Title: Does the Fourteenth Amendment Require Birthright Citizenship? Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Nov 2, 2018 Author:Heritage Foundation Post Date:2018-11-02 08:57:03 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:1960 Comments:7
Poster Comment:
No doubt birthright citizenship is NOT required by the fourteenth amendment.
The Fourteenth Amendment states that “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.” Many believe that this means being born on U.S. soil is sufficient to confer citizenship. Some scholars, however, argue that the Constitution does not confer citizenship on children born in the United States to parents who are illegal aliens because they owe allegiance to another government. Others maintain that the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment sought to restore the common law doctrine of jus soli—right of the soil—which had been abrogated by the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision and that subsequent Supreme Court decisions support this interpretation. Does the Citizenship Clause mandate birthright citizenship? Legal experts John Eastman and James Ho will explore this hotly debated question that has important legal and political consequences.
It is obvious to me that anyone denying birthright citizenship in the United States gets his ass smoked by the United States Supreme Court where what they say really counts.
Jim Ho.
John Eastman.
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United States Supreme Court opinions are not overturned or reversed by a Youtube video of Jim Ho and John Eastman.
It is obvious to me that anyone who denies birthright citizenship in the United States is smoked by the United States Supreme Court, where the opinions really count.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649, 687-88 (1898)
UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
Opinion of the Court (6-2)
The words " in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, must be presumed to have been understood and intended by the Congress which proposed the Amendment, and by the legislatures which adopted it, in the same sense in which the like words had been used by Chief Justice Marshall in the well known case of The Exchange; and as the equivalent of the words "within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States," and the converse of the words, " out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States," as habitually used in the naturalization acts. This presumption is confirmed by the use of the word "jurisdiction" in the last clause of the same section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids any State to " deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It is impossible to construe the words "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," in the opening sentence, as less comprehensive than the words "within its jurisdiction," in the concluding sentence of the same section; or to hold that persons "within the jurisdiction" of one of the States of the Union are not "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States."
These considerations confirm the view, already expressed in this opinion, that the opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is throughout affirmative and declaratory, intended to allay doubts and to settle controversies which had arisen, and not to impose any new restrictions upon citizenship.
By the Civil Rights Act of 1866, "all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed," were declared to be citizens of the United States. In the light of the law as previously established, and of the history of the times, it can hardly be doubted that the words of that act, "not subject to any foreign power," were not intended to exclude any children born in this country from the citizenship which would theretofore have been their birthright; or, for instance, for the first time in our history, to deny the right of citizenship to native-born children of foreign white parents not in the diplomatic service of their own country, nor in hostile occupation of part of our territory. But any possible doubt in this regard was removed when the negative words of the Civil Rights Act, "not subject to any foreign power," gave way, in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, to the affirmative words, "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States." This sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is declaratory of existing rights, and affirmative of existing law, as to each of the qualifications therein expressed—"born in the United States," "naturalized in the United States," and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof "—in short, as to everything relating to the acquisition of citizenship by facts occurring within the limits of the United States. But it has not touched the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents; and has left that subject to be regulated, as it had always been, by Congress, in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.
The effect of the enactments conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of American parents has been defined, and the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion of the United States, notwithstanding alienage of parents, has been affirmed, in well considered opinions of the executive departments of the Government, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
There is century plus stream of Federal court opinions affirming birthright citizenship. There are 200 plus cases demonstrating the futility of Birther arguments.
