Thread: Amid immigration debate, DEMS battle GOP over 14th Amendment

The 14th Amendment Was Unconstitutionally Ratified

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/user/polconnet
.

14th Amendment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth ... Background

===========================================

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868 as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could not be citizens of the United States.

Its Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving people (individual and corporate) of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken. This clause has been used to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive rights and procedural rights.

Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause later became the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision which precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in the United States.

The amendment also includes a number of clauses dealing with the Confederacy and its officials.

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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Citizenship and civil rights

Background

Section 1, arguably the most far-reaching section of the Fourteenth Amendment, formally defines citizenship and protects a person's civil and political rights from being abridged or denied by any state. This represented the Congress's overruling of the Dred Scott decision to the extent that decision held black people were not, and could not become, citizens of the United States or enjoy any of the privileges and immunities of citizenship.[1] The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had already granted U.S. citizenship to all persons born in the United States; the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment added this principle into the Constitution to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to be unconstitutional for lack of congressional authority to enact such a law or a future Congress from altering it by a mere majority vote.

This section was also in response to the Black Codes which southern states had passed in the wake of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery in the United States.[2] Those laws attempted to return freed slaves to something like their former condition by, among other things, restricting their movement, forcing them to enter into year-long labor contracts, and by preventing them from suing or testifying in court.[3]

Finally, this section was in response to violence against black people within the southern states. A Joint Committee on Reconstruction found that only a Constitutional amendment could protect the rights and welfare of black people within those states.[4]
[edit] Citizenship Clause
Main article: Citizenship Clause

There are varying interpretations of the original intent of Congress, based on statements made during the congressional debate over the amendment.[5] During the original debate over the amendment Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan—the author of the Citizenship Clause—described the clause as excluding American Indians who maintain their tribal ties, and "persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers." He was supported by other senators, including Edgar Cowan, Reverdy Johnson, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull.[6] Howard further stated the term jurisdiction meant "the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now"[6] and that the United States possessed a "full and complete jurisdiction" over the person described in the amendment.[7][8][6] Other senators, including Senator John Conness,[9] supported the amendment, believing citizenship should cover all children born in the United States.

In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94 (1884), the clause's meaning was tested regarding whether birth in the United States automatically extended national citizenship. The Supreme Court held that Native Americans who voluntarily quit their tribes did not automatically gain national citizenship.[10]

The clause's meaning was tested again in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (189. The Court ruled that children of non-citizen Chinese immigrants possessed national citizenship by being born in United States.[11]

The difference between "legal" and "illegal" immigrants was not clear at the time of the decision of Wong Kim Ark.[12] Wong Kim Ark and subsequent cases did not explicitly decide whether such children are entitled to birthright citizenship via the amendment,[13] but such birthright is generally assumed to be the case.[14] In some cases, the Court has implicitly assumed, or suggested in dicta, that such children are entitled to birthright citizenship: these include Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), and INS v. Rios-Pineda, 471 U.S. 444 (1985).[15][16][17]

Loss of national citizenship is possible only under the following circumstances:

* Fraud in the naturalization process. Technically, this is not loss of citizenship but rather a voiding of the purported naturalization and a declaration that the immigrant never was a United States citizen.
* Voluntary relinquishment of citizenship. This may be accomplished either through renunciation procedures specially established by the State Department or through other actions that demonstrate desire to give up national citizenship.[18]

For much of the country's history, voluntary acquisition or exercise of a foreign citizenship was considered sufficient cause for revocation of national citizenship.[19] This concept was enshrined in a series of treaties between the United States and other countries (the Bancroft Treaties). However, the Supreme Court repudiated this concept in Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), as well as Vance v. Terrazas, 444 U.S. 252 (1980), holding that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment barred the Congress from revoking citizenship.
[edit] Due Process Clause
Main article: Due process

Beginning with Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897), the Court interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as providing substantive protection to private contracts and thus prohibiting a variety of social and economic regulation, under what was referred to as "freedom of contract".[20] Thus, the Court struck down a law decreeing maximum hours for workers in a bakery in Lochner v. New York (1905) and struck down a minimum wage law in Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923). However, the Court did uphold some economic regulation such as state prohibition laws (Mugler v. Kansas), laws declaring maximum hours for mine workers (Holden v. Hardy (189), laws declaring maximum hours for female workers (Muller v. Oregon (190), President Wilson's intervention in a railroad strike (Wilson v. New (1917)), as well as federal laws regulating narcotics (United States v. Doremus (1919)).

The Court repudiated the "freedom of contract" line of cases in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937). In the past forty years it has recognized a number of "fundamental rights" of individuals, such as privacy, which the states can regulate only under narrowly defined circumstances.[20] The Court has also significantly expanded the reach of procedural due process, requiring some sort of hearing before the government may terminate civil service employees, expel a student from public school, or cut off a welfare recipient's benefits.[21][22]

The Court has ruled that in certain circumstances, the Due Process Clause requires a judge to recuse himself on account of concern of there being a conflict of interest. For example, on June 8, 2009, in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., the Court ruled that a justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia had to recuse himself from a case involving a major contributor to his election to that court.[23]

GOP Sen. Jon Kyl Calls For Congressional Hearings to Look Into Denying Citizenship to Anchor Babies……

FACE THE NATION Interview

VIDEO: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6734163n

CBS: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said today that Congress should hold hearings to look into denying citizenship to illegal aliens' children born in the United States, as the fight over immigration widens into the explosive "birthright" issue.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/ ... izens.html

.

Lou Dobbs Discusses ‘Anchor Babies’ With Megyn Kelly, But Defends 14th Amendment

Fox's Megyn Kelly & Lou Dobbs
by Colby Hall

VIDEO: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/lou-dobbs-di ... mmendment/

A lot hay has been made by cable pundits and right of center politician of late, regarding the issue of the 14th Amendment, which essential claims that any child born in the United States is automatically a naturalized citizen, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. Recently Senators Lindsey Graham and John Kyl have considered eliminating birthright citizenship, which is the exact sort of controversy custom-made for cable news programming! Et VoilÃ* – today Fox News host Megyn Kelly and Lou Dobbs discussed this very issue!

When he had his 7PM program on CNN, Dobbs was such a vocal critic of an ineffective illegal immigration, that some even criticized his rhetoric and passion as “jingoistic.â€

If parents are illegal then babies should be illegal.

NO wonder they are getting away with draining our system.

Originally Posted by onetrickydude

If parents are illegal then babies should be illegal.

NO wonder they are getting away with draining our system.

================================

Consider this:

The average illegal alien female births a minimum of four anchor babies.

Those four anchor babies immediately get their social security numbers issued to the (illegal alien) parents.

Are you getting the picture?

False identities, Jobs, cars, houses, businesses all bought or established with social security numbers of anchor babies!!

Originally Posted by HAPPY2BME

Originally Posted by onetrickydude

If parents are illegal then babies should be illegal.

NO wonder they are getting away with draining our system.

================================

Consider this:

The average illegal alien female births a minimum of four anchor babies.

Those four anchor babies immediately get their social security numbers issued to the (illegal alien) parents.

Are you getting the picture?

False identities, Jobs, cars, houses, businesses all bought or established with social security numbers of anchor babies!!

Exactly right!

Originally Posted by HAPPY2BME

Feingold nixes GOP request for hearings into 14th amendment

Republicans may be calling for hearings into revising the 14th amendment, which guarantees citizenship to children of illegal immigrants, but it looks like they're not going to get 'em.

Russ Feingold, who chairs the Constitution Subcommittee, which would conduct the hearings, has "no plans" to allow them to go forward, his spokesman confirms to me.

Article In Entirety Here: http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-208328-0-da ... rasc-.html

.

That being the case then ol Russ needs to be given the boot

The biggest cost to taxpayers from illegal immigration is having to provide the education, health care and feeding of illegals' U.S. born kids. Illegals present themselves freely for taxpayer funded prenatal care and then proceed to deliver a citizen child that they expect Americans to support. There is absolutely no enforcement directed toward deporting these people before they give birth; rather it is a given that the child they are carrying will be born in the U.S., no questions asked. It is critical that this issue be dealt with now.

A costly loophole
By Rep. Gary Miller | Published: 11:59 AM 08/04/2010

A loophole in our nation’s laws is being exploited and consequently costs American taxpayers $5.63 billion annually at the federal level. What is worse, this same loophole costs state and local taxpayers much more. In my home state of California, taxpayers are paying $8.3 billion this year for this ongoing problem. This is at a time when the Golden State has a $20 billion budget shortfall.

So what exactly is costing American taxpayers billions annually? The birthright citizenship loophole.

As originally written, the citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to guarantee citizenship to all freed slaves. However, birthright citizenship has since become an attractive incentive for illegal immigration and birth tourism.

In 2010, approximately 361,000 births in the United States were to illegal immigrant mothers. Currently, there are 3.4 million U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants between the ages of 5-18, which represents over 70 percent of the population of children of illegal aliens. The cost of childbirth and prenatal care is often paid for by American taxpayers, and illegal immigrant parents can and do receive government benefits through their U.S. citizen child.

In addition, the number of U.S. births to non-resident mothers has dramatically risen in recent years. Among the foreigners who have given birth in the United States are “birth tourists,â€