RE: Levin did what to it?
Mark Levin said that people are getting the clause “Subject to the Jurisdiction” wrong, “Because they’re result-oriented. Because they want to insist the Constitution says what it doesn’t say.
Levin argues that the Supreme Court has never ruled that the children of illegal aliens are American citizens. So the Supreme Court never ruled, even if they did, it would be wrong.
The clause speaks for itself, the author of the clause made it abundantly, unequivocally clear, ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States.’ Let’s stop there.
If it means what the proponents of birthright citizenship say, it would stop right there. ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States’ are citizens. There’s no need for anything else, but that’s what it says. Then it says, and, ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’
Now, you have slip and fall lawyers, some phony constitutional lawyers, they have ‘Esquire’ after their name, they come on TV, they go all over the place, ‘Jurisdiction means geography.’
Jurisdiction has nothing to do with geography. zero. It had to do with POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE to the United States of America. How do we know it? Because they said it.
And they also excluded everybody that the left, and some of the Republicans want to include.
Now here’s the good news, there’s another part of the Constitution. It’s Article I, Section 8, Clause 4. Here’s what that says, in plain English. ‘The Congress shall have power to…establish a uniform rule of naturalization.’ Now, you know what that means, that means Congress, not the courts, not the president, not ICE, it means the United States Congress has the power to regulate immigration in this regard.
And in the 1920s, that’s exactly what it did. The 14th Amendment excludes Indians, that is Native Americans, as US citizens, because they felt that they had allegiance to their own national tribes.
Then it was in 1923, Congress reversed course, and said, ‘You know what? Under the 14th Amendment and under this Article I, we’ve decided to grant citizenship, national citizenship to all Native Americans.”
We don’t have to amend the Constitution, it says what we say it says, and by statutes, by statute, going forward, prospectively, Congress can, in fact, say, ‘We want to emphasize to this federal government, to this president, no, you cannot make children of illegal aliens American citizens automatically.’”
And here is where Levin loses me. He props up a straw man and doesn't address the critics' real point.
No one thinks it's just about geography. Most think "subject to the jurisdiction" means subject to the laws - an interpretation consistent with other uses of the word in the Constitution - as You points out in the article.
Diplomats and Indians weren't fully subject to our laws since those relationships were governed by treaty. Resident aliens (there was no such thing as an illegal alien at the time) were and still are fully subject to our laws.
This is the distinction that I've never heard Levin address.