Posted on 04/11/2002 7:06:14 AM PDT by SJackson
Last week, the so-called "Second American Taliban" was taken from his wire cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and flown to a brig at the Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia.
Twenty-two-year-old Yasser Esam Hamdi was captured by U.S. troops in the prison uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif, the same location where the first American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, was apprehended. Both were fighting with the enemy.
What makes this latest "American" so intriguing is that he spent almost all his life in the Middle East with his Saudi Arabian parents, and not in the United States. He was born in Baton Rouge, La., while his parents were living there, but he and his family returned to the Middle East when he was three. His supposed American citizenship means that he cannot be retained in Cuba without benefit of a trial by jury and an attorney, with all the trappings of a defense accorded to American citizens.
So what makes him an American?
He is an American only by a great stretch of imagination and a fluke in the American Constitution -- or, worse yet, a misinterpretation of that Constitution.
Common wisdom is that the Constitution states that anyone born here, even if their parents are foreigners merely passing through, is automatically an American citizen. This is supposedly based on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1868 in order to grant citizenship to slaves freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. To accommodate the former slaves, the amendment grants citizenship to those "subject to the jurisdiction thereof of the United States."
When it comes to former slaves, that makes a good deal of sense. But since then, that one phrase has been expanded exponentially by the courts -- probably falsely -- to include anyone born here, even of foreign parents and even if the mother of the child was in the United States illegally when she gave birth!
It is a bizarre interpretation of citizenship, one that exists nowhere in the world except the United States and Canada. Now, an enemy of the United States is using this distorted view of citizenship to ensure himself the full protection of our laws.
But not every scholar or politician is convinced that the interpretation of the law is sound or constitutional. The debate began in another direction -- because of the enormous number of illegal immigrants into San Diego from Mexico who, after giving birth in a county hospital, were allowed to stay here legally because their infant was declared to be an American citizen by virtue of the 14th Amendment.
I agree with you..the purpose of that law no longer exists. We now have Mexican woman crossing the border for the sole pupose of giving birth here and getting the rights of citizenship ..(like medical ,food stamps,welfare etc) for their kids..it is time to close that loophole NOW
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