Thread: BORN IN THE USA ~ so called, Anchor Babies

BORN IN THE USA

By Michael LeMieux
August 5, 2010
NewsWithViews.com

This afternoon on Fox News, Senator Robert Menendez(D) from New Jersey, was discussing the issue of the 14th Amendment in regards to illegal immigration in which he stated that children born in the US are citizens of the United States and that we should not change that.

He is quoting the portion of the 14th Amendment which states, in part, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…â€

Here is a bit of the Elk v. Wilkens decision:

to be citizens are "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.

Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of and owing immediate allegiance to one of the Indiana tribes (an alien though dependent power), although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more "born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," within the meaning of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children born within the United States of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign nations.

This view is confirmed by the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that

"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."

Slavery having been abolished, and the persons formerly held as slaves made citizens, this clauses fixing the apportionment of representatives has abrogated so much of the corresponding clause of the original Constitution as counted only three-fifths of such persons. But Indians not taxed are still excluded from the count for the reason that they are not citizens. Their absolute exclusion from the basis of representation in which all other persons are now included is wholly inconsistent with their being considered citizens. So the further provision of the second section for a proportionate

Page 112 U. S. 103

reduction of the basis of the representation of any state in which the right to vote for Presidential electors, representatives in Congress, or executive or judicial officers or members of the legislature of a state is denied, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, to "any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States," cannot apply to a denial of the elective franchise to Indians not taxed, who form no part of the people entitled to representation.

It is also worthy of remark that the language used about the same time by the very Congress which framed the Fourteenth Amendment, in the first section of the Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866, declaring who shall be citizens of the United States, is "all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed." 14 Stat. 27; Rev.Stat. § 1992.

http://supreme.justia.com/us/112/94/case.html

and not subject to any foreign power

Well that leaves all illegals out since they clearly are "subjects" of a foreign power...


Kathyet