Thread: 'Anchor Babies' Issue - TIME

'Anchor Babies' Issue: Could Conservatives Change 14th Amendment?

By REYNOLDS HOLDING Reynolds Holding –
Sat Feb 5, 9:15 am ET

It is among the clearest passages in the U.S. Constitution, a single sentence that tells us who shall be a citizen, defines the U.S. as different from most other nations and puts to legal rest a shameful period in American history. With all that going for it, you would think that the first clause of the 14th Amendment had earned the respect of legislators on both the left and, especially, the right - the same people who extol the plain words of the Constitution and the exceptional nature of American law.

But as Representative Steve King of Iowa and conservative legislators from five states recently made clear, you would be wrong. (See TIME's photo-essay "The Border Fence Rises in the Southwest." http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0 ... 06,00.html )

In January, King introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to exclude the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants from the 14th Amendment's guarantee of automatic citizenship. At the same time, state legislators promised to push their own bills to deny those children the benefits of U.S. citizenship. The measures are squarely aimed at those whom many on the right derisively dub "anchor babies": kids who are U.S. citizens from birth simply because their mothers sneaked across the border to have them - or, as one Senator delicately put it, to "drop and leave."

Their alleged motives aside, plenty of undocumented women give birth in the U.S.: 3.8 million have at least one child who is an American citizen, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and in 2008, 73% of kids of illegal immigrants were U.S.-born. As citizens, they are entitled to costly benefits, and that's one reason most countries don't allow birthright citizenship. So no matter how you feel about the issue, there's nothing necessarily nutty about denying automatic citizenship to the children of people who shouldn't be in the country in the first place.

What's nutty is that King and his allies are trying to do that through legislation rather than the far harder method of a constitutional amendment. That approach offends the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment, suggests that the U.S. should simply follow other countries' immigration laws and relies on an argument once used to deny citizenship to African Americans. (See "Arizona's Next Immigration Target: Children of Illegals.")

The 14th Amendment says, "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." Opponents of illegal immigration say kids of undocumented parents aren't covered because they aren't "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S.: they may owe allegiance to their parents' home country and can't gain the privileges of being an American without U.S. permission. No permission, no citizenship. The problem, then, is not with the 14th Amendment but with the courts' misinterpretation of it. A simple law can fix that. (Comment on this story.)

It's a clever argument, but one that history does not support.

America's birthright citizenship derives from the 1608 English case of Robert Calvin, who was born in Scotland just after the Scottish King, James VI, also became the King of England. Calvin wanted to own land in England but couldn't unless he was a subject of England as well as Scotland. The court ruled that he was, because he and Englishmen owed allegiance to the same King. The outcome had a lot to do with James' need to consolidate his kingdom, but the rule became that anyone born on land governed by the King was a British subject - except for children of foreign invaders or diplomats, who were outside British jurisdiction.

(See "Blocking the Border Fence in Texas.")


English and then American courts consistently followed that rule for centuries. But Britain began saying in 1981 that people born there could not automatically become citizens unless at least one parent was already a citizen or permanent resident, and the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1857 that slaves could not be citizens even when born here. The infamous Dred Scott decision rested in part on the idea that the framers of the Constitution had chosen not to make slaves citizens. This idea of choice was clearly contrary to the rule of birthright citizenship, and Congress essentially rejected it through the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and, more definitively, through the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1868.

The Supreme Court resolved any remaining doubts about birthright citizenship - and the 14th Amendment - in the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the U.S. to Chinese parents. Wong was in his 20s when he left his San Francisco home in 1894 to visit China. He tried to return the next year but was denied re-entry to the U.S. because he was "not, under the laws of the state of California and of the United States, a citizen thereof," his mother and father "being Chinese persons, and subjects of the Emperor of China," customs officials said. But the Supreme Court ruled that Wong had in fact acquired American citizenship at birth, and that citizenship had "not been lost or taken away by anything happening since his birth" - namely, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which had strongly limited Chinese immigration into the U.S.

The court went on at length about Calvin's case and British common law and confirmed that the 14th Amendment meant what it said - and what supporters and opponents stated in congressional debates that they believed it said. While residing in the United States, pretty much everyone is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," because they must obey U.S. law. Under the 14th Amendment, the only exceptions are the children of diplomats (who have diplomatic immunity) and invaders and people born on foreign ships or to members of Indian tribes. (Tribes are sovereign nations, and Congress excluded their members' children in a compromise designed to preserve tribal independence.) The justices concluded that the 14th Amendment "affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory ... including all children here born of resident aliens."

The court didn't mention undocumented immigrants, but 84 years later, it held in Plyler v. Doe that the amendment's citizenship clause applied to their American-born children as well as to anyone else "subject to the laws of a state." In 1985 the court again said kids born in the U.S. to undocumented parents were American citizens.

Despite the weight of history and legal precedent, opponents of birthright citizenship seem hell-bent on getting the courts to reconsider the 14th Amendment and put the U.S. in step with most of the world. Only about 30 nations grant automatic citizenship to the children of undocumented parents, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, and no European country does. Most nations assign babies the citizenship of their parents or require illegal immigrants to be longtime residents before their kids can be born citizens. Others simply require government consent - a system with uncomfortable echoes of the Dred Scott decision.

There are lots of options - some that might even curb illegal immigration. But if that's the goal, legislators can do better than pursue policies that prompt costly litigation, rehash debates over slavery and, ultimately, slight the Constitution they claim to revere.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110205/u ... 9204561700

From above:

(See TIME's photo-essay "The Border Fence Rises in the Southwest." http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0 ... 06,00.html )

Some great pictures of the border area.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

The Supreme Court resolved any remaining doubts about birthright citizenship - and the 14th Amendment - in the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the U.S. to Chinese parents. The court went on at length about Calvin's case and British common law and confirmed that the 14th Amendment meant what it said - and what supporters and opponents stated in congressional debates that they believed it said. While residing in the United States, pretty much everyone is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," because they must obey U.S. law.

OK, that's Constitutional Law as interpreted by the Chamber of Commerce.

"And subject to the jurisdiction thereof" must be understood in the context of who is or may become a citizen. We can of course apply our laws to anyone who is on our territory, but incarcerating - or expelling - people who break our laws does not convey citizenship to them. That's because they are citizens of another state and owe their allegiance to that state.

We can see the importance of allegiance to a foreign sovereign by looking at the Oath of Allergiance that all legal immigrants must swear, to become citizens of the United States. The Oath reads in part, I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;

Incarcerating people is an example of applying territorial jurisdiction. There is no allegiance expressed or implied. Full legal jurisdiction can only be applied to people who are citizens of this country. That's why legal immigrants must explicitly give up their allegiance to any other state or sovereign.

What a load of crock article. They say its obvious but don't have one shred of evidence as to why its apparently obvious in favor of illegals.

1. They use a 1608 English ruling on the base that Scotland was under English rule and as a man born during that time had English privledges and status has English rights even if born in Scotland. How does this apply as these foreign countries are NOT under US rule or jurisdiction as Scotland was under English rule. Utter nonsense.

2. The next case they argue is that a child can have no loyalty. Ask any parent and loyalty is to parents. Anyways IF that is what the framers meant it would mean that 2/3 of the 14th amendment was just meaningless words. Why allow for jurisdiction and other wordings when it clearly means no baby has any loyalties other then the land its born on. Waste of words if it was true. But no in reality a baby has loyalties to its parents to convey also loyalty to their country of citizenship.

Again, The ILLEGALS continue the invasion with the abuse of the 14th Amendment to create an Anchor for U.S. Citizens to furnish benefits! The Elitist Politicians and Elitist Contributors are socializing benefits to the ILLEGALS for the ILLEGAL EMPLOYERS, veiled as social programs for U. S. Citizens, on the backs of U.S. Citizens through our assets such as the Education System, Social Security, and Health Care not to mention our National Security while keeping the profits for themselves! The reason the ILLEGALS have the Anchors, furnishing a timely SOB story, is to stay in the U.S. to receive the benefits, their Anchors are nothing more than throwaways for their agenda; if they were important to the parents they would take their children with them when they returned to their HOME countries . They do not want to be Citizens only to the extent that it would allow the ILLEGALS to remain in the U.S. for our tax money returning to their home countries as soon as they have drained the U.S. Dry.

America's birthright citizenship derives from the 1608 English case of Robert Calvin, who was born in Scotland just after the Scottish King, James VI, also became the King of England. Calvin wanted to own land in England but couldn't unless he was a subject of England as well as Scotland. The court ruled that he was, because he and Englishmen owed allegiance to the same King. The outcome had a lot to do with James' need to consolidate his kingdom, but the rule became that anyone born on land governed by the King was a British subject except for children of foreign invaders or diplomats, who were outside British jurisdiction.

If American law is based on this case why are we giving birthright citicenship to foreign invaders? Illegal aliens are foreign invaders.