Friends,
Kamala Harris is very angry with Donald Trump.
With her usual condescension and scorn, she tweeted out on
Thursday, August 22, that Donald Trump should go read the 14th Amendment—the
implication being that when the president brought up, once again, the
possibility that he might issue an Executive Order regulating birthright
citizenship, he was woefully misreading the application of that Reconstruction
amendment.
Of course, for a supercilious Leftist elitist like Harris, Trump
will forever be that ignorant, brash, illiterate, racist New Yorker who is just
way out of his league. It doesn’t really make any difference that he graduated
with a B.S. in Economics from the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the
University of Pennsylvania. You see, he doesn’t have all the fineries and
veneer of the self-proclaimed East Coast-West Coast Brahmin Elites who have
controlled this country, its economy, its foreign policy, and its government
for more than a century. Despite the fact that he has—in my view—given in far
too often to those same Elites, nevertheless, they will only accept 100%
obedience and compliance. Upsetting the apple cart, thwarting the advance of
globalism in the slightest will get you—the Russia Hoax, the White
Nationalist/Racist Hoax, the Gun Control Hoax, endless investigations and
multiple mini-impeachment efforts, plus the extreme and active (even violent)
hostility of almost all the media, academia, Hollywood, and the political
class.
You can’t get off the Deep State reservation, even a hare, and
expect any mercy.
So,
when once again the president declared that his administration was looking into
ending “birthright citizenship” through a presidential Executive
Order—something he had suggested back in October of 2018—all hell broke loose,
and the officious and ideologically crazed Harris jumped like a famished black
snake on a defenseless toad. Once again it was the Trump template of “full
blown racism,” “appeals to white supremacy,” “undermining and attacking our
democracy,” and, of course, since Trump is an illegitimate president, an
interloper—then almost any type of resistance is permissible.
What such an Executive Order would do is clarify the application
of the 14th Amendment and, essentially, end birthright citizenship for
children of illegal aliens who come across the US border and then produce
offspring who, then, as if by magic become American citizens.
Recall that the amendment was enacted after the War Between the
States to guarantee the rights of citizenship to manumitted slaves and their
offspring. And, indeed, there is a serious legal question about
whether the amendment itself was ever legally and legitimately ratified. But be
that as it may, it has applied ever since 1868.
Here is how Section 1 of the 14th Amendment
reads:
Section 1. 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. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Harris and other open border zealots always quote the first
section: “All persons born or naturalized
in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein
they reside.” But the leave out, either by mistake or by
direction: “and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof.”
It’s a key phrase, critical to understanding what the authors of
the amendment intended and what for nearly 100 years was settled law up until
the 1960s when leftist lawmakers got into the act simply by de facto practical
applications. In other words, between the very clear and forthright intention
of its authors that the 14th Amendment only applied
to slaves and their offspring born in the United States who are necessarily
“subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” andthe
imposed practice we now have which enables a foreign woman to illegally slip
across the Rio Grande and have a child who then, by that simple act, becomes a
citizen and an “anchor baby,” permitting its illegal relations to all come
across—between these two
interpretations and applications there is an absolute irreconcilable difference.
The key figures in drafting the amendment at the time were
clear: Senator Lyman Trumbull, pivotal in the drafting the 14th Amendment,
declared “subject to the jurisdiction” meant subject to “complete” jurisdiction
of the United States, and “[n]ot
owing allegiance to anybody else.” Senator Jacob Howard of
Michigan, responsible for the critical language of the jurisdiction clause,
stated that it meant “a full and complete jurisdiction,” that is, “the same
jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the
United States now.” In other words, a non-citizen simply by giving birth on
this side geographically of the Rio Grande does not produce a new citizen of
the United States.
Presented with this history, those defending the current
practice, including Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox, appeal, like
Harris, to constitutional practice and to the courts.
But, actually, the Supreme Court has spoken on
this question, at least indirectly.
In 1884, sixteen years after the 14th Amendment was ratified,
John Elk, an American Indian, went to court to argue that he was an American
citizen due to his birth in the United States. In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, the
Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not grant
Indians citizenship. As Ann Coulter cites that decision:
[The] “main object of the opening sentence of the Fourteenth
Amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of
opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes and to put it
beyond doubt that all persons, white or black … should be citizens of the
United States and of the state in which they reside.”
And she adds: “American Indians were not made citizens until
1924. Lo those 56 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Indians
were not American citizens, despite the considered opinion of Judge Napolitano.”
Ending birthright citizenship, based on a false and specious
reading of the 14th Amendment, is an idea whose time has come, in fact, is far
overdue. At the very least, an Executive Order would force the courts,
including the Supreme Court, to take a serious look at the historic abuse of
our immigration system and the definition of American citizenship.
Let us hope that this time—nearly
a year since he raised it—President
Trump will follow through on his consideration: birthright
citizenship has been and is an Achilles’ Heel in American immigration policy.
Ending it would be a major step in securing our border and preserving the
integrity of our culture.
**************
I believe I passed on to you last year the following legal essay by Professor of
Law, John Eastman. It is a succinct but thorough restatement of the points made
in my commentary.
Reprinted from My
Corner by Boyd Cathey.
