Prominent Legal Experts Call Repeal of 14th Amendment a Red Herring: The Real Solution is Immigration Reform

Yesterday, legal experts from across the political spectrum, including the deans of the Liberty University School of Law, the University of California Davis School of Law and a professor of law at West Point, came together on a national telephonic conference to discuss the constitutional implications of recent calls by Republican Senators to change the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that grants citizenship to the children of immigrants born in the United States. Experts agreed that this latest political move is a misguided attack on immigrants and a distraction from real Congressional action on a practical and lasting solution to our broken immigration system.

Mat Staver, Dean of conservative Liberty University School of Law and the Founder and Chairman of the Liberty Counsel explained the origins of the 14th Amendment and why immigration issues would not be solved by its repeal. “The debate about repealing the 14th Amendment is just political rhetoric. The attempt to amend the constitution is highly unlikely; in contrast you can fix the issue more justly through legislation. A constitutional amendment would only look at one narrow problem; a comprehensive reform would secure the border, enforce our laws and provide an opportunity of earned legal status for the undocumented immigrants living in our shadows. We need to keep our eyes focused on the ball…we need comprehensive immigration reform.”

“The debate over birthright citizenship is a red herring and a smoke screen from the larger discussion on immigration reform,” said Kevin Johnson, Dean of UC Davis School of Law and Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicano/a Studies. “It would require a Herculean effort to change the constitution…It would take a number of years and it would engage the nation in a furious debate. There are number of bad policy reasons why the abolition of birthright citizenship does not make much sense.” Dean Johnson pointed to the unsustainability of the current immigration system and the need to fundamentally fix it: “By almost all accounts the current system is broken…Without comprehensive immigration reform we will have a continuation of what we have right now: mass removals, mass detentions, deaths on the border, more human trafficking and a large undocumented population. The true issue and the one that we really should focus on and I hope the nation will focus on is comprehensive immigration reform.”

Margaret Stock, Immigration attorney and Law School Professor, West Point and Univ. of Alaska Anchorage explained that a repeal of the 14th amendment would create enormous unnecessary hurdles: “You cannot take away citizenship retroactively. If we amend or reinterpret the 14th amendment, it’s only going to affect people born in the future. It will not solve the current problem of millions and millions of undocumented people here and their children.” Attorney Stock highlighted the vast contributions of current U.S. citizens benefited by the 14th amendment, including prominent ones such as Governor Bobby Jindal: “Right now we have hundreds of thousands of citizens, who are children of immigrants, serving our country well. They are serving in our military, some of them are politicians, and some of them are national leaders of industry. If we deprive similar people of citizenship, we will not only reduce the nation’s tax base but America will be loosing a tremendous amount of manpower.”

To access a recording of the briefing on birthright citizenship, please visit http://www.conservativesforcir.org/

KJ