Born in the USA

A couple states and a couple really conservative type congressional types are offering bills to keep some people born in the US from being citizens. The argument for this new slew of legislative posturing is that if a person is the child of illegal immigrants they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US. Therefore, they are not US citizens and entitled to all that allows.

For the most part these people are hypocrites. I say this, and I acknowledge that I'm generalizing here, most of these people are conservative right wing types. Most have argued against judicial activism and a more literal interpretation of the Constitution. The 14th Amendment is pretty clear on this one. So really, what these people are saying is that judicial activitist are really just people who don't agree with us.

An extension of this argument is that the legislative history of the 14th amendment shows the 14th Amendment was really only meant to apply to former slaves. It ignores that this is really a concept we got from English law a couple centuries before the 14th and an 1890s case where the Supreme Court definitively ruled on this already. Some Chinese guy born here when back to China. He wasn't allowed back under the argument that he was a subject of the Emperor of China. The Supreme Court said the 14th Amendment applied.

So these people are clearly pushing an unconstitutional agenda. Really, if they want to make the argument they need to push for a constitutional amendment. Otherwise, they're going nowhere. They are just going to waste a lot of people's money and time.

But maybe this is the way of these movements now. Civil Rights for gays has really started with small state challenges. I hope this one gets squelched hard and fast so we can move on to an intelligent discussion about immigration reform.