A Natural Born Disaster

A Natural Born Disaster

May 25, 2006

When it comes to the illegal immigration issue you might as well keep singing “the more things change the more they stay the same” until the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is changed,. The President, the MSM and most of Congress is bamboozling the American public with byzantine solutions (that intentionally won’t work) to what should be a simple task...secure our borders; make illegal presence in the country a felony; make the hiring of illegal immigrants a felony for the employer; cease public assistance for illegal immigrants and amend the Fourteenth Amendment.

As long as Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment remains in force, no matter what else is proposed to “solve” the illegal immigration disaster, the law-breakers will still have the protections afforded to the parent(s) of legitimate US citizens. And don’t think those “Open Border” anarchists aren’t keenly aware of this.

According to the latest poll, 90% of Americans think that, “the United States has the right to control its borders and decide who can move to this country and when they can move here”. Yet Washington D.C. keeps taking its marching orders from Mexico City. To paraphrase a quote from the movie Scarface, “...who, where, why and how America grants citizenship is nobody else’s business”.

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment is crucial to the illegal immigration debate. It is the mother of all Anchor babies. By stating that, “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”, the Fourteenth opened the floodgate (and your wallets) to most of the illegal immigrants’ perceived rights.

The intent of the Fourteenth was never to reward invading trespassers with the gift of citizenship for their children.

When the Fourteenth was allegedly ratified in 1868, it is doubtful that that any national leaders could imagine millions of third trimester border invaders cashing in on the American taxpayer. Modern welfare wasn’t born until 1935 and the right to a free public education was (and still is) nowhere to be found in the Constitution...a little thing called States’ Rights.

The first section of the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to protect the rights of former slaves who had been involuntarily thrust upon the American continent. Findlaw explains that “The States were competent...to confer state citizenship upon anyone in their midst, but they could not make the recipient of such status a citizen of the United States. The 'Negro,’ or ‘African race,’ according to the Chief Justice, was ineligible to attain United States citizenship, either from a State or by virtue of birth in the United States”.

Not only was the Fourteenth never intended to confer citizenship on the newborns of wily water-busting mommies sneaking across the border, but the legitimacy of the Fourteenth’s ratification has never fully been accepted.

In 1959, David Lawrence published There is No "Fourteenth Amendment"! in U.S. News & World Report. With regard to the Fourteenth, Lawrence states that, “No such amendment was ever legally ratified by three fourths of the States of the Union as required by the Constitution itself. The so-called "Fourteenth Amendment" was dubiously proclaimed by the Secretary of State on July 20, 1868. The President shared that doubt.”

In the Truth About the 14th Amendment, Thomas J. DiLorenzo believes that “The Fourteenth Amendment has had precisely the effect that its nineteenth-century Republican party supporters intended it to have: it has greatly centralized power in Washington, D.C., and has subjected Americans to the kind of judicial tyranny that Thomas Jefferson warned about when he described federal judges as those who would be constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.” And who can argue with that!

On May 16^th, the President threw a few bones to the American citizenry and then snuck in a stink bomb...”Create a temporary worker program that would match willing workers with employers and require those workers to return to their home countries after a limited period of time” Who does he think he is kidding.

What happens when that it’s time “to return to their home countries” for those “temporary” workers and babies are popping out all over the place. SNAFU...can’t separate American citizen baby from “temporary worker” parents and the American taxpayer gets screwed again. Did Bush really think he could sneak this one past the smell test?

Now, the New York Times is reporting that, “In the Senate, the emerging legislation was toughened up...Senators...disqualified criminals and those who ignored deportation orders from receiving citizenship. They approved 350 miles of border fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers between the United States and Mexico, designated English as the national language and voted to require those seeking citizenship to demonstrate some English proficiency.” No mention about the American born children of “criminals”, “those who ignored deportation orders” or those who do not “demonstrate some English proficiency”. Yet, that same Senate keeps voting to give these “criminals” Social Security benefits.

350 miles of border fencing will do for illegal immigration what being fondled by the TSA did for the War On Terrorism...hire more government bureaucrats and nothing else. Illegal immigrants are like locusts...cut off one crossing and they will just swarm to another. If anybody was really serious, the entire border would be fenced. But that would still be just a half-measure.

As long as the incentive to illegally enter the US remains, people will keep trying to illegally enter the US.

The simple acts of making it a felony to hire an illegal immigrant and removing the Anchor Baby indemnification from the Fourteenth Amendment would solve 95% of the problem in a year.

What is so hard about this quid pro quo...your baby is a citizen only if you are LEGALLY in the US on a PERMANENT basis?

Of course that would put some teeth into the solution which is exactly what the President and Senate are trying not to do.

But what do I know, as Peggy Noonan reminded me...this is just a base opinion from the Conservative base.

Just a little history of Ratification of the 14th. Note, you see that all the Southern States that rejected it (the basis for the claims of it's illegitimacy) did later ratify it.

The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several States by the Thirty-ninth Congress, on the 13th of June, 1866. It was declared, in a certificate of the Secretary of State dated July 28, 1868 to have been ratified by the legislatures of 28 of the 37 States. The dates of ratification were: Connecticut, June 25, 1866; New Hampshire, July 6, 1866; Tennessee, July 19, 1866; New Jersey, September 11, 1866 (subsequently the legislature rescinded its ratification, and on March 24, 1868, readopted its resolution of rescission over the Governor's veto, and on Nov. 12, 1980, expressed support for the amendment); Oregon, September 19, 1866 (and rescinded its ratification on October 15, 1868); Vermont, October 30, 1866; Ohio, January 4, 1867 (and rescinded its ratification on January 15, 1868); New York, January 10, 1867; Kansas, January 11, 1867; Illinois, January 15, 1867; West Virginia, January 16, 1867; Michigan, January 16, 1867; Minnesota, January 16, 1867; Maine, January 19, 1867; Nevada, January 22, 1867; Indiana, January 23, 1867; Missouri, January 25, 1867; Rhode Island, February 7, 1867; Wisconsin, February 7, 1867; Pennsylvania, February 12, 1867; Massachusetts, March 20, 1867; Nebraska, June 15, 1867; Iowa, March 16, 1868; Arkansas, April 6, 1868; Florida, June 9, 1868; North Carolina, July 4, 1868 (after having rejected it on December 14, 1866); Louisiana, July 9, 1868 (after having rejected it on February 6, 1867); South Carolina, July 9, 1868 (after having rejected it on December 20, 1866).

Ratification was completed on July 9, 1868.

The amendment was subsequently ratified by Alabama, July 13, 1868; Georgia, July 21, 1868 (after having rejected it on November 9, 1866); Virginia, October 8, 1869 (after having rejected it on January 9, 1867); Mississippi, January 17, 1870; Texas, February 18, 1870 (after having rejected it on October 27, 1866); Delaware, February 12, 1901 (after having rejected it on February 8, 1867); Maryland, April 4, 1959 (after having rejected it on March 23, 1867); California, May 6, 1959; Kentucky, March 18, 1976 (after having rejected it on January 8, 1867).

You should take any opinion that says the 14th Amendment isn't legitimate with a grain of salt. While initially it was not ratified by all States (because of the Civil War)- the basis for the argument against the 14th Amendment, most analysis fail to realize (or hide) that after the Civil War, those States that didn't ratify it initially, did so.
This is still argued by those who don't think the 'Union' installed governments in these States was legitimate.

It is not as simplistic as you make it sound. First of all the fact that the Congress submitted the 14th amendment to the Southern states shows that they were considered states at the time the 14th was submitted to them. Constitutional amendments afterall may only be ratified by states. (The Congress had also submitted the 13th and counted the southern states ratifications which was willingly ratified without the heavy handed tactics used to secure the 14th amendments ratification). Second of all the fact that the Construction Acts deprived these same states of any representation in the Congress until they ratified the amendment is an inherent violation of republican principles. To place states under martial law and deprive them of representation AFTER they have been declared by the President to be full fledged operational states again is dubious. The Supreme Court also later declared that the states were full members states and had never left the union in Texas v White (1869). So how can Congress unilaterally dissolve state legislatures and militarily install new unrepresentative legislatures? Doesn't that go against the very ideals of republicanism?

Also several of the northern states were appalled at the heavy handed tactics of the ratification process and subsequently rescinded their ratifications before the amendment was ratified. Without those ratifications even with the questionably legal ratifications of the Southern states, the Secretary of State declared that the amendment could not be ratified. The Congress then ordered the Secretary to ignore the will of the rescinding legislatures and count them as ratifying states anyway. The ratification history of the 14th amendment is unorthodox at best and hence carries questions of its legitimacy which have not yet been completely resolved. In fact, some of the methods used in securing the 14ths ratification have set a precedent which could potentially result in the use of military occupation as a method to secure ratification of a constitutional amendment, an idea that suggests that it is not the constitution, but the the army that makes the law legal.

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