More on the Proposed Abolition of Birthright Citizenship

Congressmen Brian Bilbray (R-CA) and I yesterday discussed the latest proposals to try to eliminate birthright citizenship on Southern California Public Radio.  Expressing a minority view not even embraced by Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Bilbray contended that the 14th Amendment does not need to be amended to eliminate birthright citizenship but that Congress could do so by statute.  Bilbray raised the specter of “birth tourism” as one reason for eliminating birthright citizenship.  He also suggested that the 14th Amendment might be reinterpreted and intimated that the birthright citizenship rule embraced by the 14th Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court is some kind of “urban legend.”

The discussion largely focused on the meaning of Section 1 of the Fourteenth 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.” 

I must say that I was heartened by one of the comments on the discussion on the Southern California Public Radio website website:

 “As the law professor explained, you are `subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States if you are present in it. So, even if you are undocumented and unauthorized, if you committ a crime, you are subject to jurisdiction of any of the states of the US and of the federal goverment. You will be arrested and prosecuted. If you commit a civil infringment, you can be sued, by anybody in US in US Courts and/or a state court. How hard is that for you to understand? This is actually a pretty easy concept. A government could hardly operate if people were present within its boundaries and `not subject to a jurisdiction.’ You are obviously not a lawyer, because this is first day of class, of the first year, in any good law school. Basic. Basic. Basic.”

Maybe there is hope!

On another note, it is no coincidence that the current emergence of the birthright citizenship issue comes after the latest skirmish over Arizona’s SB 1070 in the federal court.  Politicians, including Senator Graham and Congressmen Bilbray, are seeking to tap into the popular concerns with immigration by exacerbating fears of “birth tourism”, “anchor babies”, and the like, to go after birthright citizenship.  As should be clear by now, the nation needs some kind of comprehensive immigration reform to really address immigration at the national level, provide meaningful solutions, and reduce the efforts to make political hay out of peoples’ fears.

KJ