This argument has gone through the paces for sure, but after reading some of the latest comments I figured I'd throw in my updated two cents worth again as an exercise of thinking more than anything.
The 14th Amendment says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” But seriously people, those words don’t mean a free pass for border-jumpers’ kids. The “subject to the jurisdiction” clause screams intent, and illegal aliens aren’t fully under U.S. jurisdiction.
They’re scofflaws thumbing their noses at our laws, not pledging allegiance. Legal scholar Edward Erler, in his 2015 Claremont Review piece, nails it. “The 14th Amendment was never intended to confer citizenship on the children of illegal aliens, whose presence violates federal law.” Founders didn’t envision anchor babies as a loophole.
How can a reasonable thinking person believe that the Founders foresaw that we would allow non-citizens that break into our Country and have a child become an instant citizen? Congress fought hard to pass the 14th Amendment to counter racist state laws, Black Codes, Jim Crow seeds, popping up to strip black rights in the South. Thaddeus Stevens, the 'radical' Republican and amendment backer, said in 1866, “This amendment secures the great principles of freedom and equality.” But somehow we've twisted it into a border-jumping loophole.
Lynn Wardle, a top law prof at Brigham Young, agrees in his 2010 Harvard Journal of Law, saying, “Granting citizenship to children of illegal entrants undermines sovereignty and incentivizes law-breaking, hardly the republic’s intent.” Exactly, why reward breaking in with a golden ticket. It’s a magnet for illegal entry, straining schools, hospitals, and taxpayers, Census data showing 4.5 million “birth tourists” since 2000. Scrap it, and you gut the incentive, securing borders even more and saving many tragic abuses, rapes and deaths, also cutting off another revenue stream for the cartels.
We all know where President Trump’s EO will end up. What I still find amazing after all these years is that if the SC rules that the EO is not constitutional, I will believe that the judges could not bear the pressures and caved for nothing more than peer pressure and perhaps they believe they should change the intent because of their personal beliefs rather than an honest reading of the text and its clear intent.
If they rule the opposite, the left will say nearly the same thing, except of course with a bit of a sharper edge. Instead of peer pressure it will be because they fear the 'dangerous dictator's response, or something like that. And so goes the battle.
