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ilbegone 03-31-2010 04:06 AM

14th Amendment
 
George Will does a "Book Report" on an essay by Professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school.

Graglia's essay:

Quote:

BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP FOR CHILDREN OF ILLEGAL ALIENS: AN IRRATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/pr...php?id=graglia
Will's column:

Quote:

An argument to be made about immigrant babies and citizenship

By George F. Will
Sunday, March 28, 2010

A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.

To end the practice of "birthright citizenship," all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's first sentence: "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." From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.

A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school, "can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare state." Therefore, "It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry."

Writing in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, Graglia says this irrationality is rooted in a misunderstanding of the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." What was this intended or understood to mean by those who wrote it in 1866 and ratified it in 1868? The authors and ratifiers could not have intended birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants because in 1868 there were and never had been any illegal immigrants because no law ever had restricted immigration.

If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration -- and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration -- is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 begins with language from which the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause is derived: "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." (Emphasis added.) The explicit exclusion of Indians from birthright citizenship was not repeated in the 14th Amendment because it was considered unnecessary. Although Indians were at least partially subject to U.S. jurisdiction, they owed allegiance to their tribes, not the United States. This reasoning -- divided allegiance -- applies equally to exclude the children of resident aliens, legal as well as illegal, from birthright citizenship. Indeed, today's regulations issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Justice stipulate:

"A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States, as a matter of international law, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. That person is not a United States citizen under the 14th Amendment."

Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois was, Graglia writes, one of two "principal authors of the citizenship clauses in 1866 act and the 14th Amendment." He said that "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" meant subject to its "complete" jurisdiction, meaning "not owing allegiance to anybody else." Hence children whose Indian parents had tribal allegiances were excluded from birthright citizenship.

Appropriately, in 1884 the Supreme Court held that children born to Indian parents were not born "subject to" U.S. jurisdiction because, among other reasons, the person so born could not change his status by his "own will without the action or assent of the United States." And "no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent." Graglia says this decision "seemed to establish" that U.S. citizenship is "a consensual relation, requiring the consent of the United States." So: "This would clearly settle the question of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. There cannot be a more total or forceful denial of consent to a person's citizenship than to make the source of that person's presence in the nation illegal."

Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to mothers who are here illegally. Graglia seems to establish that there is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to those whose presence here is "not only without the government's consent but in violation of its law."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...032603077.html
14th Amendment http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/c...n/amendment14/

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 http://www.historycentral.com/docume...rightsact.html

PochoPatriot 03-31-2010 08:04 AM

Interesting thoughts. I thought that it would require a Constitutional amendment to change things to a more sane approach to the anchor baby problem. I am glad I was wrong. I realize that there may be one or two on this and other boards that will say, "I told you so." To them I retort, "Perhaps if you had been less offensive and abrasive in your interactions with me over this issue, then you could have swayed me."

Anyway, one thing that could be a problem with changing the law, is that it could cause an increase of pregnant illegal invaders wanting to drop an anchor baby prior to the change of the law. Therefore, an increased presence at the border would be absolutely necessary.

On other issue, are the liberals that control the public social services at the state and local level. This area must be controlled somehow. This segment of government must be controlled because they will brazenly refuse to enforce the law.

ilbegone 03-31-2010 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PochoPatriot (Post 7498)
Interesting thoughts. I thought that it would require a Constitutional amendment to change things to a more sane approach to the anchor baby problem. I am glad I was wrong. I realize that there may be one or two on this and other boards that will say, "I told you so." To them I retort, "Perhaps if you had been less offensive and abrasive in your interactions with me over this issue, then you could have swayed me."

Anyway, one thing that could be a problem with changing the law, is that it could cause an increase of pregnant illegal invaders wanting to drop an anchor baby prior to the change of the law. Therefore, an increased presence at the border would be absolutely necessary.

On other issue, are the liberals that control the public social services at the state and local level. This area must be controlled somehow. This segment of government must be controlled because they will brazenly refuse to enforce the law.

I didn't think it could be changed - I still think it would be a difficult prospect due to the general thought process concerning the 14th amendment.

Nor do I believe that US citizenship should be stripped from those who have benefited from misinterpretation of the 14th amendment. That would serve only to open a can of worms which would lead to to willy - nilly disenfranchisement of anyone out of favor with the the power to be at the particular moment.

As far as addressing the abuse of social services, there still needs to be a strategy for identifying operative managers who instruct that a blind eye be turned or even active recruitment of illegal aliens engaged in by by low echelon public employees.

Twoller 04-01-2010 08:39 AM

This is great. It could be real progress.

We need to go back and correctly establish that only when the parents are both US citizens and the birth is in the US, only then is the offspring a US citizen.

Once we can set this right, it is only a formality to remove the citizenship of the anchor babies. This is like amnesty. Amnesty does not work because it does not do anything to confront illegal immigration and, in fact, has the opposite effect. Everybody on the other side of the US border wants in before amnesty is posted with the limitations. Where you have amnesty, so also you have people who are unqualified after a certain date.

We cannot set some kind of bounderies for who and who is not a citizen based on birth right. The best that the anchor babies should be able to hope for is that they can line up to be naturalized like anybody else. But meanwhile, no voting at least. Naturalization would be the place to determine exactly who and what we have in terms of anchor babies. Those from English speaking countries would have less of a problem, but anchor babies who grew up with no English would have to be removed.

Patriotic Army Mom 04-01-2010 09:58 AM

Ted Hayes is great on explaining this situation.


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