Posted on 08/03/2010 8:17:59 AM PDT by lbryce
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told The Hill on Monday that Congress “ought to take a look at” changing the 14th Amendment, which gives the children of illegal immigrants a right to U.S. citizenship.
McConnell’s statement signals growing support within the GOP for the controversial idea, which has also recently been touted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
In an interview, McConnell said the 14th Amendment provision should be reconsidered in light of the country’s immigration problem.
McConnell stopped short of echoing Graham’s call for repeal of the amendment.
“I think we ought to take a look at it — hold hearings, listen to the experts on it,” McConnell said. “I haven’t made a final decision about it, but that’s something that we clearly need to look at. Regardless of how you feel about the various aspects of immigration reform, I don’t think anybody thinks that’s something they’re comfortable with.”
During an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Kyl said, “There is a constitutional provision in the 14th Amendment that has been interpreted to provide that, if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen no matter what. … And so the question is, if both parents are here illegally, should there be a reward for their illegal behavior?”
Kyl added that he suggested to Graham that “we should hold some hearings and hear first from the constitutional experts to at least tell us what the state of the law on that proposition is.”
It is unclear when such hearings would occur. Democrats, who control the Senate, set the chamber’s hearing schedule.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Excellent! Thank you for the clarification, ODH. It’s been a while.
No it hasn't. Wong Kim Ark dealt with the children of legal aliens.
The subject of illegal aliens has never come up.
Intentionally. Because their supporters realize what would happen.
Rather transparent isn’t it. This is the big wiener that the Rinos will push for along with increased Border Patrol Agents and mandatory employment verification. In the coming “compromise” for “comprehensive immigration reform” amnesty will pass with provisions for more BP agents but employer verification and birth right citizenship will be dropped.
Finally! For the love of God and all that is Holy, put the requirements of citizenship BACK to the states where it belongs!
That is exactly how it works now. The parent does not get to stay in the US just because they have a US citizen kid. We deport countless illegal parents daily who take their US citizen kids with them.
The problem is in 21 years the kid has a right to petition to have his or her parents, sisters or brothers and any children they may have had out of the country to receive immediate relative status immigrant visas. Immediate relative visas have no annual cap and are a first priority for processing. That is why they call them anchor babies. Its chain immigration with no end and our immigration service’s first priority is “family reunification”.
I was more impressed with his analogy to "birthright citizenship" as equivalent to British press gangs, in that it is a way that the State places a claim of obligation on the part of a person born here but otherwise having no natural loyalty. For example, a child born during an an overflight of American airspace could theoretically be taxed or drafted.
It was a very deep analysis, its like seldom seen in American jurisprudence.
That's not right either. The majority opinion in Ark made no distinction between legal and illegal immigrants - which was a concept that had already been established with the enactment of the Page Act of 1875, some 14 years before Ark was heard and decided.
The Ark opinion, both the majority and dissenting opinion, could have drawn a distinction between the two classifications of immigrants, but didn't. The only exceptions the major laid out was (1) children born to foreign diplomats and (2) children born to enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country's territory.
The central legal argument Gray asserts stipulates these facts...
"The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties were to present for determination the single question stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parent of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative."
While that's not inclusive of illegals, it's certainly not exclusionary either. A future court is either going to narrow or affirm the understanding in Ark, but whatever happens, it will be their call, not Congress.
True, the case was about aliens who had entered the country legally. The USSC has never directly ruled on illegal immigrants per se although in Elk v. Wilkins the plaintiff John Elk was born in the US on a reservation but as a member of an Indian nation was not considered to be an automatic citizen at the time. So that may be considered an illegal immigrant case.
That's why I don't understand how anyone in Congress today cannot get the fact that their own legislating in the Indian Citizenship Act, which came years after Ark affirmed their authority to determine whether whole classes of illegal aliens would qualify to be an automatic citizen or not. Or it could be most likely they do and prefer to keep it political.
the 14th Amendment, which gives the children of illegal immigrants a right to U.S. citizenship.thanks lbryce.
Yes, the states propose the convention, but if you read the clause closely it says that Congress calls the convention. Therefore, what do you do if Congress refuses to call the convention if the states ask for it? What if the Congress delays a convention indefinitely or unreasonably to manipulate election outcomes in the state legislatures?
On another note, we really ought to amend Article V to make the amending process clearer. There are a lot of very gray areas in the Article V amendment process which ought to be be amended to clarify things like how long each state has to complete the ratification of an amendment, whether a state can withdraw its ratification once they've given it as long as the amendment isn't ratified yet, whether a state can change its vote from no to yes. What happens when the US uses the military to compel states to ratify (like in the Civil War which also rigged the state legislatures with the rump legislatures)? Who gets to determine when the ratification has been properly done? What if states are added in the middle of a ratification process, do you use 3/4 of states at the time it was proposed or 3/4 the number of states at the end of the process? etc. All of these are real questions that have come up at some point of US history. The amendment sounds so straight forward when you read Article V, but in reality there are some serious problems. It could use a little clarification.
This is what is known as the elusive Constitutional Crisis. If we look closely at the pertinent excerpt, it says... "...on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention..." emphasis added
I believe the operative word here is "shall". For 230+ years, the Republic has survived because when push really came to shove, we had people that did the right thing. This is always the question - "What happens when, when it matters most, people don't do the right thing". I don't know.
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