Via WaTi: Huckabee vows to defy birthright citizenship
Mike Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens, according to his top immigration surrogate — a radical step no other major presidential candidate has embraced.
Mr. Huckabee, who won last week’s Republican Iowa caucuses, promised Minuteman Project founder James Gilchrist that he would force a test case to the Supreme Court to challenge birthright citizenship, and would push Congress to pass a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to remove any doubt.
First off, this article seems wholly predicated on a second-hand retelling of what Huckabee supposedly said, so I take the whole thing with a grain of salt. No doubt Gilchrist would like this to happen, but it is a sloppy reporting job to take someone else’s word for a major position being taken by a candidate.
Second, WaTi is frequently sensational and unreliable for my tastes and has been prone, for some reason, to inflammatory reporting regarding immigration (see for example).
Third, while I suppose it is possible that 2./3rds of both chambers of the Congress could be persuaded to amend the 14th Amendment (which simply states “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.”) it strikes me as a pretty extreme act, and not one that really solves the main problem at hand. Further, tampering with the constitution tends to have unintended consequences.1
Beyond that, while there are clearly problems created when persons in the county illegally have children on US soil, it is also the fact that birthright citizenship is the fastest way to assimilate persons into the US. If we start creating more complex pathways to citizenship we will find ourselves with some of the problems that Europe currently has with disaffected, unassimilated populations who are neither citizens nor really foreigners either. This is not a desirable direction in which to head.
Beyond the implications, it is not as easy as it sounds for a president to come in and get the Congress to initiate the amendment process.
Update: James Joyner notes that Huckabee has denied the story.
Sphere: Related Content- Indeed, the 14th Amendment language in question was meant as a means of making former slaves citizens and was not envisioning anything to do with the immigrants, per se [↩]
January 8th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Regarding your Footnote 1, it is also the case that “not subject to the jurisdiction of” was in 1868, and remains today, an unambiguous legal term of art meaning only three things: (1) diplomats, (2) prisoners of war, (3) Indians on tribal lands.
Any and every attempt to suggest that illegal aliens (and therefore their born-here children) are “not subject to the jurisdiction of” the United States is ignorant and insolent sophistry.
I give Paul credit for ackowledging that a constitutional amendment would in fact be necessary (though not for his bigoted advocacy of such an amendment).
Those who try to pretend that the Constitution should be interpreted to mean the exact opposite of its plain text should stick to Kelo-style atrocities. (/sarcasm)