Amendment 14. 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 Stte wherein they reside." I am not a lawyer, my degrees are in history and electrical engineering. Lawyers have odd ways of reading and writing. "Subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in ordinary English means citizen, legal alien, green card holder, and at a stretch, tourist visa holder.
So to an ordinary reading of the 14th Amendment, there is no requirement to grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Newsies who claim that a constitutional amendment is needed are just plain wrong.
Trump could stop Birth Right Citizenship by executive order. Politically it would be better to get an act of Congress on the matter. Any such change will be opposed in court, and the courts give a lot more deference to acts of Congress than they do to executive orders.
In all the talk about process and legality and constitutional change, we haven't heard much about the real issue here, namely does our current policy of birthright citizenship cause real harm to us. And what might that harm be? As it is, travel agencies in China make arrangements for Chinese mothers to fly to the US to give birth here so that their children will have US citizenship. Which is kinda flattering to us that people would spend all that money, and be away from friends and family for the birth of a child. They really care about having US citizenship. And the Chinese are already citizens of China, an important country, which speaks their language and embodies Chinese culture. We Americans have created a good thing here if so many people want to come here.
No comments:
Post a Comment