Words have meanings - especially when it comes to Amendments to The Constitution of the United States!

 

A pocket guide to why Trump is correct on birthright citizenship

By Andrea Widburg www.americanthinker.com

I was having lunch with some conservative gal pals yesterday, and the subject got around to birthright citizenship. I was quickly able to sum up the arguments in favor of Donald Trump’s position (many of which have been made on this site), so I thought I’d give you a handy-dandy guide to these arguments.

The predicate for this discussion, of course, is this clause from the 14th 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. (Emphasis mine.)

One. English common law, which underpins American law, held that an invader’s children are not citizens. To the extent that the illegal aliens in America have not entered through invitation or by any legal process, they are foreign invaders. Therefore, as a matter of ancient legal principles, they do not get to complete the process of conquest by having their children automatically become citizens with the right to affect elections or claim benefits.

Two. Illegal aliens are not people who “reside” in the United States of America. Residence doesn’t simply mean that you are currently in a place. For example, when I’m sitting in an airport waiting to board a plane, I do not “reside” in the airport. “Residence” has a legal meaning that, again, is based upon whether you are a legally recognized occupant of American soil (e.g., a green card holder, an acknowledged refugee or asylee, someone with temporary protected status, etc.) or an invader.

Three. The 14th Amendment does not simply say that to be “born” in America is sufficient. Instead, the person must also be subject to American jurisdiction, which is something different from being obligated to obey American laws while on American soil. If I visit Germany and decide to beat up someone, I’ll be arrested and subject to Germany’s limited jurisdiction for my having violated that law, but I will not be a German citizen, entitled to the benefits and burdens of German citizenship, and no one would say I was.

That is, “jurisdiction” is not the same as “being on a nation’s soil and obligated to obey the laws.” Instead, it’s about a person’s birth fealty to another nation, a fealty unchanged by a legal process, including a formal declaration of allegiance. (Note: The illegal immigrants have made their allegiance clear with their decades of waving their birth nation’s flags at pro-illegal immigration rallies, most recently in Dallas.)

Four. The word “alien” has a specific legal meaning: “The term ‘alien’ means any person not a citizen or national of the United States.” For decades, though, leftists have successfully pushed to refer to those here illegally as “undocumented migrants.” Leftists focus on the adjective “undocumented,” saying that no person is “illegal,” so their term gives people dignity. That’s sleight of hand. The real purpose is to substitute “migrants” for “aliens.”

Why does this matter? Because one of the 14th Amendment’s drafters, Sen. Jacob Howard, whose intended purpose was to give citizenship to blacks whose parents had been forcibly imported to the United States and who had no other national fealty, stated explicitly that the amendment would not apply to “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens...”

What the drafters intended matters. Ancient rules of statutory construction (going back, again, to English common law) mandate that, if a statute’s words are ambiguous, you must look to the drafters’ intention.

The people who voluntarily enter here illegally are “aliens,” not “migrants.” Our government never intended to hand out citizenship to those who voluntarily came here illegally, whether on their own two feet or nicely packed in their mother’s womb. I hope this helps whether you’re talking to friends who truly want to know or need the facts at your fingertips when dealing with a pro-illegal immigration advocate. (BTW, you’ll never change the latter’s mind. Your hope in these debates is that your reasoned, informed, and civilized arguments change the minds of less doctrinaire people auditing the conversation.)