The problem lies where the UDHR doesn't hold to local values. In the US, for example, we have codified the second amendment in our Constitution. Most other nations don't share this belief. In Iran, the stoning of adulterers could be seen as religious expression, though the most of the world doesn't share that view. In short, the UDHR, at least as it exists currently, doesn't allow for heterogeneity. In some cases, that may be clearly right, and in other cases, it may be clearly wrong -- but only from a particular point of view, and only by imposing value judgements... and with value judgements, more often than not, there is no clear, demonstrable answer.

> And don't US constitution and laws also have things in them that apply to all people, period?

I think what you're referring to is the content of the fourteenth amendment. Ironically enough, not a part of the original Constitution or Bill of Rights, but it is there, though it only applies to US citizenry.

    No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
    privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor 
    shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, 
    without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its 
    jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

> though it only applies to US citizenry

Oh? I always read the "any person" as being distinct from "citizens". As in, citizens get "privileges", but everybody gets due process.

And the first thing I just looked at seemed to confirm just that:

http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... (it's a PDF sorry)

> Given this record, it is not surprising that many members of the general public presume that noncitizens do not deserve the same rights as citizens. But the presumption is wrong in many more respects than it is right. While some distinctions between foreign nationals and citizens are normatively justified and consistent with constitutional and international law, most are not. The significance of the citizen/noncitizen distinction is more often presumed than carefully examined. Upon examination, there is far less to the distinction than commonly thought. In particular, foreign nationals are generally entitled to the equal protection of the laws, to political freedoms of speech and association, and to due process requirements of fair procedure where their lives, liberty, or property are at stake.

But of course, rights are presumed to not even exist are even more useless than those that aren't enforced :/

You're not wrong. The states are barred from enacting laws that discriminate against citizenry, and enforcement is barred from punishing anybody without their fifth amendment privileges of due process.

Despite that though, there's nothing to bar the state from enacting a law that discriminates against foreign citizens, and nothing to prevent due process from affecting the punishments ascribed as violation of the law.

For a real-world scenario, the state of California could require non-citizens to provide work visas or other such requirements before allowing them to be employed within the state, whereas (at least my interpretation of the OP's post read) that is otherwise discriminatory. In this context, it is legal, and even accepted practice to discriminate against non-citizens.

In a time when the mayor of New York City has stated (paraphrasing) that the only problem he sees with "stop and frisk" is that too many white people are stopped, and not enough minorities, I don't think it's too far a cry to imagine a scenario in which a law might be written that effectively nullifieis portinos of the Constitution as they pertain to non-citizens.

> But of course, rights are presumed to not even exist are even more useless than those that aren't enforced

Agreed. Further, the idea that the Bill of Rights encompasses the only rights that men may have is equally naive, as is the idea that a right must be codified in a document somewhere in order for it to exist. Our transition from a mindset of "individuals have rights, except where those rights infringe the rights of others" to "individuals have only the rights already codified, and must ask permission for everything else" is, in my opinion, a broken way to interpret our nation's governing documents.

> there's nothing to bar the state from enacting a law that discriminates against foreign citizens

There are, namely constitutional rights. What you said only applies to citizenry doesn't only apply to citizenry. You really should read the pdf. Another snippet:

> the Supreme Court has squarely stated that neither the First Amendment nor the Fifth Amendment "acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens." For more than a century, the Court has recognized that the Equal Protection Clause is "universal in [its] application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to differences of nationality." The Court has repeatedly stated that "the Due Process Clause applies to all 'persons' within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent." When noncitizens, no matter what their status, are tried for crimes, they are entitled to all of the rights that attach to the criminal process, without any distinction based on their nationality.

Maybe we could argue about people outside of the jurisdiction. But it's flat out a common misconception that most of these rights don't apply to non-citizens. When it says persons and people, it means persons and people.

That doesn't disagree with what I've said. I acknowledged your statement, and agreed with it here,

> enforcement is barred from punishing anybody without their fifth amendment privileges of due process.

Ambach v Norwick, for example, discriminates against foreigners from employment as teachers, despite the protections you believe exist.

For what it's worth, I agree with how I think you're saying things ought to be, but in practice, we can and do enact discriminatory laws against those of certain alienage all the time, and it's rare that those claims in court enjoy strict scrutiny, which puts the standard of review in those protections up for debate. So while I agree on how things ought to be, that's a far cry from how they actually are which, to sum up, is to say that we routinely discriminate against aliens, illegal and legal alike, especially in matters of employment, all the time.

This is why I brought up non-codified rights. Most rational people would agree that a "right to work" is in fact a civil right, but it exists nowhere in the Constitution. The Wagner act bears on this to an extent, but in short, it's clearly a right that all people capable of working should enjoy, despite it not having been codified in the Bill of Rights, which means that its interpretation, however obvious, will not enjoy strict scrutiny, and is not even necessarily going to enjoy intermediate scrutiny, by whatever courts happen to be tasked with its interpretation. Rational basis has, regrettably, upheld far too often in those regards, and is indeed the way of the land.

Thanks for clearing that up for me :)

No problem at all. Thanks for the discussion.

Peanuts are neither peas nor nuts, but rather legumes, and despite the use of the word "right" in the UDHR, the document does not actually create any legal restrictions. Also, it has no signatories. It was passed by voice vote, with "yea" votes including the U.S. and other wonderful rights-loving countries like China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Liberia, etc.

Yeah but that still leaves the laws the US gives itself, see other reply.

Of course the U.S. could pass laws or Constitutional amendments limiting how the government can treat foreigners on foreign soil, though even then are questions of enforceability. The executive was designed to be able to exercise all of the powers of the European sovereigns when it came to the world outside the U.S. Meanwhile, the courts are fundamentally domestic institutions. So if Congress created a law banning the President from conducting drone strikes of foreign nationals in Afghanistan, and someone sued the President in federal court to enforce that law, there would be multiple separation of powers problems. First, the law is quite possibly an impermissible impingement by Congress onto the military discretion of the President. Second, even hearing the case would quite possibly be an impermissible impingement by the judiciary into political affairs.