The has been a lot of discussion among the political class lately about the concept of birthright citizenship. At the present time, the policy seems to be that any child born in America is an American citizen, regardless of the status of the child’s parents. There are valid arguments on both sides, but I would like to present the argument that says the child’s status depends on the status of the parents.

The quotes are from an article in the Conservative Review by Daniel Horowitz. Please follow the link to read the entire article.

The article points out what we would have to accept to say that any child born in America is automatically an American citizen:

Let’s put aside everything we believe as conservatives for a moment and take the activist ruling of Wong Kim Ark [169 U.S. 649 (1898)] as impregnable constitutional law.  As such, the 14th Amendment would compel Congress and the Executive agencies to grant citizenship to all children of legal immigrants.  Although we all agree as a matter of policy that it is a good idea to grant children born to legal permanent residents citizenship, by accepting the 1898 court decision as settled law, thereby enshrining birthright citizenship into our Constitution, we’d have to swallow the following ridiculous notions:

We’d be adopting one-directional stare decisis of an activist court that overturned two previous court decisions: the 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases and Elk v. Wilkins (1884).  In those cases, the Supreme Court made it clear that the original intent of the 14th Amendment was primarily to grant equal rights to freed black slaves and that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” required that the petitioner for citizenship be “completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.”  These cases excluded children born to foreign diplomats and Native American Indians and were quite clear that the meaning of the 14th Amendment would not include all children of immigrants – most of whom would have been covered by less political jurisdiction than even those born on Indian reservations, which were partially under U.S. jurisdiction.

…Immigration transformation pursued outside of the democratic process is even worse than having courts decide societal issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, in what Justice Scalia calls “societal transformation without representation.”  The courts have now empowered themselves to unilaterally and immutably change civil society itself – without any recourse from those the Constitution vested with making such decisions.  How far we have deviated from the Founders’ vision that even so-called conservatives support the idea of changing the civil society without the consent of its citizens.

Indeed, the issue of birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants is not just a tangential topic within immigration.  It cuts to the very core of how illegal immigrants are able to coerce their will on the American citizenry and the broader issue of sovereignty.  This runs much deeper than the 14^th Amendment.  The question for policy-makers has moved beyond whether we will survive as a nation as our Founder’s envisioned.  We have already deviated so far from that vision.  It’s a question of whether we are a nation at all.       

When told that we need automatic citizenship for all children born here regardless of the status of their parents, you might want to consider what the policy is in other countries. In most countries, enforcing the border is considered a natural thing to do. It is not a matter of debate. If an American went to Mexico illegally, he would be jailed or sent home–no other options. If we are to remain a nation, we have to begin to act like one. Acting like a nation includes taking responsibility for enforcing our borders and knowing who is in our country. We do need to change our immigration system to allow for legal immigration, but before we do that, we have to end illegal immigration.