The 14th Amendment Debate – USA Gov Policy

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 14^th 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.

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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 13^th ended slavery and the 15^thprohibited restrictions on voting due to race, color, or “previous condition of servitude.” It is clear, then, that the purpose of the 14^th 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 14^th 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 14^th 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 14^th 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)

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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