All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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.
--The Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. Constitution
It's probably not a shocker that I'm a liberal person. Still, I always had a healthy respect for the libertarian viewpoint. I thought it was based on principles (e.g., less government, fewer regulations, control of one's reproductive choices, etc.) rather than the virulent fear and hatred that fuels so much of the modern Republican Party.
I even tried to give Senate candidate Rand Paul the benefit of the doubt for his truly idiotic and potentially dangerous statement that private businesses can discriminate based on race.
"He's just being a hardcore libertarian," I thought. "He can't be that racist."
Then Paul let loose with his latest conservative broadside. He said that the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the United States should not be granted citizenship.
With that comment, it's difficult to ignore Paul's implication that, in his opinion, the United States has way too many Latinos. There is no principle here.
Paul, and anyone who agrees with him, has to be willing to ignore the Constitution's unambiguous statement that everyone born here is a citizen. They also have to be eager to overturn decades of court precedents, an action that would require a decision from a monumentally activist judge (one of those guys I thought conservatives hated).
Still, plenty of conservatives have championed the anti-birthright position in recent years, despite the right wing's oft-stated love of the U.S. Constitution.
By the way, here's a study question for all social conservatives: If forced to chose, do you revere the words of the Constitution or the Bible more? As a follow-up, have you read either one?
But back to the topic at hand, which is anchor babies.
Randy Terrill, a Republican state representative in Oklahoma who is trying to get an anti-birthright bill passed, says that in a worst-case scenario, "Children of invading armies would be considered citizens of the U.S."
I must admit that I had never thought of this. In Terrill's grim assessment of our future, invading armies (from some unknown or unnamed country) send brigade after brigade of pregnant soldiers to charge our front lines. Hesitant to fire upon the rampaging moms-to-be, our soldiers let them wobble in and overrun the nation. Support troops, perhaps infantry women in their second trimester, manage to crawl under the barbed wire or hop the fence without putting pressure on their swollen bellies.
Mere months later, the soldiers start giving birth. These pseudo-citizens are then granted citizenship, and the United States falls to the invading hordes. It's truly evil genius.
Now, I've written before about the concept of revoking citizenship upon birth, and I expressed my support for amending the Constitution... as long as we really go for it. That is, let's reject citizenship for everyone born here, whether or not the parent is an undocumented worker or a ninth-generation American. Every child is a legal resident, but can't become a citizen until he or she passes a basic test -- the way naturalized citizens do.
For some reason, this idea has never caught on.
The truth is that we just don't want Maria from Mexico to give birth to a kid inside the California border, then have to call the offspring a citizen. So by all means, let's ignore those sections of the Constitution that we don't like.
But could we try not to pretend that there's anything like principles or consistency on display? They are simply not present in this debate.
1) Born in the USA then you are a citizen, don't deny it.
2, 3) Change citizenship via the Constitution of the United States of America; this then opens the door to what other constitutional changes, and to what and who's agenda ? Not a good idea.
"Possible Solution:"
Don't put the burden on the USA for the welfare of the parents that created a "baby born in the USA". Instead put the monetary burden of the, illegal alien, parents on the country that they came from illegally.
Let the parents stay in the USA and raise the child until he or she is considered of adult age. Through government sanctions make the country from which the illegal aliens, i.e., (the parents) came pay for the parents stay until the child is of age. Thereby a baby is not separated from the parents!
When the child is of legal age the parents would be sent back to their legal homeland unless the country from which they came still wanted to pay the bill for their illegal parents to stay in the USA.
In doing this you do not burden the USA taxpayer with the monetary bill for the illegal parents!
This would also help the USA border patrol as the country from which the illegals were coming would have a financial incentive to secure their own borders.
If the Federal Governing Authorities were to know of a person residing illegally in a given space they would immediately detain that person and deport them. Therefore, the fact that an Alien is residing illegally (legal definition) in a given area confirms in and of itself that said Alien has not been successfully brought not under the Jurisdiction of the Federal Government. Your assumptions regarding jurisdiction are nothing more than a philosophical construct with no more validity than any other philosophical construct.
It is a rather easy question under the law as it stands. If a child is born in the US to a foriegn national the child is considered an American but in many cases is also a citizens of the mother's nation. Until the age of 18 if the mother is repatriated to her home country, in most cases the child can go to. It just involves contacting the embassy of the home nation. As I understand it the child could stay with legal citizen relatives in the US if the parents so desired.
Changing the 14th Amendement would require another Amendment, and Congress can right now barely legislate it's way out of a urine-soaked paper bag. Much less work out something as big as a Constitutional Amendment
We are a country of mongrels. There is no American "race" - nor should there be. We don't even have a unique culture, but rather a conglomeration of cultures that others (immigrants) have brought here which has become the American culture.
I am opposed to the anchor baby phenomenon in principle since most of these parents do not truly want an "American" child but rather wish to use their child's birthright to their advantage. That concept, in and of itself, is abhorrent. Any parent wishing to take advantage of their child's talent, ability, or situation is selfish and unfit. But the children are innocent and should not have to suffer the consequences of selfish parents.
Let's leave this part of the Constitution alone.
And it's not just Latinos that are doing this (although they are in the majority):
"Not only Latin Americans have figured out Uncle Sam’s birthright bonanza. South Koreans have created a birth tourism industry. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2002, Korean tour operators fly Korean mothers into Los Angeles and other American cities, there to give birth —in Korean-owned clinics with Korean staff— to an "American."
http://www.mnforsustain.org/immg_case_against_birthright_citizenship_hamdi.htm
Thanks for the link. Here's another you might like to check out that says much of the same:
http://www.mnforsustain.org/immg_case_against_birthright_citizenship_hamdi.htm
It seems to me with this analysis, even those children born here of parents legally in the country but not yet citizens also do not qualify for birthright citizenship. They would have to apply for citizenship upon reaching their majority just as their parents had to do.
If this is true, then I'm not legally a U.S. citizen but, instead, a citizen of the Netherlands. While my parents were here legally when I was born, they weren't citizens at the time, although eventually they were naturalized.
So maybe it won't take a Constitutional amendment. Perhaps Congress can simply pass a law clarifying that only those born to citizens at the time of birth are automatically U.S. citizens.
This repeal of citizenship of children born on US soil is going NO WHERE.
The phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means they not only have to be born here, but they have to be here legally and not subject to foreign fealty. It does not just mean they have to be here, because that would be redundant. Why have that phrase at all?
An excerpt from the well written From Feudalism to Consent : Rethinking Birthright Citizenship by John Eastman:
The "subject to the jurisdiction" provision must therefore require something in addition to mere birth on U.S. soil. The language of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, from which the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was derived, provides the key to its meaning. The 1866 Act provides: "All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." As this formulation makes clear, any child born on U.S. soil to parents who were temporary visitors to this country and who, as a result of the foreign citizenship of the child's par ents, remained a citizen or subject of the parents' home country was not entitled to claim the birth right citizenship provided by the 1866 Act.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2006/03/From-Feudalism-to-Consent-Rethinking-Birthright-Citizenship
If Americans choose to re-interpret the section of the Fourteenth Amendment that says “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to exclude children born to Illegal Alien parents this would actually bring the USA more closely into alignment with the majority of international law that currently exists in this area. And it would not cause the children of Illegal Aliens residing in the USA to become stateless since jus sanguinis citizenship is almost universally practiced worldwide.
Ironically, the extremely limited nature of jus sanguinis practiced by the USA combined with the extremely generous interpretation of jus soli is quite rare in the world. This combination actually puts the foreign born children of Americans at risk of being stateless.
I am also heartened that conservatives have seized upon one redundant phrase in the 14th amendment in an attempt to undermine it. There is no contradiction between that and how fervently they argued that the whole “well regulated militia” phrase in the 2nd Amendment was completely irrelevant.
In any case, the fact remains that it would take an incredibly activist judge (one of the supposed bad guys) to overturn the many precedents that have upheld this interpretation of the Constitution.
Love seeing Latin phrases on HuffPo, though.
http://www.mnforsustain.org/immg_case_against_birthright_citizenship_hamdi.htm
The phrase is not redundant. It is a well-established doctrine of legal interpretation that legal texts, including the Constitution, are not to be interpreted to create redundancy unless any other interpretation would lead to absurd results. See, e.g., Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., Inc., 513 U.S. 561, 562 (1995) ("this Court will avoid a reading which renders some words altogether redundant"); see also Richard A. Posner, Legal Formalism, Legal Realism, and the Interpretation of Statutes and the Constitution, 37 Case. W. Res. L. Rev. 179 (1989), And yes there is no contradiction between the interpretations of the 2nd and the 14th, as the phrases themselves are different.
Unfortunately you make a valid point about the chances of correction originating from the federal bench or SCOTUS. Even though of course they contradicted themselves on this very issue from the Slaughterhouse Cases.
Have you forgiven Rand Paul yet?
The answer will come back that they revere each equally and each has it's place in America. The caveat is that they want to pick and choose which parts apply at which time.
Leviticus says no gay sex, so that is an absolute.
Leviticus also says no shellfish, no pork and menstruating women have to hide. (Oh, but those were only for health reasons and don't apply anymore)
The 14th Amendment states that anyone born in the US is a citizen (Oh, but that was written only for emancipated slaves, so it does not apply anymore.)
I have never seen people better able to parse words than social and religious conservatives.
But they didn't. So, IMO, it will take a Constitutional amendment to change it. I don't think Congressional legislation will suffice.
The whole anchor babies concept is swollen with racial hatred. Do citizen children of illegal parents complicate the simplistic notion that we should just 'deport them all"? You bet, that's why some conservatives are pushing this.