Posted on 06/25/2010 11:33:53 AM PDT by Christian_Capitalist
Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul said Thursday he would support amending the Constitution to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States.
Paul, the libertarian Republican nominee for the Senate who's also the son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), said courts should review the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," to determine whether or not it should apply to the children of illegal immigrants.
If those court challenges fail, Paul said in an interview with the conservative blog Right Wing News, then he would support an amendment that would have the effect of denying citizenship to children of illegal immigrants who are born in the U.S.
"But the 14th amendment actually says that you will be a citizen as long as you are under the jurisdiction of the United States," Paul said. "Many argue that these children that are born to illegal aliens are really still under the jurisdiction of the Mexican government."
"I think we need to fight that out in the courts," he added. "If we lose, then I think we should amend the Constitution because I don't think the 14th amendment was meant to apply to illegal aliens. It was meant to apply to the children of slaves."
Paul has previously suggested that children of illegal immigrants should not be considered citizens of the United States, but appears not to have directly addressed whether the Constitution should be amended to clear up the matter.
Some nonprofits and lawmakers have also fretted over the growing practice of "birth tourism," where pregnant women from foreign nations pay to travel to the United States to deliver, with the intent of obtaining U.S. citizenship for their child.
Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/105287-rand-paul-favors-amendment-to-deny-citizenship-to-children-of-illegals-born-in-us
The contents of this site are © 2010 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsisiary of News Communications, Inc.
Do you intend to count it as a "Win" for yourself if, unwilling to bash Paul for his righteous stance on Illegal Immigration, the Paulphobics just sulk off and start their own thread?
These pregnant Mexicans coming here so their babies are granted US citizenship is a fraud.
This should have been done 25 years ago...
You don’t need a Constitutional amendment. All Congress has to do is pass a law enforcing the 14th Amendment.
You know things are deteriorating rapidly when ya see illegals pushing strollers standing at every corner of every intersection, while the lines from our abused, overrun hospitals extend to the borders, with non-paying illegal alien females.
It's really disgusting....
Good for Rand Paul.
Reagan, Bush and Bush got us one amnesty, another amnesty attempt and no attempt such as this to correctly define citizenship.
So if getting called a “paul” something is what it takes, go for it.
We haven’t heard any such common sense and popular proposal from any of the Presidential hopefuls.
*I* agree with you. Hopefully, the Courts will agree with you as well.
Rand Paul is simply hedging his bets with the Amendment suggestion, in case the Courts don't acknowledge that Illegal Aliens are not "under the jurisdiction of the United States" per the 14th Amendment.
Ideally, we do it your way, without cluttering up the Constitution further. And that's Rand Paul's "opening ante", anyway.
22 emergency rooms in L.A. County are shut down.
And Whooping Cough in L.A. is an epidemic now.
“This should have been done 25 years ago...”
That would have been 1985, the year before Reagan’s amnesty; which makes no mention of reforming anchor babies, and left the matter with unacceptable documents for employees/employers.
The nation was not over run with upwards of 30 million illegals in 1986. The illegals were not marching through our streets by the millions, waving foreign flags like was done under the pro illegal alien Bush administration...
The problem was, there was a massive surge after that 1986 mistake. Reagen never expect that and he would never support an amnesty today. Unlike Bush who recenlty pushed for amnesty until his last day in office.
“Looking back, Reagan’s amnesty was somewhat understandable... “
It wasn’t to me, at the time and it isn’t now.
He made plenty of big mistakes, like not punishing Iran for hostage events, emboldening radical islam and we later found out about that.
Cutting taxes but not spending.
The nation was not over run with upwards of 30 million illegals in 1986. The illegals were not marching through our streets by the millions, waving foreign flags like was done under the pro illegal alien Bush administration...
The problem was, there was a massive surge after that 1986 mistake. Reagen never expect that and he would never support an amnesty today. Unlike Bush who recenlty pushed for amnesty until his last day in office.
It wasn’t to me, at the time and it isn’t now.
I don't think you read the above. You cannot compare 1986 to now in regards to people here illegally.
Question:
Do you think if Reagan were alive *today*, give what has happened with our borders the past couple of decades, would Reagan support an amnesty like Bush did recently?
Be honest now.
I know that Reagan came from California, my home almost all my life.
We were hit by illegal immigration from the first, and the hardest.
The fact it continued is not proof it continued due to, or not due to amnesty.
The fact is no President since Eisenhower took illegal immigration seriously enough to try hard to prevent it.
What Reagan might do today is speculation; what he did was history.
Don’t get me wrong, I think of Reagan as the best President in my adult lifetime. He was a western state Republican in the Goldwater libertarian mold, more than this website recognizes.
California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico have a lot of hispanics going back to territorial times and before. I’m certain he would not go for the hispanic bashing which is so popular in some factions.
In November and in 2012 the GOP should run on hardline immigration enforcement and reform. It has become a national issue, whereas it was more regional in Reagan’s time.
Not if the Court continues to respect stare decisis, which is likely especially when the decision is from 100+ years ago. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), Gray writing for the majority said...
impossible to construe the words "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," in the opening sentence [of the Fourteenth Amendment], as less comprehensive than the words "within its jurisdiction," in the concluding sentence of the same section; or to hold that persons "within the jurisdiction" of one of the States of the Union are not "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States."...every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States.
emphasis added
The Court revisited this very excerpt in Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), (another horrifically decided case) almost 100 years later, and found it compelling, so much in fact that it cited Gray's opinion, and expanded from there....
"one early commentator noted, given the historical emphasis on geographic territoriality, bounded only, if at all, by principles of sovereignty and allegiance, no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment "jurisdiction" can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful. See C. Bouve, Exclusion and Expulsion of Aliens in the United States 425-427 (1912)"The country should fix our problem with certain kinds of birthright citizenship, but it's going to take a constitutional amendment to do it, unfortunately.
Feel free to answer the question:
Do you think if Reagan were alive *today*, give what has happened with our borders the past couple of decades, would Reagan support an amnesty like Bush did recently?
“Do you think if Reagan were alive *today*, give what has happened with our borders the past couple of decades, would Reagan support an amnesty like Bush did recently?”
I have no idea. “What has happened” goes more than two decades; try five.
Reagan must have believed in the concept of amnesty, because he gave one.
I opposed the amnesty at the time, and reduced my admiration of Reagan accordingly, at that time.
More important than guessing about what Reagan might have done today, is what political figures do now.
I have no idea.
I suspected you would not be honest and avoid the question.
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