President Trump’s decision to write an Executive Order regarding the citizenship of children born to illegal aliens has produced a broad national debate on the constitutionality of his proposal. Opponents claim that the move would violate Section One 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.”
The practical and financial need to address the issue is clear, as noted in statistics provided by The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS):
- In 2014, one in five births (791,000) in the United States was to an immigrant mother (legal or illegal). CIS best estimate is that legal immigrants accounted for 12.4 percent (494,000) of all births, and illegal immigrants accounted for 7.5 percent (297,000).
- The 297,000 births per year to illegal immigrants is larger than the total number of births in any state other than California and Texas. It is also larger than the total number of births in 16 states plus the District of Columbia, combined.
- The estimated 28,000 births to illegal immigrants in just the Los Angeles metro area is larger than the total number of births in 14 states and the District of Columbia.
- Among the native-born, a large share of new mothers (42 percent) are either uninsured or on Medicaid. The rate is even higher among new mothers who are legal immigrants (47 percent) and higher still for new mothers who are in the United States illegally (67 percent). Almost all of these births are likely paid for by taxpayers.
- Of all births likely paid for by taxpayers, about one in four (429,000) was to an immigrant (legal or illegal). Illegal immigrants account for 11 percent (198,000) of all publicly funded births, and legal immigrants are another 13 percent (231,000).
- CIS estimates that the cost to taxpayers for births to immigrants (legal and illegal) is roughly $5.3 billion — $2.4 billion of which is for illegal immigrants.
The specially levitra for sale online formulated Sinrex is absorbed directly into the bloodstream, and you will start to notice the results after 15 to 20 minutes of consuming the medication. Thus, this inability of the flow of blood in the arteries connected to buy levitra in uk the penis, the reverse pressure pulls extra blood from the body into the corpus cavernosa. Kamagra Oral Jelly comes as an excellent helping hand in your days of more cheapest cialis total unhappiness when you no longer enjoy your marital life. Most of organizations gives a path for the new solid anagen hair to develop. cialis online pill respitecaresa.org
Objections to the President’s plan center on whether the policy change requires a Constitutional Amendment. It is helpful to understand the historical context.
The 14th, ratified in 1868, was one of three amendments passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, which were intended to abolish slavery and establish civil and legal rights for black Americans. The 13th ended slavery and the 15th prohibited restrictions on voting due to race, color, or “previous condition of servitude.” It is clear, then, that the purpose of the 14th amendment was to address the citizenship of ex-slaves.
Following the conclusion of fighting between the Union and the Confederacy, the Reconstruction-era process of incorporating the Southern states back into the national government faced a number of obstacles, including the actions by formerly rebellious jurisdictions to oppress freed blacks. Democrats continued to oppose the Republican move to recognize the former slaves as full-fledged citizens.
As History.com explains, “Though the Union victory had given some 4 million slaves their freedom, the question of freed blacks’ status in the postwar South was still very much unresolved… Even as former slaves fought to assert their independence and gain economic autonomy during the earliest years of Reconstruction, white landowners acted to control the labor force through a system similar to the one that had existed during slavery.”
The need for the 14th Amendment to establish recognition of ex-slaves as full-fledged citizens was clear. But others born in the U.S. were not covered by it. It was not until June 2 of 1924 that Native Americans were given citizenship, when President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, which provided that “all noncitizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States…”
A close reading of the first sentence of 14th Amendment also provides a conclusion that it does not apply to births to illegal aliens and tourists:
“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.”
Even if the clear historical context of the 14th Amendment as a means to protect ex-slaves is wholly ignored, the existence of that key part of the very first sentence specifically refutes any argument that it applies to births of illegal aliens or others merely temporarily within the nation.
Illustration: Battle of Stone River during the Civil War (Smithsonian Institution)