"Dr. John C. Eastman, Dean of Chapman Universitys law school in Orange, California, is among the leading scholars in the nation on constitutional law and has testified before Congress on the issue of birthright citizenship. Eastman states plainly that the framers of the 14th Amendment had no intention of allowing another country to wage demographic warfare against the U.S. and reshaping its culture by means of exploiting birthright citizenship.
We have this common understanding of when you come here to visit, that you are subject to our jurisdiction. You have to obey our traffic laws. If you come here from England, you have to drive on the right side of the road and not on the left side of the road, he said. But the framers of the 14th Amendment had in mind two different notions of subject to the jurisdiction. There was what they called territorial jurisdiction you have to follow the laws in the place where you arebut there was also this more complete, or allegiance-owing jurisdiction that held that you not only have to follow the laws, but that you owe allegiance to the sovereign. And that doesnt come by just visiting here. That comes by taking an oath of support and becoming part of the body politic. And it is that jurisdiction that they are talking about in the 14th Amendment. Then by definitionand one would think common senselegal tourists here to enjoy Disneyland and illegal immigrants who broke into the country clearly do not fall under this blanket of allegiance-owing jurisdiction. Accordingly, their giving birth on American soil does not make their children citizens.
Dr. Edward J. Erler, a political science professor at Cal State San Bernardino, has spoken out against the political malaise and the popular misconception that has blossomed around the continued awarding of citizenship to virtually anyone born in the country. Echoing the sentiments of Eastman, Erler points out that the framers of the 14th Amendment sought to reassure the Congress in 1868 that the citizenship provisions did not covernor were they crafted with the intent to grantcitizenship to the children of foreign nationals born in the United States. Specifically, the myriad of Native American tribes were not covered under the citizenship clause because they clearly owed allegiance to their tribes and therefore were not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. governmenta clear indication Erler says that jurisdiction is indeed contingent on exclusive allegiance. And a childs allegiance must follow that of its parents during its years as a minor.
Its difficult to fathom how those who defy American law can derive benefits for their children by their defiance; or that any sovereign nation would allow such a thing, Erler said. That it has been allowed to happen on such a massive scale and has even been encouraged by various groups gets Terry Andersons blood boiling. A life-long black resident of South Los Angeles, Anderson has used his talk radio show to decry not only the radical and rapid transformation traditional black neighborhoods in Los Angeles and the erosion of the black power structure in the face of explosive immigration, but to blast the governments policy of granting birthright citizenship to illegal immigrants.
Then by definitionand one would think common senselegal tourists here to enjoy Disneyland and illegal immigrants who broke into the country clearly do not fall under this blanket of allegiance-owing jurisdiction. Accordingly, their giving birth on American soil does not make their children citizens. "
There is no law that makes them citizens, as the government has acquised the issue:
"Birth Is All You Need
According to Eastman, the real shift in popular perception began to take root in the late 1960s, when the idea that mere birth on American soil alone ensured citizen status.
I have challenged every person who has taken the opposite position to tell me what it was that led to this new notion, he said. Theres not an executive order. Theres not a court decision. We just gradually started assuming that birth was enough.
Eastman attributes some of it to our nations loss of an intrinsic understanding of the language that the framers of the 14th Amendment spoke and used in that era, ergo a century later the phrase subject to the jurisdiction has been watered down in the collective American consciousness to require little more than an adherence to traffic safety laws. "
British common law made that distinction, and that distinction was discussed as dictum by the U.S. Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark.
However, under British common law, allegiance to the monarch was also tied to protection by the monarch (protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem), and those who were considered not to have the allegiance-based jurisdiction for the purpose of passing British citizenship to a child born within the British empire were foreign ministers, ambassadors, or foreigners during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England.