U.S. citizenship losing its meaning

Posted: July 15, 2011
1:56 pm Eastern
© 2011

I've been concerned for some time that American citizenship is losing its meaning, being downgraded, redefined and dumbed down.

When the courts interpreted the 14th Amendment to mean that when any mother drops a baby in U.S. territory, no matter her own national status, the baby automatically becomes an American citizen, some cheered. I mourned.

When the American media and political establishment determined that the Constitution's "natural born citizen" eligibility requirement for the president of the United States simply meant "born in the USA," some cheered. I mourned.

And now we learn that even foreign diplomats, clearly not under the jurisdiction of the U.S., are dropping babies while working here, and those offspring are being granted U.S. birthright citizenship. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07 ... ip-report/

But it gets worse. Because these guest-citizens have advantages no other citizen has – diplomatic immunity, meaning they have no obligation to obey U.S. laws and cannot be prosecuted for offenses. In other words, wittingly or unwittingly, we have created a new breed of "super-citizens" who should not be regarded as citizens at all under the clear rule of law.

That's the conclusion of Jon Feere, author of a report called "Birthright Citizenship for Children of Foreign Diplomats," http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07 ... ip-report/ and, frankly, I don't know what other conclusion anyone could draw from the facts.

Even the U.S. State Department can't provide a straight answer to the simple question of whether the offspring of foreign nationals serving in their country's diplomatic corps in the U.S. are citizens by virtue of their birth on U.S. soil.

Here's what one spokesman from State told Fox News – anonymously, of course: "Persons born in the United States, including a child of foreign diplomats, are legally entitled to an official birth record issued by the Bureau of Vital Statistics of the state in which the child is born. Whether a child born in the United States to a foreign diplomat acquires U.S. citizenship at birth pursuant to the 14th Amendment requires a fact-based analysis."

In other words, the State Department has no answer. It can neither confirm nor deny that foreign diplomats can attain a form of super-citizenship for their American-born offspring. It needs further review. In the meantime, we continue to diminish the essential meaning of U.S. citizenship and the rights and privileges attached to it.

No word on whether the State Department even considers this matter important enough to investigate it – to form a task force or to seek clarification from Congress. Apparently, the State Department is content to wait for word to come down from Mount Sinai.

The State Department does take the position that diplomatic immunity and U.S. citizenship are not compatible. Yet Feere's report documents just how easily those two seemingly irreconcilable attributes are being melded in real-life examples today.

Why?

Because the very birth certificate forms used by most states, and designed by the National Center for Health Statistics' Division of Vital Statistics, never asks about the diplomatic status of the parents. Therefore, on the basis of the birth certificate alone, there is no basis upon which the child can be denied citizenship. And, on the basis of the child's parents, there is no way he or she can be denied diplomatic immunity.

What does all this suggest?

It suggests there is widespread confusion – maybe even intentionally – within the government about what it means to be a citizen, a native-born citizen and a natural born citizen. All these terms have become synonymous in the age of Barack Obama. Members of Congress don't even have a clue as to what these terms mean. They're afraid to define these terms because of political correctness and multiculturalism and just because they will probably be called names if they try.

The result? Chaos.

The rule of men, not the rule of law.

And the men who rule don't even have to establish citizenship.

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