pro_14

The 14th Amendment to t he Constitution was not intended to grant citizenship to the children of people living in our country illegally. Adopted in 1868, this Amendment was specifically designed to address the horrible injustice of slavery by guaranteeing that children born to former slaves would automatically be American citizens

In a June 2010 poll by Rasmussen Reports, 58% of Americans surveyed stated that a child born to an illegal immigrant should not automatically become a U.S. citizen.

Among the most politically charged issues before American citizens is whether we must accept tens of millions of illegal migrants within our sovereign borders and extend citizenship to the offspring of transient aliens who give birth to anchor babies whose allegiance to the U.S. is seen as unrelated to that of the lawbreaking parents by some. Their manipulation of our medical system to gain government recognition and assistance for the illegal migrants’ bloodlines, thereafter, has been a significant contributor to more than a hundred hospitals across the southwest having been forced to close since the mid-90’s. With estimates ranging from nearly 400,000 births to more than a half million annually to mothers who have no legal standing or recognition of any kind before our federal government, the current practice of assigning “birthright citizenship” is contentious, to say the least, and remarkably different from what was intended when Senator Jacob Howard and members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction brought recommendations for the 14th Amendment before the Senate for discussion and debate.

As principal author of the Citizenship Clause, Senator Howard, attempted to address not only the post Civil-War issue of citizenship and rights for slaves in the 14th Amendment, but included wording meant to withhold assignment of comparable rights to offspring of non-citizens given birth on U.S. soil. In 1866, Sen. Howard clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by stating:

"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. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country."

The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was intended to exclude American-born persons from automatic citizenship whose allegiance to the United States was not complete. With illegal aliens who are unlawfully in the United States, their native country has a claim of allegiance on the child. Thus, the completeness of their allegiance to the United States is impaired, which therefore precludes automatic citizenship

Since the original intent and correct interpretation of the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause specifies that an illegal alien mother is subject to the jurisdiction of her native country, as is her baby, birthright citizenship appears to have come from imaginative Court rulings that reverted back to English common law rather than the Amendment’s wording or the Authors’ intent. Several Supreme Court rulings during the latter part of the nineteenth century confirmed and supported the original restrictive interpretation of citizenship through the so-called "Slaughter-House cases" [83 US 36 (1873) and 112 US 94 (1884)]13. The Court essentially stated that the status of the parents determines the citizenship of the child. To qualify children for birthright citizenship, based on the 14th Amendment, parents must owe "direct and immediate allegiance" to the U.S. and be "completely subject" to its jurisdiction. In other words, they must be United States citizens.

The 14th amendment to the Constitution provides each baby with a United States citizenship at birth if he is born on the territory of America, even though the parents remained undocumented. This is the reason for which some Republican lawmakers want to revise birth right citizenship, so that the children of illegal immigrants would not immediately receive a citizenship. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 340,000 babies of the 4.3 million born in the United States hospitals in 2008 belonged to illegal immigrant parents, and this makes a total of 4 million citizen currently living in the country and which have illegal immigrant parents. This is the first reliable estimation of annual United States births to illegal immigrants, and ads fire on the already hot debate over the children of illegal immigrants

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution appeared after the Civil War so that the descendants of slaves received United States citizenship. “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”. George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said that the draft of the 14th Amendment mentioned that it is not referring to foreigners or aliens, but the courts have repeatedly ruled that people who are born in the United States are American citizens. The Supreme Court only dealt once with this matter, in 1898, and ruled that citizenship by birth only applies to United States born children of legal immigrants who have yet to become citizens. The United States is one of the few remaining countries that still grants citizenship to all children born on its grounds.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), in a surprisingly radical move on his part, appeared on Fox News on July 28th explaining a new tactic dubbed “drop and leave,” in which undocumented mothers come to the U.S. explicitly to have a child. As a result of this process, the baby would be granted American citizenship, thus providing an “anchor” with which the parents could later use to gain legal residence themselves.

Demographers estimate that by 2050, the nation will no longer have a majority white population with roughly 25 percent of the population Latino, 13 percent African American and another 13-15 percent Asian American. That would leave generously some 45-48 percent of the population defined as non-Hispanic white. Immigration is a heated issue, and surprisingly, in a June 2010 poll by Rasmussen
 * What This Means for the Future **

[]

[]

[]

[]