None Dare Call It Amnesty

Remember, too, that because of existing U.S. law, the child can legalize his parents, bring in his siblings, a spouse, and any children of his own, beginning when he hits age 18.

It’s all in this report:

“Birthright Citizenship in the United States: A Global Comparison”
Center for Immigration Studies
http://www.cis.org/birthright-citizenship

As for guestworkers, they will never leave, especially once they start having U.S. citizen babies here. Same for the “Temporary” Protected Status (TPS) aliens.

“Birthright Citizenship in the United States: A Global Comparison”
Center for Immigration Studies
http://www.cis.org/birthright-citizenship

In modern parlance, Senator Howard’s comments were meant to insure that the 14th Amendment did NOT mean that a Saudi Prince and his wife could come over here, have a baby in New York City, have the baby spend the first 40 years of his life split between the madrasses and the harems, and come back here, as an American citizen, and run a multi-billion dollar campaign to become President.

In the first place, one can very plausibly argue that when the senator said that the amendment “will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons,” that he was referring to one class of excluded people born in the United States only, not three– especially since it otherwise makes no sense to list foreigners and aliens as separate groups, since those two words have the identical meaning, in both common parlance and as a matter of law! Otherwise, the senator should have inserted an “or” after “aliens,” to show that he was not viewing them all as a single category of excluded people, but was instead listing three separate categories.

In the second place, only if and when a Constitutional issue is adjudicated, and an argument is put forward that the plain language of the Constitution should be interpreted in some alternate way from how it has always been viewed, would a court even begin to delve into its legislative history for guidance– and, even then, only if the court determined that the language was legally ambiguous. (I had a lesbian in my Employment Discrimination class in law school who argued that all legal proscriptions against such discrimination based upon “sex” should be interpreted to proscribe discrimination based on sexual behavior, rather than merely gender. In the quarter century since, I am unaware of any court that has been willing to entertain reading the word “sex” in such statutes in a way other than how it was obviously intended– i.e., as a noun, rather than as a verb!)

In the third place, the notion that the Constitution is to be interpreted based solely upon its supposed “original intent” is simply one competing theory of Constitutional interpretation. Another would be that of the so-called “living Constitution.” As a liberal document– in the old-fashioned sense of “liberal”– the Constitution was intended to be read liberally in favor of the rights of the people, whom the Founding Fathers considered to be the source of all legitimate government, and yet strictly construed against the government, whose legitimate powers stem solely from grants of authority by the people. A liberal document, in other words, is to be interpreted to fully realize its underlying purpose– in the case of the Constitution, to protect the governed from the depredations of their own government!

In the fourth place, even if one accepts, arguendo, the theory of Constitutional “strict construction based upon original intent,” the notion that that is some self-evident and easily discernible thing is itself problematic, at best. Whose intent is to be strictly construed? The drafter(s) of the language? The members who sponsored it in each house? The members who voted for it in each house? The legislators in the multitude of states who ratified it? The notion that each of those people would have had the same intent as all of those others– overall, let alone as to each clause, phrase and word chosen, passed and ratified– is a fairly ridiculous assertion for almost any substantive Constitutional issue that one may imagine, let alone for the document as a whole.

Again, as I wrote above, the notion that “anchor babies” are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States (and of the respective states in which they are located) is nonsense. Simply claiming that they cannot be because some other country unilaterally claims them as citizens of its own is ridiculous: that country has no jurisdiction over the illegal-alien parents, let alone a child that has never been in that other country. That other country, for instance, may not tax them, may not conscript them into its military, and may not retrieve them, even to face criminal charges, without the permission of the United States government. Furthermore, an argument based on equating foreign citizenship with lack of American jurisdiction also would mean that the American-born children of permanent legal residents would not be citizens– and none of the descendants of such permanently resident non-citizens would be citizens, either, unless their own American-born “foreign” parents had been naturalized prior to the births of their offspring. In fact, those children of permanent legal residents, absent birthright citizenship, would themselves become illegal aliens upon birth!

Original Intent

I don’t think anyone is disputing that birthright citizenship, as it currently stands, is the law. However, it’s the law because of judicial precedent, not because that was the intent of the Congress that drafted the 14th Amendment, much less the framers of the Constitution. Linda Chavez has even gone so far to argue that the enshrinement of birthright citizenship, as it relates to anchor babies, is based upon English common law.

Now, even though American common law has a place in the courts, since when did the common law of England take precedence in a question of Constitutional jurisprudence?

In 1866, Senator Jacob Howard clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by stating:

“Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.

This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.

It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.”
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Just google authors of the 14th amendment, the reason they added in “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is because all babies are subjects of the native countries of their parents. For example, illegal mexican babies are mexican citizens, NOT US, because their parents are citizens of mexico.

Slaves, having been brought here against their will, were not citizens of the US and the 14th amendment was designed to grant EX-Slaves citizenship so that they would not be shipped back to their country of origin.

quote:
Post-Civil War reforms focused on injustices to African Americans. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of native-born Black Americans, whose rights were being denied as recently-freed slaves

http://www.14thamendment.us/birthright_citizenship/original_intent.html