August 23, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP and the Future of America
Friends,
Kamala
Harris is very angry with Donald Trump.
With her
usual condescension and scorn, she tweeted out on Thursday, August 22, that Donald
Trump should go read the 14th Amendment—the implication being
that when the president brought up, once again, the possibility that he might
issue an Executive Order regulating birthright citizenship, he was woefully
misreading the application of that Reconstruction amendment.
Of
course, for a supercilious Leftist elitist like Harris, Trump will forever be
that ignorant, brash, illiterate, racist New Yorker who is just way out of his league. It
doesn’t really make any difference that he graduated with a B.S. in Economics
from the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of
Pennsylvania. You see, he doesn’t have all the fineries and veneer of the
self-proclaimed East Coast-West Coast Brahmin Elites who have controlled this
country, its economy, its foreign policy, and its government for more than a
century. Despite the fact that he has—in my view—given in far too often to
those same Elites, nevertheless, they will only accept 100% obedience and
compliance. Upsetting the apple cart, thwarting the advance of globalism in the
slightest will get you—the Russia Hoax, the White Nationalist/Racist Hoax, the
Gun Control Hoax, endless investigations and multiple mini-impeachment efforts,
plus the extreme and active (even violent) hostility of almost all the media,
academia, Hollywood, and the political class.
You can’t
get off the Deep State reservation, even a hare, and expect any mercy.
So, when
once again the president declared that his administration was looking into
ending “birthright citizenship” through a presidential Executive Order—something
he had suggested back in October of 2018—all hell broke loose, and the officious
and ideologically crazed Harris jumped like a famished black snake on a
defenseless toad. Once again it was the Trump template of “full blown racism,”
“appeals to white supremacy,” “undermining and attacking our democracy,” and,
of course, since Trump is an illegitimate president, an interloper—then almost
any type of resistance is permissible.
What such
an Executive Order would do is clarify the application of the 14th
Amendment and, essentially, end birthright citizenship for children of illegal
aliens who come across the US border and then produce offspring who, then, as
if by magic become American citizens.
Recall
that the amendment was enacted after the War Between the States to guarantee
the rights of citizenship to manumitted
slaves and their offspring. And, indeed, there is a serious legal question
about whether the amendment itself was ever legally and legitimately ratified.
But be that as it may, it has applied ever since 1868.
Here is
how Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads:
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 State wherein they
reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Harris and other
open border zealots always quote the first section: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of
the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But the leave out,
either by mistake or by direction: “and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
It’s a key phrase,
critical to understanding what the authors of the amendment intended and what
for nearly 100 years was settled law up until the 1960s when leftist lawmakers
got into the act simply by de facto
practical applications. In other words, between the very clear and forthright
intention of its authors that the 14th Amendment only applied to slaves and their
offspring born in the United States who are necessarily “subject to the
jurisdiction thereof,” and the
imposed practice we now have which enables a foreign woman to illegally slip
across the Rio Grande and have a child who then, by that simple act, becomes a
citizen and an “anchor baby,” permitting its illegal relations to all come
across—between these two interpretations
and applications there is an absolute irreconcilable
difference.
The key figures in drafting the amendment at
the time were clear: Senator Lyman Trumbull, pivotal in
the drafting the 14th Amendment, declared “subject to the jurisdiction” meant
subject to “complete” jurisdiction of the United States, and “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.”
Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan, responsible for the critical language of the
jurisdiction clause, stated that it meant “a full and complete jurisdiction,”
that is, “the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.” In
other words, a non-citizen simply by giving birth on this side geographically
of the Rio Grande does not produce a new citizen of the United States.
Presented with this history, those
defending the current practice, including Judge
Andrew Napolitano on Fox, appeal, like Harris, to constitutional practice
and to the courts.
But, actually, the Supreme Court has spoken on this question, at least
indirectly.
In 1884, sixteen years after the 14th
Amendment was ratified, John Elk, an American Indian, went to court to argue
that he was an American citizen due to his birth in the United States. In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment
did not grant Indians citizenship. As
Ann
Coulter cites that decision:
[The] “main object of the opening
sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment was to settle the question, upon which
there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this
court, as to the citizenship of free negroes and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white
or black … should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which
they reside.”
And she adds: “American
Indians were not made citizens until 1924. Lo those 56 years after the
ratification of the 14th Amendment, Indians were not American citizens, despite
the considered opinion of Judge Napolitano.”
Ending
birthright citizenship, based on a false and specious reading of the 14th
Amendment, is an idea whose time has come, in fact, is far overdue. At the very
least, an Executive Order would force the courts, including the Supreme Court,
to take a serious look at the historic abuse of our immigration system and the
definition of American citizenship.
Let
us hope that this time—nearly a year
since he raised it—President Trump will
follow through on his consideration: birthright citizenship has been and is
an Achilles’ Heel in American immigration policy. Ending it would be a major
step in securing our border and preserving the integrity of our culture.
**************
I
believe I passed on to you last year the following legal essay by Professor of
Law, John Eastman. It is a succinct but thorough restatement of the points made
in my commentary:
Revoking birthright citizenship would enforce the
Constitution
President Trump’s comments are not even set to air until
this weekend, but already they have created a firestorm of commentary, most of
it ill-informed.
It is not “within the president’s power to change
birthright citizenship,” claimed Lynden Melmed, former chief counsel to the US
Citizenship and Immigration Services, echoing the views of many in the legal
academy. Birthright citizenship is mandated by
the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and therefore can only be “changed” by constitutional
amendment, not by mere executive order or act of Congress, or so the argument
goes.
That
view depends on reading the 14th Amendment as actually mandating automatic
citizenship for anyone and everyone born on US soil, no matter the circumstances.
Temporary visitors, such as tourists, students and guest workers, can
unilaterally confer citizenship on their children merely by giving birth while
here, is the claim.
That view has given rise to the cottage industry known as
“birth tourism.” Worse, under this view, citizenship is automatic even if the
parents overstay their visas and become illegally present in the United States.
Worse still, such citizenship is automatic for children born of parents who
were never lawfully present in the United States in the first place.
In a nation such as the United States, which is rooted in
the idea that governments are formed based on the consent of the governed, the
notion that foreign nationals can unilaterally confer citizenship on their
children as the result of illegal entry to the United States (and therefore
entirely without our consent) is a bit bizarre.
It rewards lawlessness, undermining the rule of law. It
deprives Congress of its constitutional authority to determine naturalization
power.
And it essentially destroys the notion of sovereignty
itself, since a “people” are not able to define what constitutes them as a
“people” entitled, as the Declaration of Independence asserts, to “the separate
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle
them.”
That the 14th Amendment settled the question without ever
explicitly addressing it is even more bizarre.
The actual language of the 14th Amendment actually
contains two requirements for automatic citizenship, not just one. “All persons
born or naturalized in the United States” — that’s the birth-on-US- soil part —
“and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It is
that second requirement, “subject to the jurisdiction,” that is the source of
much confusion today, because to our modern ear, that just means subject to our
laws.
That is one meaning, of course, but not the only one, and
not the one that the drafters of the 14th Amendment had in mind. For them,
being merely subject to our laws meant that one was subject to our “partial” or
“territorial” jurisdiction. It was a jurisdiction applicable to “temporary
sojourners” — what we today call temporary visitors. It was not the kind of
jurisdiction that was codified in the 14th Amendment. For that, a more
complete, allegiance-owing jurisdiction was required.
We don’t need to speculate about this, as the authors of
the 14th Amendment were asked directly what they meant (albeit not in the
context of illegal immigration, since there were no restrictions on immigration
at the time). When asked whether Native Americans would automatically be
citizens under the clause, Sen. Lyman Trumbull, a key figure in the drafting
and adoption of the 14th Amendment, responded that “subject to the
jurisdiction” of the United States meant subject to its “complete”
jurisdiction, “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.”
And Sen. Jacob Howard, who introduced the language of the
jurisdiction clause on the floor of the Senate, contended that it should be
construed to mean “a full and complete jurisdiction,” “the same jurisdiction in
extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.” And
the “now” that he was referencing was the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provided
that “All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign
power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the
United States.”
So President Trump is not proposing to “amend” the
Constitution by executive order. He is proposing to faithfully enforce the
Constitution as written, not how it has erroneously come to be interpreted in
the last half century. It’s long overdue.
John Eastman is a constitutional law professor at Chapman
University