'Birthright Citizenship' Policy May End For nearly 140 years, any child born on U.S. soil, even to an illegal immigrant, has been given American citizenship. Now, some conservatives in Congress are determined to change that.
According to the Los Angeles Times, A group of 92 lawmakers in the House will attempt next week to force a vote on legislation that would revoke the principle of "birthright citizenship," part of a broader effort to discourage illegal immigration.
The push to change the citizenship policy is backed by some conservative activists and academics. But it could cause problems for the White House and the Republican Party, which have been courting Latino voters. GOP officials fear the effort to eliminate birthright citizenship will alienate a key constituency, even if the legislation ultimately is rejected by Congress or the courts.
The principle at issue rests on the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 to guarantee the rights of emancipated slaves: "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."
According to the Times, some lawmakers advocating tougher immigration laws contend that the amendment has been misinterpreted for decades. Conservatives maintain that although illegal immigrants are subject to criminal prosecution and are expected to abide by U.S. laws and regulations, they are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors and their children therefore fall outside the scope of its protection
Those who want to change the interpretation acknowledge that illegal immigration is largely driven by the hunger for jobs at U.S. wages. But they also say that for some immigrants, automatic citizenship provides another compelling incentive to cross the border. They note that the United States is one of few major industrialized nations that grant birthright citizenship with no qualifications.
"Illegal immigrants are coming for many different reasons," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, one of the lawmakers pushing for the House measure. "Some are coming for jobs. Some are coming to give birth. Some are coming to commit crimes. Addressing this problem is needed if we're going to try to combat illegal immigration on all fronts."
But the proposal may rankle Latino voters.
"This is about attempting to deal with a serious policy problem by going after people's babies. It doesn't have to become law for this kind of proposal to offend people," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group. "This one really hits a nerve."
The 92-member House Immigration Reform Caucus, headed by Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., wants to attach an amendment revoking birthright citizenship to a broader immigration bill scheduled to be taken up sometime next week. Although several revocation bills have been introduced in the House, the most likely one to move forward would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.
There is no official tally of the number of children born to illegal immigrants; unofficial estimates range from 100,000 to 350,000 a year. Smith and other critics of current immigration law say that 1 in 10 U.S. births and 1 in 5 births in California are to women who have entered the country illegally.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/12/10/104526.shtml*FW Note:The 14th Amendment largely defines citizenship rights and whom they are avilable to.
However, the Fourteenth Amendment does not automatically extend to children born to alien parents at war with the United States, or to the children of diplomatic agents, or to American Indians, or to illegal aliens.
There is no evidence that these people intend to settle in the United States, or even that they have a right to do so.
There is no evidence that they consent to be subject to the sovereignty of the United States, or seek to settle in the United States or to renounce their Mexican or other citizenship. All evidence is that they retain allegiance to whatever country might have spawned them.
Section 1401(a) of Title 8 of the United States Code defines a U.S. citizen as "a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." This law uses the same language as the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Birth on U.S. territory has never been an absolute claim to citizenship.
What they intend to do is recodify and enforce existing law. It's only taken 140 years to do it.
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