Posted by
Defend America on Sunday, March 28, 2010 12:59:53 PM
An argument to be made about immigrant babies and citizenship
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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032603077.html