Posted on 11/04/2005 5:54:41 AM PST by .cnI redruM
House Republicans are looking closely at ending birthright citizenship and building a barrier along the entire U.S.-Mexico border as they search for solutions to illegal immigration.
A task force of party leaders and members active on immigration has met since the summer to try to figure out where consensus exists, and several participants said those two ideas have floated to the top of the list of possibilities to be included either in an immigration-enforcement bill later this year or in a later comprehensive immigration overhaul.
"There is a general agreement about the fact that citizenship in this country should not be bestowed on people who are the children of folks who come into this country illegally," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, who is participating in the "unity dinners," the group of Republicans trying to find consensus on immigration.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
BTW, Commerce and the 14th have been utilized way out of proportion.
In what respect? The Constitution means what it did at the point of ratification; else it means nothing. If the record exists coincident with ratification confirming its original intent, that should be a legally compelling interpretation. In this case we have multiple sources describing that original intent.
The only pure precedent that exists giving children of even legal foreign subjects natural law citizenship started with Bridges v. Wixon in 1945.
This is important in today's world.
Look at the guy who's up for plotting an assassination of Bush.
He was no more American that Osama, but he had citizenship because (I believe) his parents were here in some sort of capacity with the Saudi government.
No way should a kid born on our soil to foreigners receive citizenship. This hole in our system will probably be used against us lethally at some time in the future.
You got that right.
I'm more about traitors born to American parents who do everything possible to turn this great nation into another Communist gulag hellhole.
Modify it to where the parents MUST be here legally, and I am all for it.
Anything further would be too far IMO.
You are a citizen if you are born here only if your parents are here legally. That would include the babies of those with green cards, those here on visas, etc.
Strict construction means reading the words in the Constitution. Intent has been bent back and forth so much it is breaking off from metal fatigue. The 14th is one of the worst in that respect.
Original intent doesn't change; it stands. As to the real intent of the 14th, you might find this explanation most interesting.
The 14th was used to implement the modern corporation, and the liberal side of the USSC and the ACLU moved to turn that implementation to steel reinforced concrete. It has resulted in much of the modern discussion of the true meaning of the original Amendments, and all these campaign finance reform discussions. It's murky.
"Interesting knowledgebase you have acquired. Obviously you have read alot. But you seem unless I am mistaken to take your study and carve it in some sort of self-edifying granite."
"Self-edifying granite"?
I think I've been insulted.
But I'm not sure.
There's no particular ego at work, if that's what you mean.
I am not very much driven along by current partisan passions in the US, on either side. I tend to look at things systemically, and relatively dispassionately, looking for the best solution, with a preference for humane solutions. (This is why the long-term effect of following the tidal wave of anti-immigrant passion all the way to the point of reinterpreting the 14th Amendment to eliminate the lex solis seems so terrible to me. Yes, stop illegal immigration, by building a wall. Deport if you must. But don't go so far as to use a massive illegal labor pool, forcing it to keep its head down (and therefore wages low and regular protections non-existence), but then condemn children born here to the same fate. There has to be an eventual regularization of people who come for the money, hunker down, and stay. Maybe not for them, but for their children. Otherwise you end up with a class of sudras.)
"Marbury v Madison can be revisited."
Yes. By the Supreme Court or the Amendment process.
Between the tree-swinging liberals and the cave-dwelling arch-conservatives on the Supreme Court today, there is not one would would overturn Marbury. It's obvious that, systemically, there has to be a final arbiter of constitutionality. And given the three choices, the Supreme Court is the least bad option. There isn't a judge sitting on a federal bench in America, no matter how far to the right, who would accept the idea that the final arbiter of what the Constitution means lies in Congress itself. The abuses and excesses to which that would directly lead, in short order, are obvious.
"I recall that the Founders especially Madison were not so keen on its initial outcome. Thinking it was not a clear threat to the Republic, and thinking that it could in time be challenged de novo, they did not oppose nor did they endorse the potential conflicting judicial authority of Marbury v Madison."
"The Founders?" No. That portion of the Founders who now constituted what we now call the Democratic-Republican Party, most prominently President Jefferson, were fit to be tied. After all, the departing Federalists had foisted a set of midnight appointments on them, and they were unable to undo these things because a Federalist, John Marshall, who a few months ago had handed Mr. Marbury his commission, was now writing an opinion that said that Congress couldn't take it back.
Madison, Jefferson's close ally, was also unhappy about the decision, even though it had fulfilled precisely that role that Madison himself had written a little over a decade earlier the Supreme Court would fill. The shifting sands of politics caused positions initially conceived and expressed during the time of ratification of the Constitution to become uncomfortable, and indeed this very thing causes certain of the Federalist Papers to be difficult to attribute, because after Hamilton's death, Madison was reticent about claiming credit for some of the most persuasive of Publius' writings in favor of positions which the Administration he served now opposed.
However, as to the reasons that Marbury was not immediately opposed, I disagree that it was "the Founders" who were not keen on its outcome. The Federalists, who had lost the national election but still could hold up President Jefferson in the Senate, were very pleased with the decision. Government was divided. Jefferson and Madison didn't have the POWER to be able to sweep through reversing legislation, even had they wanted to. They could have made the charge, and been defeated.
Likewise, in the Marbury opinion itself, Marshall was very crafty. He asserted the power to review acts of Congress, and the role of the Supreme Court to expound the Constitution. But then, having done so, he did NOT ultimately put Marbury in the position (if I recall it was a postmastership), finding that no effective remedy could be crafted.
So, Marshall asserted the authority, but didn't actually stick the public official into Jefferson's eye. It is interesting to see what would have happened if he had. Jefferson may have been moved to oppose. But the Federalists in the Senate may have stood by Marshall and the Supreme Court. The toxic spirit of party, which Washington warned about, and which Hamilton, Madison and Jay all regretted in The Federalist, was already very much alive.
The bottom line is that Jefferson and Madison probably could not have thwarted Marbury even if they wanted to, because they did not control the Senate sufficiently to do so.
"And until recent, the thinking has been for centuries that justices would eschew the potential activism provided them via Marbury v Madison."
I disagree. The three most atrocious rulings in American history, prior to Roe v. Wade, were all of them extremely activist, and intentionally so: Dredd Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Lochner. Plessy was the most activist decision in history, directly ignoring three amendments to the Constitution! Dred Scott and Lochner were very aggressive, political jurisprudence. 1846, 1896 and 1906...that spans practically all of American history. Very aggressive, and noxious, judicial activism is not a new thing. The Supreme Court has always known its power, and has only been defied on a few occasions, mostly by President Lincoln.
"I have been informed more directly that it is the thinking of many constitutional scholars that Marbury v Madison had not been challenged because throughout most of U.S. history, jurists had not abused the authority that it provided."
Again, I most vociferously disagree.
Dredd Scott caused the Civil War.
Plessy ripped three amendments out of the Constitution and allowed apartheid to descend on American blacks, reversing Reconstruction and, to a certain extent, the outcome of the Civil War for almost 50 years.
Lochner prevented the STATES from passing most sorts of labor regulations whatever, even those involving health and safety of workers.
These were aggressive, abusive decisions that, all three of them, changed American history for the worse.
Roe is bad, but this is not a new phenomenon.
"I have also been informed that the same scholarly community includes an open discussion of the certainty of challenging Marbury v Madison in the coming years."
Challenge away!
Scalia's not going to vote to overturn Marbury.
Neither is Thomas.
Nobody will.
So, to mount this challenge, it will have to be extrajudicial.
The most effective defiance of the Supreme Court has been executive. Andrew Jackson famously defied the Supreme Court, once (they told him he couldn't commit the CHerokee Trail of Tears; he did it anyway). Abraham Lincoln routinely ignored all Supreme Court habeas corpus orders issued to free Southern sympathizers and journalists pre-emptively arrested on Lincoln's orders during the Civil War.
A Congressional defiance of the Court would be toothless without the Executive.
An Executive defiance of the Court would be impeachable without the support of Congress.
So, both covalent branches would have to act together, and outright defy the Court, because the Court is never in a million years going to overrule Marbury v. Madison.
Subsequent to County of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad.
and the liberal side of the USSC and the ACLU moved to turn that implementation to steel reinforced concrete.
Starting with Gitlow v. New York.
It has resulted in much of the modern discussion of the true meaning of the original Amendments, and all these campaign finance reform discussions. It's murky.
If you go to the link I posted to you (I wrote the article) and avail yourself of some of the links therein, you'll see a lot less murk. Corporate communists have been with us a lot longer than most people realize.
"The law is what it was when it took effect"
That is your opinion, but it is not the law.
", else we have rubber laws that derive subjective meaning over time or even from one jurisdiction to the next."
Yes, that is the way things do work.
"You may think that's the way it is,"
Yup.
"and I might agree that such is how the system operates,"
And you would be correct in so agreeing.
"but it is not legitimate"
Who defines "legitimate"? Are people rioting in the streets? Have they ceased paying their taxes or obeying the law? "Legitimate" by whose definition? Whose opinion makes something not legitimate?
Since the law does indeed evolve in meaning, that means it's not "legitimate", according to you. Do you think this means you don't have to obey it? Do you obey it anyway, simply out of fear of punishment? Are you organizing an insurrection against the usurpers who have delegitimized the law? Or, rather, are you not following the legal norms to try and gain political momentum for your cause, within the rules, demonstrating by your actions a de facto acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the rules?
Isn't the "illegitimacy" epithet really just an exclamation of frustration that the law is not viewed the way you think it ought to be?
"because any such change did not go through either amendment or ratification."
So, since every military officer has taken an oath "to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC", does the fact that the law reposes on judicial interpretations and Common Law, and not the Sola Scriptura text of the Constitution thereby authorize military officers to coordinate the arrest and removal of the American judiciary, and any Executive or Legislative branch official who supports the Judiciary?
After all, the Constitution has been traduced and the institution that has the final power of arbitration is not "legitimate". If the military leaders accept that argument, given their oath, may they move against the domestic enemies who have usurped the Constitution and unseat the usurping judiciary?
What if the President orders them to do so, using the same logic?
May the President, in fulfillment of his oath, nullify acts of the Supreme Court?
"No way should a kid born on our soil to foreigners receive citizenship. This hole in our system will probably be used against us lethally at some time in the future."
What about a kid born on foreign soil to foreigners. Should he have gotten citizenship, without a process, just by moving here?
IF...this becomes law in my lifetime...I will run thru a tick and chigger infested forest naked.
No! Lets continue to allow in millions of illegal aliens. Soon we will have a country filled with 65 million babies of illegals. We can all learn Spanish and be just like Mexico!
Good for you, good for Wal-Mart!
Do you really want to write into the law that illegals aren't subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? Open the jail doors ...
"Furthermore, the explosion of illegal immigration has been caused by the Immigration Reform Act of 1965. JFK & LBJ opened the flood gates for immigrants and the "anchor baby policy"."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let's not forget this little tidbit either:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4991
"Senate floor manager and Camelot knight-errant Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, assured jittery senators that "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually." "
~~~~~~~~
Thanks a lot, Ted!
I hope that they make the effective date of this law less than 9 months from whenever it begins to appear likely to pass.
And 40 years later that idiot is still with us teaming up with other Senators to create yet more mischief...
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