It's gone. So you'll just have to take my word for what I'm about to write, unless you have a link to this article: Many on right eager to amend anew by Kathleen Hennessey of the Tribune's Washington bureau. If you do, please leave me the link in the comments.
This article begins with the idea of a few GOP Congressmen to alter the 14th Amendment to prohibit "anchor babies". Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer chimes in,
The intellectual positions are not new. What's new is there's a nascent political movement willing to take these up contrary to settled law. But one of the great things about constitutional law is nothing is ever settled.
Um, Dean Kramer, that's not a feature, it's a bug. Perhaps you haven't noticed your own contradiction. You say the law is settled, but in your next sentence, you say that it's not.
That's the problem. This legal instability is causing a great deal of weariness within America. We hear about the seemingly endless cycles of appeals and wonder when the judicial branch of our government is ever going to settle down and say that something is either illegal or it isn't and there is no in between. We'd really like to see some settled law for once. We do know, by the way, that endless appeals benefit lawyers, since they bill by the hour. The more hours they bill, the more money they make. So we're left to wonder if lawyers are actually interested in a law being settled, since that would tend to reduce their bottom line.
Let's take a look at what the 14th Amendment actually says:
Section 1. 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.
That seems simple enough. It's written in plain enough language that the average person can understand it. All persons born or naturalized in the US are citizens.
But there is a qualifier in that sentence, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. That qualifier makes it clear that our Founders never intended for just anyone to become a citizen and took into account certain situations, such as diplomats from other countries who may give birth while here on official business.
Certainly, if this qualifier was not included, then "anchor babies" would most certainly be legal. But the provision is there and it's there for a reason, specifically to prevent the problem that we now have with illegal immigrants coming here to give birth to American citizens.
Folks, this is clearly illegal. The Supreme Court that gave us this skewed decision is in gross violation of the Constitution. And this kind of misreading of the Constitution is the reason that there is a movement to return to the Original Intent of the Founders, because when we read its plain language, we can see that this problem was already accounted for and wisely prohibited. After all, if a country is to control immigrants, they must necessarily be routed through an immigration authority to determine if they are eligible for citizenship. This is just common sense.
But there are forces who mean to gain a political advantage by allowing illegal immigrants into the country with the intent of granting them amnesty, hopefully in exchange for their voting allegiance, those forces being the Democrat Party. This notion is contrary to the overwhelming majority of Americans who wish to see all of our immigration laws enforced and our borders secured.
We don't need any kind of revision to our Constitution. We merely need a Supreme Court that can read the original words of the Founders and adhere to them with unfailing will.
Many of our problems would not be problems if this were the case.
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