Terror babies. Or Rosamary's Baby. They're threatening you, sez Dave Vitter (R-Fool) and others of the wingnutariat. Vitter introduced an amendment to the trafficking victims bill that would, if enacted into law, would say that all children born in the United States to have at least one parent who is either a citizen or a lawful permanent resident.
Boys at a migrant labor camp, Jan. 1942
Under Vitter's plan, for the first time since the
Dredd Scott case, birth in the United States alone would not be proof of citizenship. Yesterday, this was followed up on by Mark Krikorian, a professional anti-immigrant, and a clever and perhaps even intelligent man, who
endorses Vitter's plan, but acknowledges some difficulties:
There would be other details to work out. For instance, new federal standards for state birth certificates would be required, since the citizen or legal-resident status of the parents would have to be recorded for the Social Security Administration and the State Department to know whether to issue a Social Security number or a passport, the two practical markers of a child’s U.S. citizenship. There would probably also need to be a statute of limitations, as in Australia, so that if the child of an illegal alien or foreign student or worker lives the first ten years of his life here, he would acquire U.S. citizenship on his tenth birthday.
A rather broad level of intrusion by the Party of Small Government. "New federal standards" indeed. For the nearly 4 million births in this country, the federal bureaucracy would have to register the citizenship or immigrant status of 8 million people. What could possibly go wrong?
Worse for Krikorian, I think is that he must resort to mendacity (that's a long word for "lying") when it comes to supporting his case. He calls birthright citizenship a "custom" and a "practice", when of course it is a constitutional right.
It's also a statutory right as well, which is why Vitter's amendment would have to change the statute, section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and Krikorian refers to Vitter's amendment in his own article.
People like Krikorian and Vitter are willing to override (or attempt to override) the constitution, and impose an enormous federal bureaucracy on all of us, literally from birth, so they can foster their dream society of the neo-1950s.
Children grow up quickly and they build this country. What's the justification for this wingnut attack upon them?
Japanese-American child evacuated from the west coast under military guard.
According to the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
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.
In United States vs. Wong Kim Ark, the government attempted to exclude from re-admission to the United States, a man who had been born in the United States, specifically, California, had lived in the United States pretty much continuously except for two rather short trips (for those days) to China, and who was returning from one of these trips when the Customs inspector declined to admit him, claiming his entry was barred under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The short version of the Supreme Court’s ruling was that the government, which had claimed that because his parents were Chinese, the man could not be a citizen, was wrong. The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to incorporate the English common law about who shall be deemed a subject of the king at birth:
… by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
… The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.
One would think that would be sufficient to address all the issues, but people like Vitter insist that somehow Congress has the power to "clarify" who is "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States.
Fair, Delta County, Colorado, Oct. 1940
Why are they doing this?
There is no possibility that any such law would ever be approved by President Obama, and even if it were, the courts would give it a thorough bashing.
However, there is bound to be at least one fool in black robes who would approve it, thus moving, it might be hoped, the case to the Supreme Casino, where at least three of the croupiers can be counted upon to rule in favor of any hideous idea dreamed up by the wealthy and the powerful.
Another likely reason is that Congress, or more specifically the Republicans in Congress, are basically two-faced liars who don't really care one way or the other about this so-called problem, and are simply introducing unpassable bills into Congress to garner the votes of their nativist base.
But either way, it's despicable.