The pertinent part of the Constitution is that pesky Section 1 of the 14th Amendment: "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."
A lot of ink has been spilled about the word "jurisdiction"; however, among Constitutional scholars there are now some wispy but hopeful signs that "subject to the jurisdiction" does NOT mean "within the borders of the U.S., no matter how they got there."
Maybe we should build a bunch of these.
Deport the workers and their families will follow.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
The following was posted to joe 6-pack by carry okie in another thread on this subject:
Nevertheless, the anchor baby issue will need to be dealt with as a Constitutional Amendment. To read the 14th Amendment like we “want” it to be read, and not as it is actually written puts those of us on the political right on the same intellectual and legal plane as those on the left who like to loosely read the 2nd Amendment.Most people regard the citizenship clause as self-explanitory, believing that to be "subject to the jurisdiction" all one has to do is to be within the territory of the United States. Thus they conclude that children of illegal aliens are obviously US citizens.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
If I'm driving in Britain, I have to obey their traffic laws because I am WITHIN British jurisdiction. That doesn't make me a British SUBJECT. Now, lest you think there is a difference between that usage of the word "subject" and the one in the Citizenship Clause, let's consult the Bouvier Law Dictionary 1856 edition, as it is the one most commonly used at the time the 14th Amendment was drafted and ratified. In this instance, the contextual usage of "subject" in the definition is exactly the same as that employed in the Citizenship Clause:
SUBJECT, persons, government. An individual member of a nation, who is subject to the laws; this term is used in contradistiction to citizen, which is applied to the same individual when considering his political rights. Thus the seemingly "obvious" reading of the Citizenship Clause isn't at all correct, simply because illegal aliens are not "subject" to the jurisdiction as defined by the common understanding of the term at the time the 14th Amendment was drafted, passed, and ratified. That is the law.2. In monarchical governments, by subject is meant one who owes permanent allegiance to the monarch. Vide Body politic; Greenl. Ev. §286; Phil. & Am. on Ev. 732, n. 1.
Hard to say it better than that!