Posted on 12/17/2005 11:39:40 AM PST by Founding Father
Alien Birthright Citizenship: A Fable That Lives Through Ignorance
Ever since the subject of Congress taking up Birthright Citizenship have we seen the power of ignorance at work through the MSM. It is difficult to find any editorial or wire story that correctly gives the reader an honest and accurate historical account of the Fourteenth Amendment in regards to children born to foreign parents within the United States. Most often the media presents a fabled and inaccurate account of just what the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment means.
Recent story lines go something like this: "Currently the Constitution says that a person born in this country is an American citizen. That's it. No caveats." The problem with these sort of statements other than being plainly false is that it reinforces a falsehood that has become viewed as a almost certain fact through such false assertions over time.
This is like insisting the sun rotates around the earth while ignoring the body of evidence to the contrary.
During the reconstruction period following the civil war the view on citizenship was that only children born to American parents owing allegiance to no other foreign power could be declared an American Citizen upon birth on U.S. soil. This is exactly the language of the civil rights bill of 1866: "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."
The author of the Fourteenth Amendment, Rep. John A Bingham (OH), responded to the above declaration as follows: "I find no fault with the introductory clause, which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen."
Already before we get to the Fourteenth Amendment Citizenship Clause we have the entire Congress declaring only children born to parents who owe no foreign allegiance shall be citizens. We also have the author of the Fourteenth Amendment declaring this is law of the land. It just gets worst for advocates who want to either believe or, revise history, to support their fable that the Fourteenth Amendment somehow magically makes anyone born in the United States regardless of the allegiance of their parents a natural born citizen.
Sen. Jacob Howard, who wrote the Fourteenth's Citizenship Clause believed the same thing as Bingham as evidenced by his introduction of the clause to the US Senate as follows:
[T]his amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that 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.
Advocates for birthright citizenship for aliens either through ignorance, or deception, attempt to pretend "subject to the jurisdiction" means only one thing: location at time of birth. It does not, and never had such a meaning during the time period in question. The record of law is full of references to jurisdiction that had nothing to do with physical location. Take for example title XXX of 1875, sec 2165 where is states:
[Any] alien who was residing within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States...
Simply being on US soil (limits) does not automatically put you under US jurisdiction like some pro alien advocates would like to believe. Under the common myth of the meaning -- simply being within the limits of a State automatically places an alien under US jurisdiction for Fourteenth Amendment purposes. It does not as Bingham and Howard plainly makes clear as well as laws regarding the subject at the time also make clear.
So than, what exactly did subject to the jurisdiction mean? Sen. Lyman Trumbull, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, framer of the Thirteenth Amendment told us in clear language what the phrase means under the Fourteenth:
[T]he provision is, that 'all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.' That means 'subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.' What do we mean by 'complete jurisdiction thereof?' Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.
Sen. Jacob M. Howard, responded to Trumbull's construction by saying:
[I] concur entirely with the honorable Senator from Illinois [Trumbull], in holding that the word "jurisdiction," as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.
Myths can be difficult to dispose of, and birthright citizenship to aliens is no exception. Pro immigration advocates will refer to the Supreme Court ruling U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark as a desperate attempt to keep the fable alive. The problem with relying on Wong Kim Ark is that it draws zero support from the Fourteenth Amendment. In fact, the ruling had nothing to with the Fourteenth Amendment at all, but everything to do with English Common Law, something the Fourteenth's Citizenship Clause had no connection because it was a virtue of "national law."
There is other significant problems with the Wong Kim Ark ruling other than having no basis in Fourteenth Amendment text, intent and history that will never hold up under review -- and that is how will any court with a straight face attempt to reconcile the Civil Rights bill of 1870. Remember that civil rights bill declared those children born to parents subject to a foreign power cannot be declared United States citizens.
You cannot simply revise he Fourteenth's Citizenship Clause to mean yes, it really was the intent of the Congress to grant citizenship to alien children born on US soil when the same Congress enacted law afterwards that did just the reverse. Try and explain why Congress would pass a Constitutional Amendment that grants citizenship to ANYONE born in the US and then turn around and pass a law that would deny automatic citizenship to aliens? Because you cannot, only leads us back to the to the exact construction of the clause for which it was intended and written to mean.
The Wong Kim Ark ruling is so badly flawed and irrelevant probably lead to the US Supreme Court in 1982 to say they "had never confirmed birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens."
By far the most relevant Supreme Court ruling on the subject to date, and indeed, fully supported by the Fourteenth Amendment itself came in Elk v. Wilkins 112 U.S. 94 (1884), where the court held that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction "requires "direct and immediate allegiance" to the United States, not just physical presence.
If pro immigration groups or individuals want to continue in believing the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to anyone born in the country regardless of their allegiance, fine -- but to continue to insist the Fourteenth Amendment supports their fable is both feeble and a disrespect to American history.
Your argument is not with me but with the framers of the 14th Amendment.
That you do not object to publick misedumacashun is obvious. You are probably a poroduct of it. What gives you the right, citizen or otherwise, to loot the taxpayers of your community so that the National Education Association may brainwash their charges into leftism, however temporary? If you do not object to that, call yourself what you are and what you are is NOT conservative. What you seem to be angrily defending is a system in which American socialism is to benefit American citizens only. What conservatives do is to oppose socialism period.
My attempt was to dispel your notion that everyone that disagrees with you does so in an irrational manner.
I am afraid that there is a 5th column to institute "globalism" in the USA that is becoming larger by the day. They are illegal aliens from third world countries.
Did I lose my job to a Mexican? No.
Do I need a scapegoat for what I percieve as too little in my paycheck? No, I make a decent living. I'm not rich but I manage to live and put a little aside.
I'm not hysteric about illegal immigration but I see a LARGE problem with allowing undocumented illegal aliens to cross our borders, no matter what country they enter from. You have to admit though, the larger problem is with the southern border.
You take great pains to define yourself as not being anti-Mexican or whatever but that is dissolved by your last two paragraphs and the paranoia about terrorists crossing the border from Mexico when they are far more likely to cross from Canada.
How do my last two paragraphs dispel the fact that I'm not anti-hispanic or not anti-Mexican? I fail to see how my concern for a terrorist coming across the southern border makes me anti-hispanic or anti-Mexican.
They are people yearning to contribute to our economy, to become Americans and to reap their share of the earnings. They are not "invaders" whatever you may wish to imagine and however convenient it may seem to squeeze immigrants into a non-fitting frame so that you can make believe that your desire to exclude them is constitutional.
Some want to contribute to our economy, some want to send everything they get from our economy back to their home countries. Some want to become Americans, some do not.
I disagree that this is not an "invasion". Try sending 12 million people from ANY other country into ANY other country and see what they call it.
It puts a strain on resources, local, state, and federal, of many types that shouldn't have to be borne.
We have a "constitutional" avenue for immigration at this time. Why do YOU want to circumvent it?
If you are not disturbed by the levels of socialism strangling our country, by 50 million abortions, by "gay" "marriage", by the utter futility of publick skewels brainwashing kids for socialist and anti-moral schemes, one really wonders why you are so upset at the immigration.
I AM upset by all these things. But the utter numbers of illegal aliens guarantees that all, or at least most, of these things will become worse, not better.
The plain meaning of the 14th amendment has no bearing on stopping illegal aliens from coming across any of our borders. It has bearing on who is, and who is not, a citizen of the United States.
Just because a child is a citizen doesn't mean the parents are legal immigrants.
Until that child is old enough to petition the government to allow the parents to immigrate legally, it may seem cold hearted, only the CHILD is a US citizen.
I agree that some type of a guest worker program is needed, or the current B1-H(?) program needs to be expanded to allow for unskilled labor.
But until we get a handle on who is, and who is not, allowed to enter our country we are slouching toward third world, at least 2nd world, status.
Explaining why the 14th Amendment was not designed to confer citizenship upon anchor babies, or why assimilating millions of unskilled, uneducated, potentially criminal aliens into our labor force-or quite often, allowing them to leech off our social welfare programs-is not a wise policy decision on either a macro or micro level would be pointless, because you are not susceptible to reason and do not ground your belief in rationality.
You have the same mentality as Southern antebellum plantation owners-and other equally clueless Confederates-who felt that they could sustain a modern regional economy upon medieval agrarianism, which was driven primarily by chattel slavery.
No amount of logic will puncture your illusory conviction that turning this country into a replica of our benighted, endemically corrupt third world neighbor-the ambition of so many OBLs such as Tamar Jacoby, the NIF, LULAC and assorted "civil rights" organizations that are attempting to eradicate the notion of an American birth right-is not something to be desired.
It would be akin to arguing with a creationist about natural selection.
I would also suggest that those who come here to have anchor babies are very much in favor of citizenship by birthright.
I note that on this conservative website you are still very upset that the Mexicans may upset your chrished socialist welfare system rather than doing what most conservatives do and seek its abolition.
Rationality does not consist in agreeing with your primal screams. Actually, quite the contrary.
Until the 13th Amendment, slavery was quite constitutional. To make slavery unconstitutional required the late unpleasantness between North and South and the deaths of an awful lot of non-slaves on both sides. The 13th Amendment was the old-fashioned way of correcting constitutional deficiencies by amendment. It was in all the constitutions of 1787 and put there by the Founders. If you want to treat Mexicans differently, you will have to follow the example of the War Between the States in all likelihood to repeal or amend the 14th Amendment Equal Protection clause.
If you are going to keep accusing my ancestors of incest by calling me inbred, you ought to post my family tree to prove it rather than hiding behind your keyboard to avoid the consequences that would follow in, say, a barfight.
We disagree. No animus just disagreement. The Mexicans crossing our borders are much more likely to be social conservatives than the Junior League types or the Planned Barrenhood types.
Suffice it to say, your knowledge of evolutionary biology is just as meager and unimpressive as your makeshift, backwoodsman, correspondence course scholarship in the U.S. Constitution.
I've already pointed out that the "rights" bestowed upon illegal aliens did not exist until well into the 20th century.
The relevant 5-4 decision not occurring until 1982!
The fact that subsequent courts have reaffirmed this pernicious decision based upon the principle of stare decisis doesn't make the original decision any less outrageous.
Have another banana.
To be honest, I could probably have a more intelligent conversation with that Bonobo ape.
You know what those are, don't you?
Just for your edification, I'll tell you.
They're the closest (extant) relatives to humans, with the exception of chimpanzees.
That's why we share a common ancestor, which is a simplified explanation of the evolutionary concept that you evidently failed to comprehend earlier in this thread.
Apparently, some of us have evolved more than others.
I am not familiar with Bonobo apes but then again I don't claim them as relatives because they are not. I will concede that I share ancestry with the lovely young lady on the left but I see no family resemblance between her and Bonobo or whatever its name may be.
Clearly, you are a finished product of publick misedjamikashun. Was Bonobo your principle at John Dewey Public High School or your "science" teacher? You might well have a more intelligent conversation with Bonobo (a match of somewhat equals with the advantage to Bonobo) but would Bonobo experience a more intelligent conversation with you and your ilk than it would with reality-based actual humans????
Some HAVE evolved more than others (assuming falsely that any evolved at all). HUMANS were created in the image and likeness of, well, GOD, by God. Sorry about you guys. Have another banana on Bonobo.
I am not familiar with Bonobo apes but then again I don't claim them as relatives because they are not. I will concede that I share ancestry with the lovely young lady on the left but I see no family or species resemblance between her and Bonobo or whatever its name may be.
Clearly, you are a finished product of publick misedjamikashun. Was Bonobo your principle at John Dewey Public High School or your "science" teacher? You might well have a more intelligent conversation with Bonobo (a match of somewhat equals with the advantage to Bonobo) but would Bonobo experience a more intelligent conversation with you and your ilk than it would with reality-based actual humans????
Some HAVE evolved more than others (assuming falsely that any evolved at all). HUMANS were created in the image and likeness of, well, GOD, by God. Sorry about you guys. Have another banana on Bonobo.
The CONSTITUTION says what it means and means what it says regardless of the SCOTUS track record of intellectual and moral dishonesty. Of course, even SCOTUS gets it right once in a while as it apparently did in angering the border yahoos in 1982.
Gee, I think they used to sing that song in France, Netherlands, Sweeden and a few other European countries that are now beginning to chane a few notes in that tune.
Why don't you just put a sock in it or get on the payroll,. Fox is paying good money for this kind of propaganda, and here you are doing it for free, what kind of capitalist are you?
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