Earlier this month I posted about how a Republican Task Force was looking at challenging the automatic citizenship granted by the 14th Amendment to children born to illegal immigrants. I was trepidatious at the time, stating:

The 14th Amendment begins: “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.” This is pretty plain language, and being a Conservative, I’m a plain language kind of guy. That’s why even though I want illegal immigration dealt with by ejecting those here illegally — no hearing, no attorneys, no anything but eviction — it bothers me that those “unity dinners” are talking about subverting the Constitution.

The subversion I was speaking of was the mention of “scholarship” suggesting that these so-called “anchor babies” could be denied citizenship by statute:

“There’s been recent scholarship that says we can do it by statute, and we ought to try,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican, who usually finds himself on the opposite side of immigration issues from Mr. Tancredo.

I speculated at the time that the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” would be the likely target area of the 14th Amendment in seeking to legislate citizenship by statute, and today Fox News has confirmed this.

At the time of this writing, there is a video on the FoxNews.com web site. Click on “Video” on the top menu, then select “Only on Fox” from the left menu. You’re looking for “Born in the USA”.

As the story reports, Nathan Deal (R) of Georgia has introduced legislation (H.R. 698) to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny citizenship at birth to children born in the United States of parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.

As of March 2, 2005, the bill has been referred to the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims.

In the interview, Deal argues that aliens who are here illegally don’t meet the definition of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. He notes that if you examine the original Congressional debate over the amendment it’s easy to see that the intent was not to give “carte blanch birthright citizenship to anyone who happened to be born on American soil.”

Fox also interviewed an unnamed individual who wanted to maintain the status quo with regard to birthright citizenship. Her arguments were that taking away the right [TD - right?] of citizenship from children of illegals would lead to more undocumented people, and would penalize children for the acts of their parents.

These are specious arguments. We give citizenship to avoid having “more undocumented people”? The way you avoid having more undocumented people is by immediately arresting the undocumented parents and shipping them and their newborn back across the border as soon as the mother is able to travel. Oh, and by the way, deduct the cost for her medical care from any aid going to the parents’ country of origin. That way, instead of having one more undocumented person, you’ve now reduced the number of illegal aliens in this country by three.

As for penalizing children for the acts of their parents, how many times does that happen to real Americans? Isn’t it punshing to a child not to have a parent at home because the parent is in jail for committing a crime? What are we supposed to do? “OK, kid, you’ve got citizenship, but guess what? Mommy and daddy are going to be shipped back south of the border. You see, we don’t want to punish you for what your parents did. Want to go with them or stay here? What’s that? You’re two days old and can’t talk yet? Oh, too bad. Well, we’ll keep you here, but say bye-bye to mommy and daddy until you’re old enough to travel on your own.”

The problem I have with advocates for illegal immigrants is that they think the immigrants are entitled to a) be here, and b) have more rights than American citizens.

According to Fox News, 24% of illegals have children who are U.S. citizens. I would love to see any child born to illegal parents since the last amnesty stripped of their automatic citizenship. At the very least, they should be denied the opportunity to sponsor anyone for citizenship.

A plurality of Americans, 49%, support ending birthright citizenship for illegal aliens, wihle 41% want to keep things the way they are now. That will change when the first terrorist incident occurs where it can be proven that the perpetrators crossed our southern border to arrive in America.

TD