Posted on 11/19/2006 3:33:25 PM PST by ruination
Anyone born in the United States is an American citizen, a right with post-Civil War roots and defined in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But a controversial bill filed for the 2007 session of the Texas Legislature, one of a flurry of measures seeking crackdowns on illegal immigration, is challenging this long-held tenet of U.S. citizenship.
House Bill 28, filed Monday by Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, would exclude U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants from access to public education and health care, unemployment, public housing, disability and other state benefits. Analysts think it is the first-ever state challenge of birthright citizenship.
With the start of the legislative session still more than seven weeks away, the bill is stirring an outcry among critics, who say it is blatantly unconstitutional and who question the fairness of punishing U.S. citizen children for their parents' decisions to enter the country illegally. The dust-up is rekindling a bitter debate about birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment that provides it.
"It's very, very clear beyond reasonable doubt that under current interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and simply U.S. law, that anybody born in the United States, except for a few exotic examples, becomes a citizen," said Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Texas.
Berman's bill is unconstitutional, Levinson said. "That's not even a close case," he said. In recent years, however, some who want to clamp down on illegal immigration have seized on the 14th Amendment, saying it was never intended to grant citizenship to children of illegal immigrants.
Contending that birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration, some critics have dubbed the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants "anchor babies" because they can sponsor their parents for legal permanent residency when they turn 21.
"That's the reward they get for violating our laws," Berman said. "That's got to stop."
More than 3 million children born in the United States have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant, according to researchers at the Urban Institute in Washington.
Immigrant rights groups say the number of cases in which parents enter the country illegally for the purpose of having a baby is considerably smaller than critics allege, a position captured in the plain-spoken language of the late U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan of Texas in 1995.
"People come to this country because they want jobs. They don't come to have babies," said Jordan, then the chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.
Berman said he expects — and wants — a court challenge if his bill passes because he hopes to force the Supreme Court to review the 14th Amendment. Levinson says it'll never get there.
"It would be knocked down by whatever court heard it first," Levinson said.
Legal experts interpret a 1982 Supreme Court decision as at least indirectly affirming the 14th Amendment's citizenship rights for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. The decision struck down a Texas law and required that the state provide public education to children regardless of their legal status.
"The environment has changed considerably since that time. We didn't have 20 million illegals," Berman said. Analysts generally estimate the illegal immigrant population in the United States at 11.5 million to 12 million.
Push hasn't gone far
For more than a decade, concerns about surging illegal immigration have led to a re-examination of birthright citizenship.
But congressional efforts to revoke the right have proved to be nonstarters, said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum.
"The basic reason is because it's unconstitutional," Kelley said. In 2005, U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., offered a bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to end birth citizenship. The measure has not moved beyond committees.
U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, one of the bill's co-sponsors, was unavailable for an interview. But in an op-ed piece published in the San Diego Union-Tribune last year, Smith and U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., wrote that one of every 10 births in the country are to illegal immigrant mothers.
"Congress is long overdue in making sure the Fourteenth Amendment is correctly interpreted. Illegal immigration has become a crisis in America," Smith and Lungren wrote. "Passing a law to eliminate birth citizenship would help deter illegal immigration and reduce the burden on the taxpayer of paying for illegal immigrants' education, health care, and other government benefits."
Legal experts disagree about whether a constitutional amendment or a federal statute is needed to end birthright citizenship.
Levinson said such a decision would "have to be made at least by Congress, and I suspect most people would say by a constitutional amendment."
'Big problem' in Texas
As filed, Berman's bill would deny education and health care benefits. But later in the week, Berman said he had decided to remove them from his bill because the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed them as constitutional rights and because leaving them in would hurt his bill's chances. "We're not violating the Constitution," Berman said.
He said his legislation is necessary because the federal government is doing nothing about illegal immigration, which he claimed costs Texas taxpayers $3.5 billion a year, citing a report by the Lone Star Foundation, a think tank that touts what they call traditional family values and free enterprise.
The net cost of illegal immigration is among the most disputed topics in the nation's roiling immigration debate.
"(Illegal immigration is) a big problem in every district in Texas," Berman said. "People are getting sick and tired of spending money in hospitals, on education, in our prison system, in our courts."
Removing the carrot of government benefits, he said, is one way to discourage illegal immigration.
A member of the Texas House since 1999, Berman narrowly won re-election in March.
Berman's bill and others signal that Texas is joining a growing list of states and municipalities attempting to legislate responses to illegal immigration, long viewed as a federal responsibility.
Earlier this week, the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch became the first city in Texas to pass measures fining landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and declaring English the city's official language.
On the same day Berman filed his bill, the first day to file bills for the 2007 session, lawmakers introduced several measures targeting illegal immigration issues. Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, filed a bill authorizing the state to sue the federal government to recover costs incurred by illegal immigration and demanding that it enforce immigration laws.
Dan Kowalski, an Austin immigration attorney and editor of Bender's Immigration Bulletin, said states and cities are "trying to find that middle ground point in the law where they can legislate locally and that does not step over the (federal government's) pre-emption line."
But Kowalski added, "Whether it's the issue of the 14th Amendment or housing or local employment, state and local lawmakers need to know that all these issues have been carefully examined by constitutional law experts for decades. They should do a little research before filing bills or enacting local ordinances."
The 14th Amendment
Ratified in 1868, the amendment was designed to protect freed slaves and their children. Section 1 says: "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."
Yet another view for your consideration:
http://federalistblog.us/2005/12/birthright_citizenship_fable.html
I believe this Amendment needs to be amended to say that "all persons borne to a citizen of the United States..." meaning that at least one of the parents MUST be a citizen in order for citizenship to be automatic for the baby.
This is a ruling that doesn't even pass the smell test. How can taxpayers be expected to pay for the education of ILLEGAL occupants of our Country? Unless the law is taken before a CONSTITUTION-respecting USSC, rather than an agenda-driven Liberal court seeking to legislate from the bench, NO Constitutional provisions are safe from re-interpretation by the Liberals.
This crap has been occuring over and over again, and with the remarks of Chuckie Shumer, regariding "no conservative appointements will be allowed", it's obvious this will not only continue, but will grow....
If we can deport them or convict them of a crime that they commit, then they are subject to our jurisdiction. Ambassadors, consuls, diplomats, United Nations kakistocrats, and their families, employees, servants, and slaves fall outside our jurisdiction. Under international law, we cannot convict them of crimes that they do commit, such as illegal parking, enslavement, or even murder.
Instead of proposing a 700 mile fence, why doesn't one of our solons propose amending the Constitution to specifically say children of those here illegally do not get automatic citizenship or any rights associated with it?
Does citizenship mean anything anymore? Or is it just where you happen to drop your butt down?
I would hope that the Supreme Court would uphold this state law. If the Supreme Court wouldn't uphold it, I would hope that the state would defy the Supreme Court's unconstitutional decision.
Never happen!
Sorry, but just because liberals abuse the text of the Constitution to create rights that don't exist doesn't mean what conservatives can do the same. The text is clear -- if you're born here, you're a citizen. Anything else is sophistry.
If the parents cannot legally be called citizens of the US nor are legally following our laws, they are nor here within our jurisdiction.
If the Soviet Union launched a nuclear weapon and discharged it over one of our cities, was it here by or under our jurisdiction?
Jurisdiction, as it is mentioned at Dictionary.com, can be substituted with the word "authority" or "control".
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/jurisdiction
it does say that
"Senator Jacob Howard, co-author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, stated in 1866, "Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."
"The Fourteenth Amendment states,"(A) Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
However a proviso limits foreigners who have babies in America. It couldn't be clearer, children of foreigners, aliens or diplomats, who are subject to the jurisdiction of their home country, are ineligible for citizenship.
At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified we didn't have immigration laws. One hundred and thirty eight years later we are paying for the misinterpretation of it."
sw
About time!
the link on post three is a greatly condensed, easier to read of the prior one. The powers to be back then went as far as saying that a person born must have a FATHER that is a citizen. Not just a parent that is a citizen. This alone could be a good talking point since there is much information on the "fact" that a child finds their self identity through their fathers, and not their mothers. These great men prove to show that we have only gone downwards as a society.
Now THAT would be something! I believe the only place in Amerika right now that could defy the U.S. Supreme Court ruling without Federal action would be Kalifornia (which is basically a third world country, anyway).
A lot of our present environment began with the 14th Amendment and a lot of it is interpretation, not expressly stated. The birth thing is not the biggie although big enough to be noticeable.
since the US no longer has slavery....what good is this amendment??
oh yeah...it will help the lib/dems get more illegals to vote for them!!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.