Daniel Greenfield: The 14th Amendment Protected the Civil Rights of Freed Slaves, Not Illegal Aliens | Frontpage Mag:
“I have said it before and I will say it again, the 14th Amendment is by far the worst amendment to the Constitution. It broke every possible rule of constitutional government beginning with simplicity and timelessness. The 14th is a sprawling mess meant to deal with immediate problems that used sloppy broad language and quickly became a magnet for every leftist effort to conduct backdoor rewrites of the law.
Consider that in just the last few years, Democrats used 4 of the 5 sections of the 14th to argue that…
1. That Trump was ineligible to hold office
2. That Congress was obligated to raise the debt limit
3. That men who pretend they’re women are entitled to do so
and now
4. That illegal aliens born in this country are automatically citizens
We know exactly what Section 1 of the 14th was aimed at. “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” was meant to protect the civil rights of freed slaves. It did not mean that anyone who happened to give birth in this country automatically made their kid a citizen, but that’s the absurd premise of birthright citizenship.
And the current Trump executive order meant to apply to future children of illegal aliens is being challenged on the basis of the Fourteenth. This battle is almost certainly going to end up in the Supreme Court which should be interesting, though far from an inevitable happy outcome. If you think Neil or Amy are going to vote to eliminate birthright citizenship, well good luck with that. Ideally we should repeal old number fourteen which is probably the sloppiest and messiest of the amendments. If you doubt that, go look up at that list above.
Not likely to happen, but a man can dream.
There’s no such thing as birthright citizenship. Or any of the other things that Dems keep finding in the 14th Amendment which was not written to do any of these things.” …….
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“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens…”
or
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens…”
That's how the 14th Amendment would have been written if the authors had wanted Birthright Citizenship inserted into the Constitution.
True, some of the Amendment authors supported Birthright Citizenship, while others did not. But the qualifier “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof…” means the opponents won.
"...subject to the jurisdiction thereof…” does not mean you are in America, so you are subject to the jurisdiction of American laws. That is a given. Absent Diplomatic Immunity cases, if you speed, of course you can get a speeding ticket. If you murder, of course you can be charged.
Jurisdiction is why children of ambassadors are not American citizens; their parents are subject to the jurisdiction of their homeland governments even while temporarily in the United States. The same is true of illegal aliens. And of Birth Tourists, coming here to spit out an anchor baby.
James Madison said “It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect.”
Therefore, for example, if the Framer’s Constitution asks a Vice-President Pence to certify the Electoral Count, he MUST use his power and authority to ensure the Will of American People has been honored–not the will of crooked Voting Machine Corporations, Mail-In ballot- forgers or George Soros and his Gang of Dirty Election Officials.
If a mere rubberstamp was all that was required, the Constitution would have had a clerk certify it. They specifically required a Constitutional Officer certify, in order to protect the People's Right of Self-Government and THEIR Constitution.
Similarly, the clause "...subject to the jurisdiction thereof…” is not meaningless redundant boilerplate, inserted just to take up space.
If China's army invaded California, and some of those soldiers were there long enough to give birth, under Birthright Citizenship, those children would be called Americans.
But under the Actual 14th Amendment, the one that Americans ratified to make sure the children of former slaves were included in the American Family, those children of Chinese military invaders would correctly be considered Chinese citizens, and like their parents, subject to the jurisdiction of Chy-Na.
Just like the Biden Crime Family.
more:
Trump Is Right – Ending Birthright Citizenship Is Constitutional | The Heritage Foundation
Birthright Citizenship Is A Pernicious Lie That’s Destroying America
"The Birthright Citizenship Clause Too Many Forget, but President Trump Is Right To Question" by Amy Swearer and Hans A. von Spakovsky:
"Key TakeawaysContrary to popular belief, the 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all people born in the U.S. are citizens.
Legislative history shows that Congress intended the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate permanent race-based barriers to citizenship.
The president has the authority to direct federal agencies to act in accordance with the original meaning of the 14th Amendment.
Few of President Donald Trump’s new executive orders have caused as much alarm as the one on birthright citizenship.
That order prohibits federal agencies from issuing or accepting citizenship documents for children born in the U.S. when neither parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth.
Critics paint it as flagrantly unconstitutional, including a misinformed federal judge in Seattle who issued a temporary injunction against it last week. But the new policy fits squarely within the text and original meaning of the 14th Amendment.
For the first century following the 14th Amendment’s ratification, few legal scholars would have batted an eye at a directive like Trump’s. If anything, they’d have been more confused as to why the federal government started issuing passports to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, tourists, and “temporary sojourners” in the first place.
Contrary to popular belief, the 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all people born in the U.S. are citizens. It says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. That second, critical, conditional phrase is conveniently ignored or misinterpreted by advocates of “universal” birthright citizenship.
This was intended to constitutionalize the protections of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provided that “all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power” would be considered citizens.
The change in language didn’t reflect a desire on Congress’s part to abrogate the statutory definition or adopt universal birthright citizenship. In fact, the Civil Rights Act remained valid law for another 70 years, with courts and legal scholars alike assuming that it was perfectly consistent with the citizenship clause.
That’s because the sponsors of the 14th Amendment made it clear that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. means owing your political allegiance to the U.S., and not to another country. Children born to aliens are citizens of their parents’ native land, and thus owe their allegiance to, and are subject to the jurisdiction of, that native land.
Legislative history shows that Congress intended the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate permanent race-based barriers to citizenship—not to bestow citizenship on everyone born within the geographical confines of the United States. Congress didn’t intend birthright citizenship to apply to the U.S.-born children of those who owed only a limited allegiance to the United States.
Even modern proponents of “universal birthright citizenship” admit that the children born on U.S. soil to diplomats or tribally affiliated Native Americans don’t obtain birthright citizenship. In fact, they and their children were only made citizens through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924—legislation that wouldn’t have been necessary if the 14th Amendment adopted common law rules of universal birthright citizenship.
While critics of Trump’s order claim that universal birthright citizenship is “the settled law of the land,” the Supreme Court has never definitively addressed this issue.
The first time the nation’s highest court opined on the meaning of the citizenship clause—in the famous Slaughter-House cases of 1872—it stated that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excluded “children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.”
The court confirmed this understanding in 1884 in Elk v. Wilkins, denying birthright citizenship to an American Indian because he “owed immediate allegiance to” his tribe and not the United States.
Most legal arguments for universal birthright citizenship ignore these early cases and point to the 1898 decision U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. However, that decision simply held that U.S.-born children of lawful permanent residents are U.S. citizens.
Further, that decision concerned the constitutionality of acts that created a class of lawful permanent residents who, just like Black people under Dred Scott, were perpetually excluded from citizenship based solely on their race—exactly the situation the 14th Amendment was designed to prevent.
Our nation’s current immigration and nationality laws no longer create this type of permanent race-based barrier to citizenship. Today, the federal statute defining citizenship (8 U.S.C. § 1401) simply repeats the language of the 14th Amendment, including the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
That language retains the same meaning today as it had when it was drafted and ratified. It doesn’t evolve to mean something else just because previous administrations erroneously interpreted it more expansively.
As a result, the president has the authority to direct federal agencies to act in accordance with the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, and to issue government documents and benefits only to those individuals who are truly subject to United States jurisdiction.
Far from being an attempt to rewrite the Constitution or “end birthright citizenship,” Trump’s order is a much-needed and long-overdue course correction, reversing a decades-long policy that was never constitutionally mandated in the first place." .......
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