There are parts of Fox News I cannot watch. There is that self-important blowhard...
...There is that worldwide ambulance chaser.
Posted on 08/06/2010 5:32:26 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
There are parts of Fox News I cannot watch. There is that self-important blowhard. There is that worldwide ambulance chaser. But as often as I can, I watch their news program at 6 p.m. My favorite part of that program is the lightning round, and especially the contributions of Charles Krauthammer.
Charles normally dissects an issue with precision and accuracy. But not today, the 5th of August. He posed the issue whether a Congressman was right to say we need to amend the 14th Amendment to deal with the problem of anchor babies. Krauthammer made the mistake of not reading the Amendment before discussing it. So did all the other participants in the discussion.
Krauthammer correctly stated that “we should not amend the Constitution to deal with such a small problem.” He missed the opportunity to point out that the Congressman, like much of the American press and punditry, are asking the wrong question and therefore getting the wrong answer.
Let’s read the document, and see where that leads. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….” Who gets to say who are “subject to the jurisdiction”?
Skip to the last sentence of the Amendment. It is a clause that appears in many of the Amendments. “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
There you have it, in the plain language of the Constitution itself. Congress can define by statute who is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. It has long since done so with regard to children born to diplomatic personnel. A child born of Japanese diplomatic personal who is born in a D.C. hospital is Japanese at birth, not American. Why is that so? Because Congress wrote a law that says so.
Congress can solve the anchor baby problem immediately by a statute. It simply has to say that a child born of a Mexican citizen who has paid a coyote to get smuggled into the US, and risked death in the deserts of the Southwest to get to an Arizona hospital is not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US. It can further resolve the problem by ending all preferences for all known relatives of a prior anchor baby to come into the US.
Families don’t need to be “united” in the US. They will be just as united back in Mexico, or any other nation from which pregnant women engage in “citizenship tourism.”
Those who favor open borders, where anyone who can sneak into the US is entitled to all privileges of Americans, favor the anchor baby route to make this so. After all, it’s for the children. And they add, we shouldn’t mess with the Constitution.
But the Constitution is in no danger, and both mothers and babies will be in less danger, if Congress simply writes a law to deal with the problem. And the 14th Amendment gives Congress that very power.
Why would able reporters and even college professors write and say in the press that “the Constitution is in danger,” when it isn’t? These false sources are pretending that the Constitution is in danger to keep the people from realizing that statement is false, and the solution depends only on competent Members of Congress reading and following the Constitution.
Having watched and read Charles Krauthammer’s work for decades, I know he is not corrupt, distorting the Constitution to achieve a predetermined result. Instead, Charles just failed to do his homework. But still, he was dead wrong, and contributed to the public misunderstanding of this issue.
The truth is, as that obnoxious commercial says, “It’s so easy, even a caveman could do it.” Well, if a caveman can do it, so can a Congressman (or most of them can). Rewrite the law. Solve this problem, without spending a single dime on it. Now.
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About the Author: John Armor practiced before the Supreme Court for 33 years. John_Armor@aya,yale.edu His latest book, to appear in September, is on Thomas Paine. www.TheseAreTheTimes.us
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John / Billybob
Krauthammer was correct in this statement Bob. In fact he was off by about $12,500.
Read the news - Dealerships are marking the volt up an average of $20,000. Covers the $7500 rebate and puts an additional 12-13 large in the dealers pocket.
Volts are stickering for $61,000
Thanks, John, you are spot-on, as usual.
Supply and demand. I’m all for capitalist auto dealers soaking the loony libs for as much as they can get!
Yep, gotta admit it when I’m wrong. After doing more study I admit that one does have to be born here and under the jurisdiction to be a citizen at birth.
But, that leads to a problem with your other assertion that they just make a law that illegal alliens are not under the jurisdiction without changing Article 14 doesn’t it? Seems if they are not subject to the laws of the United States we would have a whole set of additional problems.
” Charles Krauthammer”
He is a liberal. He will move up to the line crossing into being an American but then pulls back and takes the Marxist view every time.
Without a doubt that idiot has never so much as read the United States Constitution. Not once. He constantly misquotes it. He has never read on word of the founding fathers. He constantly misquotes them and wrongly states their positions.
John / Billybob
I like Charles quite a bit, but he’s wrong sometimes. If it’s a difference of opinion about Constitutional law of Charles vs John Armour, I would pick John.
Good article, Congressman BB.
I get a virus warning as well. I’m using Firefox.
Those two were the first that came to my mind :-)
No, foreign citizens in our country are subject to US jurisdicition, just like any citizen. They are required to obey our laws and can be punished for any violatoins just like us. Even if they are here illegally.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….” Who gets to say who are “subject to the jurisdiction”?Let’s read the document, and see where that leads. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….” Who gets to say who are “subject to the jurisdiction”?
Skip to the last sentence of the Amendment. It is a clause that appears in many of the Amendments. “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
There you have it, in the plain language of the Constitution itself. Congress can define by statute who is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
I think that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" speaks for it's self.
If someone has a baby who is not a citizen, they are subject to the jurisdiction of their country of citizenship, not the USA.
Therefore, the baby would not have the anchor of citizenship just because he/she is born in the United States if the parents are not citizens.
“The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”Perhaps you are right that Congress can define by statute who is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United StatesThere you have it, in the plain language of the Constitution itself. Congress can define by statute who is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
But the wording says that Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
There is no reason to define what the amendment already defines IMO.
It seems that only the Supreme Court can decide on the defining issue. We know what they would do, but the wording is clear enough as written.
We know what Justice Brennan stated (unconstitutionally I might add):
"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."That statement is contrary to what the 14th actually says. The Supreme Court should NOT use their opinions to interpret the Constitution, but the should be constitutionally aware enough to see what the wording means. He didn't obviously.
So, uh, why didn't the Republican Congress and the Alleged Republican GW Boosh pass it?
Had they done so, we wouldn't be having this little discussion
What is being arrested, detained, and deported by a superior power if not "being subject to its jurisdiction"?
If illegals were NOT subject to our jurisdiction, then they would not be properly before our courts for removal hearings or hardship waivers.
Of course, our jurisdiction, at least in its common English meaning, extends to these illegals. Here we are exercising our jurisdiction:
John / Billybob
John / Billybob
Dude's a lib fraud
Leading yet again to the question....why haven't the "Republicans" bothered to put any political muscle behind either Mr. Stump's bill or Mr. Deal's bill?
As you pointed out, all it takes is a statute.
Which Mr. Krauthammer knows, but deceitfully refuses to say so.
I knew vaguely that dual citizenship for a US citizen is allowed now, but was told in childhood (1950s) that it was not allowed. I googled to see if I could find anything about the change; this site gave the most succinct answer I found:
But I thought US law didn't permit one to be a dual citizen -- that if you were (by birth or otherwise), you either had to give up the other citizenship when you came of age, or else you'd lose your US status. And that if you became a citizen of another country, you'd automatically lose your US citizenship. So what's all this talk about dual citizenship?It indeed used to be the case in the US that you couldn't hold dual citizenship (except in certain cases if you had dual citizenship from birth or childhood, in which case some Supreme Court rulings -- Perkins v. Elg (1939), Mandoli v. Acheson (1952), and Kawakita v. U.S. (1952) -- permitted you to keep both). However, most of the laws forbidding dual citizenship were struck down by the US Supreme Court in two cases: a 1967 decision, Afroyim v. Rusk, as well as a second ruling in 1980, Vance v. Terrazas.
Rules against dual citizenship still apply to some extent -- at least in theory -- to people who wish to become US citizens via naturalization. The Supreme Court chose to leave in place the requirement that new citizens must renounce their old citizenship during US naturalization. However, in practice, the State Department is no longer doing anything in the vast majority of situations where a new citizen's "old country" refuses to recognize the US renunciation and continues to consider the person's original citizenship to be in effect.
The official US State Department policy on dual citizenship today is that the United States does not favor it as a matter of policy because of various problems they feel it may cause, but the existence of dual citizenship is recognized (i.e., accepted) as a fact of life. That is, if you ask them if you ought to become a dual citizen, they will recommend against doing it; but if you tell them you are a dual citizen, they'll almost always say it's OK.
I can't help wondering if the change in the law on dual citizenship played some part in the current mess.
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