I firmly disagree with the Supreme Court ruling last week on the issue of birthright citizenship. American citizenship is fundamentally incompatible with the invasion of illegals that we see in our nation, many of whom pose a clear and present danger to our national security.
Birthright citizenship derives from the 14th Amendment which states in pertinent part that “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 is that middle clause that is critical. What does “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” mean?
During Senate floor debate over the birthright citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Senator Jacob Howard argued for including the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”:
“…[E]very person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, but will include every other class of person.”
The Biden Administration corruptly allowed up to 20 million illegals to invade our homeland and my friend, Scott McKay, owner of The Hayride, has succinctly framed the legal, cultural, and national security issues created by this betrayal:
“We constantly run into an old problem which afflicts a too-comfortable society – namely, that we think we can apply legal and judicial solutions, which are designed to enforce a social compact, to problems arising from people who do not observe that social compact.” What McKay means is that the principle of national sovereignty the Framers of our Constitution put in place is failing for the simple reason that it has been abandoned. While we are a nation of immigrants, our Framers expressly provided for LEGAL immigration to the United States.
McKay continues that “birth tourism and illegal immigration are not legal or judicial issues. They’re national security issues. They’re much more appropriately addressed as acts of war than as legal cases.”
If a woman from China comes into the U.S. to give birth (a scenario the Chinese government actively orchestrates) she is subject to the jurisdiction of China. Period. That woman is also not “subject to the jurisdiction of the state in which she resides” because she doesn’t reside in any U.S. state. She is a resident of China.
That is birth tourism.
Do we really believe the Framers intended for the over 4 billion women in the world to be able to come into the U.S., give birth, and their children become American citizens merely because they put a foot onto American soil?! Insane.
This includes women from hostile nations like Russia, Iran, or North Korea! Those same babies then return to Russia, Iran, or N. Korea, become educated in those dictatorships and then return and vote in American elections?!
We will lose the historical and cultural fabric of our nation if we do nothing.
The sacred privilege of American citizenship demands singular loyalty to the United States. “Subject to the jurisdiction” must mean subject exclusively to the sovereign authority of the United States, not some global version of citizenship. It means citizen membership in our constitutional republic and being a part of, and clinging to, a national American identity.
There are two options here. One is a constitutional amendment, a difficult process. The second is for Congress to legislatively address concerns such as birth tourism and a broad restriction of visas. We could also redefine what “subject to the jurisdiction” means.
The U.S. Supreme Court is deferred to as the last word on what the Constitution means, but that is not the end of the inquiry. The Supreme Court was also the last word on Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe v. Wade, and many other decisions, all of which are now in the dustbin of history.
Lincoln declared that if “the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,” then “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”
Legislation by Congress to correct this monumental judicial mistake may be immediately struck down by the very U.S. Supreme Court that made this enormous error in the first place. However, the creed of the Declaration of Independence that we form ‘a government by the consent of the governed’ must go on!!
Shreveport attorney, Royal Alexander, worked in D.C. in the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 8 years for two different Members of Congress from Louisiana.