Posted on 10/30/2018 2:48:25 AM PDT by be-baw
President Trump plans to sign an executive order that would remove the right to citizenship for babies of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born on U.S. soil, he said yesterday in an exclusive interview for "Axios on HBO," a new four-part documentary news series debuting on HBO this Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT.
Why it matters: This would be the most dramatic move yet in Trump's hardline immigration campaign, this time targeting "anchor babies" and "chain migration." And it will set off another stand-off with the courts, as Trump’s power to do this through executive action is debatable to say the least.
Trump told Axios that he has run the idea of ending birthright citizenship by his counsel and plans to proceed with the highly controversial move, which certainly will face legal challenges.
"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," Trump said, declaring he can do it by executive order. When told says that's very much in dispute, Trump replied: "You can definitely do it with an Act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order."
"We're the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States ... with all of those benefits," Trump continued. "It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end." "It's in the process. It'll happen ... with an executive order."
The president expressed surprise that Axios knew about his secret plan: "I didn't think anybody knew that but me. I thought I was the only one. "
Behind the scenes:
Swan had been working for weeks on a story on Trump’s plans for birthright citizenship, based on conversations with several sources, including one close to the White House Counsel’s office. The story wasn’t ready for prime time, but Swan figured he'd spring the question on Trump in the interview.
The legal challenges would force the courts to decide on a constitutional debate over the 14th Amendment, which 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."
Be smart: Few immigration and constitutional scholars believe it is within the president's power to change birthright citizenship, former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel Lynden Melmed tells Axios.
But some conservatives have argued that the 14th Amendment was only intended to provide citizenship to children born in the U.S. to lawful permanent residents — not to unauthorized immigrants or those on temporary visas. John Eastman, a constitutional scholar and director of Chapman University's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, told Axios that the Constitution has been misapplied over the past 40 or so years. He says the line "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" originally referred to people with full, political allegiance to the U.S. — green card holders and citizens.
Michael Anton, a former national security official in the Trump administration, recently took up this argument in the Washington Post.
Anton said that Trump could, via executive order, "specify to federal agencies that the children of noncitizens are not citizens" simply because they were born on U.S. soil. (It’s not yet clear whether Trump will take this maximalist argument, though his previous rhetoric suggests there’s a good chance.) But others — such as Judge James C. Ho, who was appointed by Trump to Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in New Orleans — say the line in the amendment refers to the legal obligation to follow U.S. laws, which applies to all foreign visitors (except diplomats) and immigrants. He has written that changing how the 14th Amendment is applied would be "unconstitutional."
Between the lines: Until the 1960s, the 14th Amendment was never applied to undocumented or temporary immigrants, Eastman said.
Between 1980 and 2006, the number of births to unauthorized immigrants — which opponents of birthright citizenship call "anchor babies" — skyrocketed to a peak of 370,000, according to a 2016 study by Pew Research. It then declined slightly during and following the Great Recession.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that children born to immigrants who are legal permanent residents have citizenship. But those who claim the 14th Amendment should not apply to everyone point to the fact that there has been no ruling on a case specifically involving undocumented immigrants or those with temporary legal status.
The bottom line: If Trump follows through on the executive order, "the courts would have to weigh in in a way they haven't," Eastman said.
The full interview will air on "Axios on HBO" this Sunday, Nov. 4, at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT.
Is automatic birthright citizenship for children of all legal and illegal aliens expressly required by the U.S. Constitution? On its face, the answer is “no.” No language in the Constitution specifically addresses how the children of foreigners must be dealt with in regards to citizenship. The 14th Amendment confers citizenship through “naturalization” or by birth to persons “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, but provides no guidance on when an alien is to be regarded as subject to U.S. jurisdiction.""
There is plenty of guidance on what subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. means. Plenty.
All we need to do is look to the words spoken by those who were the framers of the 14th Amendment:
Original intent of the 14th Amendment
Senator Jacob Howard (served on the Senate Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the 14th) clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by stating:
"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. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country."
Sen. Lyman Trumbull, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, author of the Thirteenth Amendment, and the one who inserted the phrase (All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the States wherein they reside):
[T]he provision is, that 'all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.' That means 'subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.' What do we mean by 'complete jurisdiction thereof?' Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.
Sen. W. Williams:
I understand the words here, 'subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,' to mean fully and completely subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
Senator Jacob Howard states the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment published in the Congressional Record May 30, 1866.
https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=073/llcg073.db&recNum=11
yes Mr President. end chain migration, now. build the wall quickly. the 14th Amendment is with us, not them.
He won’t be able to “terminate” it.
He is just getting the ball rolling. This is a Third Rail issue for the Rats.
It isn’t clear at all to me that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” doesn’t include the children of at least some non-citizens. The “author” doesn’t get to decide what it means. The citizenship clause isn’t the law because Senator Howard said so. It is the law because Congress voted to propose it and the state legislatures voted to ratify it. The question—which would be answered by a court—is what did THEY think it meant when they voted to propose and ratify it.
Illegal Invaders are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, they are Trespassers who purposely violate our Laws.
I would think that Resident Aliens with Green Cards would be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States since they are allowed to live here with the approval of the Federal Government.
Have you been paying attention for the last 50 years or 60 million abortions? Legitimately or defacto its certainly seems as though they are as a practical matter. I'm trying to think of a recent example where their ruling has been summarily ignored - I can't
Green Card holders would not be included either. Why? Because they are not fully and only subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. They are still under the jurisdiction of their original/native country.
If the 14th applied to Green Card holders, who are here lawfully, the 14th would also apply to ambassadors (for example), as they too are here lawfully.
Original Intent.
We must look to the framers, and what they actually said, for what they meant by the words they used in the amendment. Not what someone thinks they meant 100 years later.
Their words, and their intent is fully documented.
Go Trump!
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The original intent was not to have babies dropped from Honduras, El Salvadore, etc.
BS
Could be his most profound accomplishment.
I will not believe it’s true ( won’t allow myself ) until it’s
done. It’s just too amazing to believe.
I so pray this is correct.
[ The USSC has *never* ruled on this issue and it’s high time it did. No other country in the world allows this. Only the United States of America and that’s only because it’s been forced upon the country by the Federal Courts and liberal judges.
That’s coming to an end, thankfully. ]
It won;t stop that buzzard Ginsberg who appreciates the courts of other countries from trying to rule against it because she is a partisan hack.
Brilliant caller on Rush made the point that
it is not the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that gives birth right citizenship to the children of illegals or people on temporary visas - it was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
For a century after the 14th Amendment, such people did not receive citizenship.
It will probably require legislation to permanently fix the anchor baby loophole, but there is no problem with the Constitution.
I don't think he can do it via EO.
The critical question concerns the "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". It can easily be argued that since the parents were not citizens, that clause does not apply to them. They are subjects of another country, not America.
That doesn't make any sense. If your interpretation is correct, everything following the "and" is completely unnecessary and redundant.
As just a point of my own curiosity, when asked what state he was born in, what does he say?
Not before we pee on his traitorous corpse...
Yes, they did:
The President has it within his statutory and constitutional authority to suspend all grants of asylum, should he choose to do so. This was reaffirmed by the SCOTUS in June of this year, in the case, Trump v. Hawaii, No. 17-965 in the Supreme Court of the United States.
“8USC 1182(f) and 1185(a) By its terms, §1182(f) exudes deference to the President in every clause. It entrusts to the President the decisions whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions. It thus vests the President with “ample power” to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated in the INA.”
About 275,000 babies were born to unauthorized-immigrant parents in 2014, or about 7% of the 4 million births in the U.S. that year, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on government data. This represented a decline from 330,000 in 2009, at the end of the Great Recession.
Births to unauthorized immigrants accounted for about one-in-three births (32%) to foreign-born mothers in the U.S. in 2014, according to the estimates.
Pew Research
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