New York Times (Opinion)
By Lawrence Downes
April 30, 2015
Republicans in Congress keep coming up with new ways to drive home the point: Immigration is bad; fear it.
This week it’s a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on a fringe subject that is forever on the wish list of the restrictionist crowd: ditching the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.
That’s this one: “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.”
The amendment was adopted in 1866, after the Civil War, to guarantee citizenship to the children of freed slaves, and to protect that bedrock question of who is an American from political whims and reversals.
Sounds sensible enough, and it works. Zoe Lofgren, the committee’s ranking Democrat, noted in her opening remarks that the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the plain and simple interpretation of the text — citizenship for all babies born here, except children of foreign diplomats.
She noted, too, that the Republican Party, so proud of its connection to Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, actually celebrates the 14th Amendment on its own website — noting the historic day, Jan. 13, 1866, that it passed Congress “with unanimous Republican support and against intense Democrat opposition.”
But today this old American way of birth rubs up against a point of hard-core, right-wing doctrine: that too many foreigners are crossing the border and having children who are American.
Can’t have that.
Representative Steve King of Iowa, in his remarks, raised the frightening specter of people who “sneak into the United States and have a baby and head home with a birth certificate.”
In testimony submitted to the committee, one witness, a law professor named John Eastman, said this of birthright citizenship: “It has encouraged a trade in human trafficking that has placed at great risk millions of men, women, and children who have succumbed to the false siren’s song of birthright citizenship.”
Millions of pregnant or fertile women and their conniving partners coming here to drop babies, when all the time we thought they were coming here to work? Infuriating!
How can this country prevent such birthright thievery? That could be a problem. A huge challenge, in fact, for the party of smaller government and individual liberty.
First, government officials would have to be satisfied, before issuing identity papers, that at least one parent of a new baby is a citizen. This could be a nightmare in the delivery rooms across the land, lengthening the checklist of things new parents have to worry about: onesies, diapers, wipes, car seat, passport or birth certificate. The Department of Homeland Security would have to have a Neonatal Division.
And if the restrictionists think immigrant assimilation and national cohesion are problems now, think of what it will it be like when this country switches over to the European model, with a permanent underclass of resident worker aliens, having alien children, who have alien children.
As for abolishing “birth tourism,” some think the solution could be as simple as denying visas to pregnant women – making sure that “the burden of proof will be on applicants to show that they are not pregnant or intending to give birth in the United States when applying for a visa.”
That’ll be easy, for sure. Consular offices are not crowded or chaotic places now, and it will be simple enough for them to stock up on a good supply of pregnancy sticks and menstruation questionnaires.
Those who oppose birthright citizenship surely would agree that while this sounds difficult, it is worth doing, in pursuit of a purer nation, one whose citizens’ claim to be American is supported not merely by the meaningless triviality of “where they were born,” but by ties of blood, tribal affiliation and genetic pedigree.
What could be more American than that?
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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