Birthright Citizenship

            I have written numerous times about my view of birthright citizenship, and I suppose that my long-time readers remember some of those posts. I have not heard much about this topic over the past months, but I saw an article today that gives me hope. Maybe it will give you hope also.

            Daniel John Sobieski posted an article at American Thinker titled “Trump and Birthright Citizenship.”  He says that Donald Trump was not his first choice for President because Trump “seemed a bull who carried around his own china shop and campaigned like Sherman marching through Atlanta with matches.” This is a great description of Trump! Sobieski says that Trump won him over by the numerous accomplishments over the past 20 months, and he can see the method in Trump’s madness.

He has unleashed America’s entrepreneurs, cut all our taxes, chopped off the strangling regulatory tentacles of big government, liberated American energy, rebuilt the military, ended “free” trade transfers of wealth to those who are not all our friends, fundamentally transformed the judiciary, and dared to step on the new third rail of American politics: illegal immigration and sanctuary cities.

            After listing these accomplishments of the Trump administration, he moves into the topic of birthright citizenship. Even though many legal “experts” say that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil, Sobieski says that the “Supreme Court, however, has never explicitly ruled that the children of illegal aliens must be granted automatic citizenship.” He says that the Court has “not said birthright citizenship is constitutional,” and then he introduces his readers to Peter H. Schuck, Yale University’s Simeon E. Baldwin professor of law emeritus. Schuck is of the opinion that “birthright citizenship is not required by the U.S. Constitution.”

…Though opposed to many of the president’s positions, he was surprised the administration has not made opposition to citizenship for the children of illegal aliens more central to its immigration policy.

On at least one key immigration stance, however, Schuck appears to be in agreement with President Trump. In the 1990s, along with Yale Political Scientist Rogers Smith, he determined, in a book called Citizenship Without Consent, that the policy of granting citizenship to everyone born on American soil, including so-called “anchor-babies” – those born to illegal aliens [sic] – was not mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as is popularly trumpeted by open-borders supporters. Trump came to the same conclusion on the campaign trail, once stating, “We’re the only ones dumb enough, stupid enough to have it.”

            Sobieski reminds his readers that it is the “misinterpretation of the 14^th amendment” that brought about “the guarantee of birthright citizenship.” A mother simply needs to sneak across the border or come into the nation on vacation and have a baby. The baby automatically becomes a U.S. citizen with power to keep its parents in the U.S. and to bring extended family also.

            The thing in this article that brings me hope is the statement that Trump agrees with me on birthright citizenship. He also believes that this misinterpretation is the “biggest magnet” for illegal immigration. He apparently said that he wanted to end it and to reunify families on the “other side of the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Trump said he would end birthright citizenship. Critics have said the task, even if justified, is well nigh impossible, requiring amending the U.S. Constitution. In reality, it may not require altering the 14^th Amendment – only correctly interpreting it, perhaps through clarifying legislation. [My emphasis]

            Since Trump has a record of following through on his campaign promises, I have hope that he will find a way to stop birthright citizenship. IF we can elect enough conservatives to Congress, he may be able to convince our representatives to clarify the 14^th Amendment through legislative action. Any such law would probably end up in the Supreme Court, but we are getting enough constitutionalists there that the justices might sustain such a law as constitutional. It is on this idea that I have hope that birthright citizenship will end sooner rather than later. So, it is imperative that we elect conservatives as our representatives in Congress!