Article XIV
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.
(Amendment 14 – Rights Guaranteed: Privileges and Immunities of Citizenship, Due Process, and Equal Protection)
Email from RAN
I received another email from my conservative “friends” at the RESPONSE ACTION NETWORK (RAN.) As usual they needed my help, and money, to help the “educate” the American public. This time it was about one of their favorite “bogeymen,” what they call “birthright citizenship.”
So here’s their problem. Any person, born in the territory of the United States of America, is considered a “natural born” citizen of the United States. They have US citizenship from birth. This includes illegal migrants in Texas, and Russian bimbos that rent Trump apartments in Florida to have their children. And while my RAN friends don’t seem to care much about the Trump bimbos, they really, really hate the migrants in Texas.
So they want to change how citizenship is granted. Here’s the current “rules.”
- Be Born in the United States of America
- Have one or both US Citizen Parents
- Born in a US Commonwealth or Territory
- Born “under the US Flag” on a US flagged ship, plane, embassy or military base.
Black Codes
These “rules” are based on the 14thAmendment to the US Constitution, written after the Civil War. The original purpose of the Fourteenth was to require the Southern States to treat their former slaves as citizens. Many of the states in the former Confederacy quickly wrote a series of laws called the Black Codes after the War ended. Those Codes created a second level of status for the former slaves, with restrictions on employment, movement, contractual rights and voting rights.
In short, the Black Codes prevented the freedmen from being full citizens. The Republicans (just thought I’d point that out) in Congress wanted Freedmen to have full citizenship rights, and to make sure, they put it in the Constitution. It’s called Black Letter Law:
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.
All Persons – regardless of their immigration status, their skin color, their profession or their education, are included in the Fourteenth. In the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof – within the boundaries of the United States of America, or in areas under its jurisdiction are all included. Are citizens – have all the rights of citizenship in the United States and the state where they live.
Seems pretty cut and dried; if you are born here, you are a citizen here.
Black Letter Law
Now, my “friends” at the DIRECT ACTION NETWORK aren’t stupid. They can read, and they know what the Black Letter Law says. And like any good second year law students, they can make an argument, even against the clearest of statutory language. Here’s their assertion.
Illegal migrants have come to the United States in violation of US law, That makes them not “under the jurisdiction” of the United States, and they haven’t “earned” the right to be a citizen.
On the surface, it sounds like a legitimate argument. Illegal is illegal, right? But the problem is, that while they may have entered the US in violation of the immigration law, that doesn’t change the “all persons” part of the Fourteenth. The Amendment itself recognizes that their was an “excepted” class. In the second clause it mentions that “Indians not taxed” would not be counted in the enumeration, census, for the purpose of apportioning legislative seats. But even, here, those Indians were specifically not excluded from the citizenship clause.
And ask ICE, those illegal migrants are certainly under the jurisdiction of the United States when they are rounded up at the chicken processing plant, or as they drop their children off at school in the morning. So it is more than disingenuous to say they are NOT under US jurisdiction for the purpose of citizenship, but ARE under the jurisdiction for all other legal purposes.
Birthers
The Stephen Miller/Trump Administration is already trying to alter the citizenship code, changing how children born to Americans overseas are treated as citizens. Many famous Americans, including Senator John McCain, were born outside of the boundaries of the nation. McCain was born in the US Canal Zone (Panama), “under the flag” and of two American parents. He was considered a “natural born” citizen, allowing him the opportunity to run for President of the United States (the natural born citizenship status is required.) The Administration is proposing changing how that works.
That was also the whole basis of the “Birther” movement to disqualify Barack Obama. He was in fact born in Hawaii of a Kenyan father and American (Kansas) mother, but the “Birthers” tried to claim that his Hawaiian birth records were forgeries, and that he was actually born in Kenya.
Even if he was (he wasn’t) he still could claim US citizenship through his mother, but that wasn’t the Birther point. Trump supporters now claim that the “Resistance” is trying to delegitimize the Trump Presidency based on a “stolen” election; the “Resistance” learned the tactic from the Birther Movement’s false claims. (By the way, I’m not convinced that the “Resistance” isn’t right about the election – history will tell us in a few years.)
White Citizens
But, the RAN people demand, what about “Anchor Babies?” These are children, born in the United States, of foreign parents. Since they were born in the territory of the United States of America, they are, in fact, natural born US citizens. Whether their parents stay in the US or not, when those children reach adulthood, they have the right to claim that citizenship.
And that makes the RAN people crazy: that even more people, particularly “brown” people, are US citizens. It is strange though, that the same argument isn’t being made against Europeans, particularly the Russian women who come to Florida, rent a Trump controlled apartment, and give birth.
The RESPONSE ACTION NETWORK is responding, to the racist citizenship politics of the Trump Administration. They want to “educate” Americans on how the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t really say what it says, just as they are fascinated with ignoring the “…well regulated militia…” section of the Second Amendment.
I guess they won’t get my help.
