this suit was brought, they are the rights of "persons."
Civil specifically means "of or proper to a citizen."
The word is only used in the U.S. Constitution to refer to Civil Offices, i.e., positions in the civilian government, which would require citizenship.
That law states that citizens or persons have the right to sue over the violation any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws; it never says civil rights. I never claims that non-citizens don't have rights that should be protected, just that these rights cannot properly be classified as civil rights.
Isn't "making it so that everyone must earn citizenship" just another type of regulation?
Sure.
By
must earn citizenship, I of course only mean in order to gain citizenship. I don't have a problem with residents of the U.S. choosing never to become citizens.
I never said that I was opposed to all regulation, but I consider regulations granting additional rights to persons on the basis of the circumstances of their birth over which they had no control as opposed to based on their choices and merits to be unjust. The only fair way would be to make attaining citizenship be a contract between the state and each individual applying for citizenship, instead of some nebulous "social contract" to which a party is bound without consent, or where simply not committing treasonous acts is considered tacit consent. For practical purposes the state should limit citizenship to those who have shown themselves capable of making educated decisions over the course the nation should take. For the sake of fairness it should provide the means to attain the needed level of, but not mandate it on anyone. The citizenship of those who have committed egregious crimes should be revoked. It is entirely proper for Congress to set the standards needed for one to become a citizen or for citizenship to be revoked, but standards that give preference to certain people over others on account of happenstance are not good standards.
The first sentence of the 14th amendment would of course have to be revoked in order to implement it in a way I consider to be just. I don't think there would have been any legal issues with my approach (except for the extreme difficulty of getting such a law passed by a population of those who didn't earn their citizenship and think they have a right to it) before this amendment was passed.
