The birthright citizenship argument

We would not be talking about the birthright citizenship argument if we could just secure our border and update our immigration laws sensibly instead of allowing uncontrolled, which is a costly mistake and drain on our society.

But in our heated political environment, that is not likely to happen anytime soon; our outdated immigration laws have failed to keep pace with the flood of illegals crossing our borders daily. No one can even pinpoint with any certainty just how many illegal immigrants live among us. It eludes me as to why the greatest country on earth can’t solve this problem and this is surely the problem that if left unsolved will be the reason for our final demise.

President Trump has been right all along when he said “if you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country.” The fact is our border is a joke, a wall has been talked about for far too long (even long before President Trump) and for all the wasted words, we could have had it built already. Immigrants flood in because they know they have a real chance of getting here to the “promised land” easier than applying through our antiquated broken legal system. That is not their fault; it is our country’s fault.

The intent of the 14th Amendment, which was one of the reconstruction amendments was to deal with granting slaves and their native born children citizenship. After the country was torn apart in the War of the States, this was the one of the results that served to correct the stain slavery had on our history. It righted a wrong that was even perpetrated by the dreaded Supreme Court decision in the 1857 Dred Scott case indicating that a “negro whose ancestors were imported into (the United States) and sold as slaves, whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen.”

In the Slaughter-House Cases of 1873, the Supreme Court said the phrase “subject to its jurisdiction was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign states born within the United States. In the 1884 Elk vs. Wilkins, the court ruled that John Elk did not meet the jurisdiction requirement of the 14th Amendment because he was a member of an Indian tribe at the time of his birth. The court concluded that although Elk was born on U.S. soil, he did not meet the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof ” requirement because it required that he “not merely be subject in some respect of degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction.”

So, as far as the birthright citizenship argument, I will merely say this. I do not believe it was the intent of our legislators who wrote the 14th Amendment to allow millions of migrants to come here unchecked and illegally to populate the United States with millions of “birthright” babies who are assumed to be automatic citizens.

I do believe if that happened to the degree it has in recent modern times, our forefathers of that day would have gotten their act together and rewrote the 14th Amendment to read in a more clear fashion. If a person is simply physically in our country, but a citizen of another country (i.e. jurisdiction) then I do not believe a child born of that person should automatically be a citizen, although one can interpret the wording of the 14th Amendment to conclude just that.

Surely it is time to revisit this issue, but first and foremost we must secure our border and update our immigration laws sensibly so all citizens by right and those who seek to become American citizens legally are afforded the same opportunities of our great country.

Liz Conti is a resident of Norwalk.