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It is among the clearest passages in the U.S. Constitution, asingle sentence that tells us who shall be a citizen, defines theU.S. as different from most other nations and puts to legal rest ashameful period in American history. With all that going for it,you would think that the first clause of the 14th Amendment hadearned the respect of legislators on both the left and, especially,the right — the same people who extol the plain words of theConstitution and the exceptional nature of American law. But as Representative Steve King of Iowa and conservativelegislators from five states recently made clear, you would bewrong. (See TIME's photo-essay "The Border Fence Rises in the Southwest.") In January, King introduced a bill in the House of Representativesto exclude the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants fromthe 14th Amendment's guarantee of automatic citizenship. At thesame time, state legislators promised to push their own bills todeny those children the benefits of U.S. citizenship. The measuresare squarely aimed at those whom many on the right derisively dub"anchor babies": kids who are U.S. citizens from birth simplybecause their mothers sneaked across the border to have them —or, as one Senator delicately put it, to "drop and leave." Their alleged motives aside, plenty of undocumented women givebirth in the U.S.: 3.8 million have at least one child who is anAmerican citizen, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and in2008, 73% of kids of illegal immigrants were U.S.-born. Ascitizens, they are entitled to costly benefits, and that's onereason most countries don't allow birthright citizenship. So nomatter how you feel about the issue, there's nothing necessarilynutty about denying automatic citizenship to the children of peoplewho shouldn't be in the country in the first place. What's nutty is that King and his allies are trying to do thatthrough legislation rather than the far harder method of aconstitutional amendment. That approach offends the plain meaningof the 14th Amendment, suggests that the U.S. should simply followother countries' immigration laws and relies on an argument onceused to deny citizenship to African Americans. (See "Arizona's Next Immigration Target: Children of Illegals.") The 14th Amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in theUnited States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, arecitizens of the United States and of the State wherein theyreside." Opponents of illegal immigration say kids of undocumentedparents aren't covered because they aren't "subject to thejurisdiction" of the U.S.: they may owe allegiance to theirparents' home country and can't gain the privileges of being anAmerican without U.S. permission. No permission, no citizenship.The problem, then, is not with the 14th Amendment but with thecourts' misinterpretation of it. A simple law can fix that. It's a clever argument, but one that history does not support. America's birthright citizenship derives from the 1608 English caseof Robert Calvin, who was born in Scotland just after the ScottishKing, James VI, also became the King of England. Calvin wanted toown land in England but couldn't unless he was a subject of Englandas well as Scotland. The court ruled that he was, because he andEnglishmen owed allegiance to the same King. The outcome had a lotto do with James' need to consolidate his kingdom, but the rulebecame that anyone born on land governed by the King was a Britishsubject — except for children of foreign invaders ordiplomats, who were outside British jurisdiction. (See "Blocking the Border Fence in Texas."). I am an expert from electronicbalancescale.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Electronic Precision Balance Manufacturer , Digital Food Weighing Scales Manufacturer, Digital Kitchen Weighing Scale,and more.
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