Measure would target birthright citizenship

It's not even the right question.

You continue to bat .000 in meaningful interaction with your fellow posters.

The ICJ ruled that the US could not enforce the sentence the court imposed on Medellin because the Mexican Consulate was not notified of his arrest.

That also applies to legitimate tourists as well.

This ruling is not a finding that the court did not have the jurisdiction to try him - it absolutely did - but that the court failed to extend him his full rights under US law.

Well, that sure changes things a bit...I’ll start holding my breath waiting for everyone else to take notice of this rather glaring point.

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.

No doubt this will be interesting. I guess Mexico will have to account for their 50 or more consulates. Both V. Fox and Calderon have claimed the Merxicans illegals to be theirs. They have even printed comic books to aid the illegals crossing the border. Both Mexican presidents claims there are no borders. Are you ready to give up sovereignty? Do you think the Supreme Court will rule in Mexico's favor that there are no borders?

It is clear that illegal aliens are subject to US jurisdiction - otherwise, the US would not be able to enforce its own laws within its own borders.

Any time you go to another country you are subject to their laws.

Since embassy children born here are not US citizens, why are illegal alliens who are under the Mexican or foreign embassy given citizenship? Who is giving the illegals ID? Answer, the Mexican consulate.

Do you think the Supreme Court will rule in Mexico's favor that there are no borders?

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that foreign citizens on US soil who are not here pursuant to the terms of a mutually recognized diplomatic protocol are subject to US jurisdiction.

If they were to reverse course and rule that such individuals are not under US legal jurisdiction, that would be in Mexico's favor.

The SC will stick with settled law.

Any time you go to another country you are subject to their laws.

And no less so if you are born in that country.

Since embassy children born here are not US citizens, why are illegal alliens who are under the Mexican or foreign embassy given citizenship?

(1) Children of diplomats are not citizens pursuant to treaties.

(2) The children of illegal aliens are not covered by these treaties and are therefore subject to US law.

Since embassy children born here are not US citizens, why are illegal alliens who are under the Mexican or foreign embassy given citizenship?

(1) Children of diplomats are not citizens pursuant to treaties.

(2) The children of illegal aliens are not covered by these treaties and are therefore subject to US law.

Bingo.

There is and was a very specific reason for the "subject to" clause, and illegals don't fit it.

I would rather that we do away with citizenship birthright, but let's do it the right way, instead of playing semantic games.

Time to amend the Constitution. Very rarely am I in favor of it, but this case meets the criteria.

You're not supposed to post articles from racist sites like vdare.
Interesting that an anti-immigrationist would be a fervent reader of a white supremacist site.
I also note that you did not provide an original source for that quote. Could it be that racists just made it up?

I wish I could say what the ruling would be. However, I did a search and found this site. Quite interesting.

http://www.usdiplomacy.org/diplomacytoday/law/immunity.php

Diplomatic immunity priviledge is given from the 1961 Vienna Convention. This is not a treaty. A UN thingy, so I don’t have a clue as to what the ruling would be.

It looks like the staff or someone who says they work for the embassy can have a baby here and not be a US citizen. They don’t have to be related to the ambassador.

Can you link to the treaties you are referring to?

ping

Will never fly in the courts. There are people who are legal immigrants, but not citizens. who would not be able to get a birht certificate for children born here legally. Even if the baby could not get citizenship in the U.S., you still need a birth certificate to get a passport from your home country. This would literally be creating people with no home country and a nightmare for the immigration courts to sort out.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling this law would run afoul of the 14th amendment, as it (the amendment) is currently written.

Fear not. The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction" refers only to those who are effectively "American subjects" (a worrying concept on its own) not foreign subjects, it has nothing to do with whether they are WITHIN the jurisdiction of the United States. I refer you to the Bouvier law dictionary, popular at the time the 14th was drafted, approved, and ratified:

SUBJECT, persons, government. An individual member of a nation, who is subject to the laws; this term is used in contradistiction to citizen, which is applied to the same individual when considering his political rights.

2. In monarchical governments, by subject is meant one who owes permanent allegiance to the monarch. Vide Body politic; Greenl. Ev. §286; Phil. & Am. on Ev. 732, n. 1.

It is clear that illegal aliens are subject to US jurisdiction - otherwise, the US would not be able to enforce its own laws within its own borders.

The word "subject" has no such meaning in law. Illegals are foreign subjects WITHIN US jurisdiction. See the post above.

I've been working on this for a while now, so here's the latest revision:

Having researched the 14th Amendment at some length, I have come to develop one serious distaste for it, irrespective of its secret construction, hasty passage, and coerced ratification. From equal protection for fictitious persons to "Selective Incorporation" this one Amendment has done more mischief to the rest of the Constitution than any other change in its history.

This article concerns the now infamous Citizenship Clause as regards supposedly conferring birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens:

Section. 1. 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.

Most people regard this clause as self-explanitory, believing that to be "subject to the jurisdiction," all one has to do is to be within the territory of the United States. Thus they conclude that children of illegal aliens are obviously US citizens.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If I'm driving in Britain, I have to obey their traffic laws because I am WITHIN British jurisdiction. That doesn't make me a British SUBJECT. Now, lest you think there is a difference between that usage of the word "subject" and the one in the Citizenship Clause, let's consult the Bouvier Law Dictionary 1856 edition, as it is the one most commonly used at the time the 14th Amendment was drafted and ratified. In this instance, the contextual usage of "subject" in the definition is exactly the same as that employed in the Citizenship Clause:

SUBJECT, persons, government. An individual member of a nation, who is subject to the laws; this term is used in contradistiction to citizen, which is applied to the same individual when considering his political rights.

2. In monarchical governments, by subject is meant one who owes permanent allegiance to the monarch. Vide Body politic; Greenl. Ev. §286; Phil. & Am. on Ev. 732, n. 1.

Thus the seemingly "obvious" reading of the Citizenship Clause isn't at all correct, simply because illegal aliens are not "subject" to the jurisdiction as defined by term. So given the history of misinterpretation and ambiguity on the subject, perhaps the original intent of the clause does bear closer examination.

As written and ratified, the 14th Amendment was never intended to grant citizenship to the children of foreign subjects, whether they were here legally or not. Senator Jacob Howard, a co-author of the Citizenship Clause offered his interpretation in 1866:

"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.

Note the ambiguity in this statement. This was first confirmed in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the first Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment on record. The author of the majority opinion was a contemporary of those who drafted and debated the Amendment. The following text is from the majority opinion:

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/display.html?terms=Slaughterhouse%20Cases&url=/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0083_0036_ZO.html

Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1872) (USSC+)
Opinions
MILLER, J., Opinion of the Court

"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 first observation we have to make on this clause is that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.

Thus, Senator Howard and Justice Miller recognized three classes of people to whom the 14th Amendment citizenship clause would not apply: foreigners (tourists here temporarily), aliens (those here illegally but who have no intention of leaving), and foreign diplomats (here legally and in a special protected status who will leave upon the expiration of their term).

Returning to the Amendment itself, Section 5 cedes control of implementing its provisions back to Congress, "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.". So, because the Constitution is a limiting document, the wording of the 14th Amendment citizenship clause means that no new categories can be invented outside those in the Amendment, such as children of visiting or resident aliens; i.e., they may not grant birthright citizenship to the children of illegals, nor the equivalent.

Justice Miller's aside in the Slaughterhouse Cases is not the holding in the case, and therefore has no compulsory value as precedent. However, the majority opinion, because it was contemporaneous with the ratification of the 14th Amendment, records the understanding of those who drafted, passed, and ratified the Amendment. It therefore does have value in constructing an originalist interpretation.

Still, Miller's statement is mere dicta, an assertion having little to nothing to do with the case under consideration. Dicta is normally not considered to be equivalent to precedent. Would that such were really true. The fact is that when the Courts want to use it as such, they do. Consider the consequences of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific (118 U.S. 394 (1886)). A headnote, written by the court clerk after the decision and having NOTHING to do with the case, supposedly established equal protection for fictitious persons (corporations), (which may in fact have been (railroad lawyers) Conkling and Bingham’s original intent, but was not the understanding of those ratifying the Amendment). Interestingly, that self same court clerk, Court Reporter J. C. Bancroft Davis, was a corporate socialist, a student of Marx, and had a record of falsifying documents. So to ignore Chief Justice Miller's interpretation in the Slaughterhouse Cases while adhering to a clerk's headnote in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific makes a mockery of jurisprudence, "settled law" notwithstanding.

US v. Wong Kim Ark effectively says that Miller's opinion didn't matter because the majority was going to redefine the phrase, "subject to the jurisdiction," as they saw fit, which is consistent with the behavior of the corporate attorneys who dominated the Supreme Court in those days.

So let's take a look at just who these concurring legal geniuses on the Court really were in US v. Wong Kim Ark:

We have Rufus Peckham, infamous inventor of the now-discredited term, "substantive due process," used to invalidate a state statute regulating the hours of bakery employees.

We have George Shiras, a prominent (drum roll please) railroad lawyer with no prior judicial experience and friend to corporate railroad barons with a rather keen interest in retaining Chinese coolies. Kinda reminds you of something rather more contemporary, doesn't it?

We have Horace Gray, author of the majority opinion, a buddy of Brandeis, Holmes, and other noted court activists and a big fan of paper money.

We have Yalie David Brewer, founder of the American Society of International Law, peace advocate, and judicial activist toward using the court to supersede State laws.

We have Yalie Henry Brown, , author of Plessy v. Ferguson!!!, and a huge fan of the use of Admiralty Law as a regulatory means (even though he hired a substitute to serve in the military for him in the Civil War).

Lovely bunch.

The The dissenting opinion to this travesty was vigorous, a work that rings with predictions of the consequences we see today. It was written by Chief Justice Melville Fuller, a big fan of Thomas Cooley’s Treatise on Constitutional Limitations and a champion of individual property rights. Joining him was John Marshall Harlan, who had the temerity to oppose broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause and opposed Plessy v. Ferguson. (Justice McKenna did not participate as he was newly confirmed.)

Fuller's dissent began with simple logic, which should have been enough to collapse the opposition were they not committed to corrupted ends:

If the conclusion of the majority opinion is correct, then the children of citizens of the United States, who have been born abroad since July 28, 1868, when the amendment was declared ratified, were and are aliens, unless they have or shall, on attaining majority, become citizens by naturalization in the United States; and no statutory provision to the contrary is of any force or effect. And children who are aliens by descent, but born on our soil, are exempted from the exercise of the power to exclude or to expel aliens, or any class of aliens, so often maintained by this court,-an exemption apparently disregarded by the acts in respect of the exclusion of persons of Chinese descent.

It is an admirably clear construction of the modern consequences of the ruling. Chief Justice Fuller goes on with this elegant argument equating birthright citizenship to alien parents with feudalism:

The English common-law rule, which it is insisted was in force after the Declaration of Independence, was that 'every person born within the dominions of the crown, no matter whether of English or of o reign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning in the country, was an English subject; save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England.' Cockb. Nat. 7.

The tie which bound the child to the crown was indissoluble. [169 U.S. 649, 707] The nationality of his parents had no bearing on his nationality. Though born during a temporary stay of a few days, the child was irretrievably a British subject. Hall, Foreign Jur. 15.

The rule was the outcome of the connection in feudalism between the individual and the soil on which he lived, and the allegiance due was that of liege men to their liege lord. It was not local and temporary, as was the obedience to the laws owed by aliens within the dominions of the crown, but permanent and indissoluble, and not to be canceled by any change of time or place or circumstances.

It's pretty strong language for a Supreme Court Justice. He has good reason. Citizenship appertains exclusively to the allegiance of parentage, else the choices and preferences of those parents as legitimately exercised under law, including changing citizenship by naturalization, is not something so easily superseded unless the State has a claim on the baby superceding the allegiances of the parents!!! Allegiances of parentage are not so easily transgressed in law as one might suppose either. Back to the dissenting opinion:

Twiss, in his work on the Law of Nations, says that 'natural allegiance, or the obligation of perpetual obedience to the government of a country, wherein a man may happen to have been born, which he cannot forfeit or cancel or vary by any change of time or place or circumstance, is the creature of civil law, and finds no countenance in the law of nations, as it is in direct conflict with the incontestable rule of that law.' Volume 1, p. 231.

It’s really quite an opinion; I recommend that everyone to read it. Fuller goes on to cite Story, Taney, and any number of opinions from within the Department of State, proving that Gray et al. could in no way honestly be citing historical precedent within the US as regards common law in this instance. He includes citation to the Federal Convention as well, indicating that the issue was raised and disposed in opposition of the majority opinion.

When he’s done with court and general pre-war precedent regarding citizenship, then Fuller looks to the essential precedent to the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed a mere two months before the drafting of the Amendment:

The civil rights act became a law April 9, 1866 (14 Stat. 27, c. 31), and provided 'that all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians [169 U.S. 649, 720] not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.' And this was re-enacted June 22, 1874, in the Revised Statutes (section 1992).

The words 'not subject to any foreign power' do not in themselves refer to mere territorial jurisdiction, for the persons referred to are persons born in the United States. All such persons are undoubtedly subject to the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and yet the act concedes that, nevertheless, they may be subject to the political jurisdiction of a foreign government. In other words, by the terms of the act, all persons born in the United States, and not owing allegiance to any foreign power, are citizens.

That this disparity between the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment exists, is strong indication of perfidy in construction of the latter.

Additionally, citizens of a foreign country are usually expressly prohibited from taking other citizenship without having renounced their native allegiance. It is patently illogical that the standards applied to children would be different than that applied to their parents.

Fuller completed his treatise addressing treaties between China and the US as well.

As to Mr. Howard's oratory in chambers (as opposed to written work), whether it should have included an "OR," frankly, that you find it necessary to make a Constitutional distinction between the children of diplomats and those of invaders and travellers is to render our treaty understandings with those countries and their jurisdiction over their citizens laughable. It is to show NO RESPECT for any other nation on earth and flies in the face of our nation's understanding of equal protection under the law.

My point in all this detail is that the children of LEGAL aliens aren't legitimate 14th Amendment citizens either; in fact the Amendment was intended to preclude that conclusion.

You continue to bat .000 in meaningful interaction with your fellow posters

Beats the hell out of negative averages - which is what outright lies amount to, but that's your gig.

Until we stop paying for the anchor babies, pregnant women will flock here in droves. We had almost 400,000 anchor babies in 2006.

Oh, I think it’s emanating an entirely different penumbra. Clearly this means the children born of already legal citizens. Note that children born of diplomats are not citizens. Why would illegals? Doesn’t make sense. Time to stop this nonsense.

I can see their point. If the anchor is born of illegal parents committing illegal acts then the birth “on american soil” is the result of illegal actions and the birth would not be on american soil if illegalities had not occurred.

Stealing a million dollars and then gifting it to your newborn does not make your newborn a millionaire.

Birthright citizenship does not and was not meant to apply for illegal aliens.

I agree. No discussion necessary for this FReeper. (Just wish my ‘wishes’ were reality on the books.)

"At the age of one minute old, he is wholly indifferent to the blandishments of tourism and employment."

Your interpretation and that of the left, politicians of either stripe with debts to the illegal/enabling industry, and those who think it'll gain points with the legal hispanic community.

Not the intended purpose, not available unless you twist both words and meaning, and, if nothing else, in need of a clarification by either courts or amendment.

I'm pulling for the courts to reassert the original meaning - and to apply it retroactively.