Movement to Repeal 14th Amendment is Attack on ALL Americans
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Related subjects: Executive Powers, Immigration Policy, J.E. Robertson, Open Government, Rights & Freedoms, Security & Surveillance, The Vote, U.S. Law, U.S. news, U.S. Politics, Vote 2010 Comments Off
The spreading notion that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution should be repealed, in order to stop illegal immigration, is a direct assault on all Americans. Most of us became citizens because we were born in this country. We required no special paperwork beyond a recognition of our birth and the giving of a legal name. We were given social security numbers and citizenship, due to our being born on American soil, and our citizenship was not conditioned on our parents’ behavior or origins.
The 14th Amendment was part of a series of laws and Constitutional Amendments that were passed in order to establish irreversibly that former slaves were in fact full citizens of the United States. In fact, the United States Constitution itself describes no qualification for citizenship other than “natural born” (Article II, §1, ¶5), which is one of the qualifications anyone must have to serve as President.
Naturalization is considered a given, as Article I, §2, ¶2 specifies that “No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States” (emphasis added). So the 14th Amendment was implemented to both correct historical injustices and to ensure that no American citizen would be treated in a manner inferior to any other, by the enforcement of the laws or with respect to government services.
The amendment reads, in part:
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.
To repeal this amendment, with the explicit purpose of ruling out the automatic grant of citizenship to people born in the United States, is a clear assault on civil liberties every American enjoys. The suggestion that the repeal be made retroactive, so that children of undocumented immigrants could be stripped of their citizenship, means that millions of American citizens would have their citizenship challenged, millions of people who were in no way at fault and did nothing to bring this on themselves besides being born in the United States.
That those who propose repealing the 14th Amendment say their intent is to target the children of undocumented immigrants runs afoul of the Constitution. The 14th Amendment provides for the equality of all persons before the law, but it is not the origin of that idea; it included that language in order to recognize the fundamental principle that no individual can be given unequal treatment. It was, after all, the Declaration of Independence that asserted with fierce lucidity:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
And the Constitution was a continuation of that legal philosophy. The Declaration is not, technically speaking, part of the body of laws that govern our Constitutional democracy, but it is part of the legal tradition and was a legislative document, passed by the Continental Congress. The Constitution establishes a system of government in which the government can only take on powers and actions that are specifically provided for in written law. To strip all American citizens of such a basic right is not within the power of the government.
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