Publius' Forum

Nicely done! I could not agree with you more...Let's enforce the laws we have....
 

Thanks, GK.

Tell you what, though. I am being beat up by some anti-immigrant conservatives on some other sites over THIS one, I hate to say!

Being called an "open borders advocate", which I am most assuredly NOT!
 

I see that you are a history buff, I recently bought a book by James Reston, Jr. "Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inqusition, and the defeat of the Moors." It is a fascinating read, it brings together the culmination, of whatI refer to as "focal points" within in history...I think you will like, if you have not already...
 

Sounds interesting. I'll look into it.
 

It is quite interesting how the 14th Amendment has been misinterpreted because one of the original authors of this amendment spelled it out here in detail from his speech in 1866, because if it were actually accurate 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", then what difference would it make if the part that specifies "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" had been omitted completely and for what reason did Senator Howard decide to throw the "AND" part in there?? (he could have just left it out in order for this to attain the same meaning that it is interpreted as today by the courts):

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of native-born Black Americans, whose rights were being denied as recently-freed slaves. In 1866, Senator Jacob Howard clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by writing:

"Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is 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, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country."
 

Seems to me that the good senator failed to clearly say so in the actual amendment, despite what he said in a speech, then.

It also seems to me that, despite claims to the contrary, since specifics are NOT in the Constitution, you are still left parsing the word "jurisdiction".

But all this is still beside my original point, even if I am somewhat wrong (or at least conceivably wrong in a legalist debate on parsing the word "jurisdiction"), we are still running away from the border issue.

I say FIX the border problem, and this temporary citizenship issue will cure itself.

Lastly, this whole thing is a problem because of overweening, cradle to the grave social programs, NOT birth OR Constitutional issues. If those programs didn’t exist, people wouldn’t be falling all over themselves to HAVE "anchor babies" in the first place!

So, you are left in the unenviable position of attacking the Constitution and IGNORING the border and the over socialist social programs.
 

I don't disagree with you on that WTH, but "fixing the border" is left open to interpretation. "Fixing" it to some may be interpreted as removing all personnel and all barriers to entry so that as many hordes of desperate, cheap laborers can come across as possible. With that being said, "fixing" it to me means:

1) aggressively target employers who pad their bottom lines by exploiting desperate people. The biggest obstacle to this though is the 'campaign contribution'.....Just like human smuggling and drug trafficking, lobbying is an industry unto itself...especially for those who don't care to shut off the flow of cheap labor.

2) use the military......of course, there's no practical humane way to stop millions of people from just showing up, however the 4th Amendment says that the federal govt. has a responsibility to protect each of the states against invasion. With that being said though, see #1 above to make this option more effective.

3) guest-worker program....However, again this is open to more fraud and abuse by the lobbying industry. People who are making a bundle either from the human trafficking itself or the savings from exploitable, cheap labor will eventually get to those who would be responsible for controlling & enforcing it. With that being said though, there are some industries that clearly have labor shortages and should have the right to import people, but shouldn't abuse this right to drive down everyone's wages by saying that they can't find anyone (who incidentally won't work for 50 cents a day) to work.

As for Senator Howard and the wording of the 14th Amendment....Again I ask, what if he had left the other part out and it read:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, 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."

So what difference does it make from the way that you already interpret it? Strictly speaking from a logic standpoint, then it would have to make some sort of difference.....If I said that I have "apples AND oranges", would you interpret that to mean that I only have apples?......
 

I agree that "Fixing the border" can have different "interpretation". But, that is beside the point when the choices were "fix" the Constitution or "fix" the border.

Still, I agreed with a whole lot of your proposals for that "fix" of the border.

As to your question about apples and oranges:

You wonder why they put the word "jurisdiction" in the Constitutional amendment if it didn't "mean" anything. But you are assuming that YOUR interpretation of the word INCLUDES the parsing that I was referring to in my original article.

That is where our argument arises. I never SAID the word was meaningless or that the amendment is read the same with or without it, so you are making a strawman argument here. The question comes down to what, if anything, does "jurisdiction" mean in the context of the Constitution.

However, I can grant you that the original Senator meant that "illegals" wouldn't be covered. Though, I see no proposal that would have delineated WHO really WAS even in the Senator's original quote. He is just as vague in his off-amendment language as we was in the amendment itself, unfortunately!

I am glad we are able to have this discussion, though. It is a necessary thing to clarify what we want as a nation, for sure. I guess my biggest lament is that we continue to put band-aides on fingers when the arm has about fallen off!
 

One might construe "jurisdiction" as not applying to a child born to illegals because the child's parent's allegiance to their home country is assumed to be preeminent. And if the parents do not hold an allegiance to the USA, neither will the child as it grows up. In that case the "jurisdiction" of said state or the federal government does not apply since no fealty to said government will be observed by that child.

But this is a reach that strains credulity for a constructionist such as myself. (After all, a child born of perfectly patriotic parents might grow up to be the next Michael Moore!)

One more comment on this....

As a constructionist, then you should appreciate the fact that the founding fathers left the provision in to change the Constitution periodically through the use of amendments to address the concerns of ever-changing times. Because of this provision, then it remains a very flexible document and there is nothing there that can never be altered and/or appended to. An example of this is the Volstead Act of 1920 (aka "Prohibition" or the 18th Amendment), which was later repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933. So it is not without precedent for previous amendments to either be repealed completely or to be redefined.

In the case of the interpretation of "jurisdiction", then the Congress is perfectly within its right to specify the appropriate interpretation (whatever that may be) if it so chooses so long as it reflects the overwhelming will of the people of the United States of America. I am somewhat like you in that I would not care for the fact that another constitutional amendment would have to be drafted to repeal the 14th Amendment because of its "vague" and "ambiguous" language and replaced with a newer version to reflect modern times....However, given the fact that this particular issue has national security implications, then if it were to come to that conclusion, then I would be all for it.

As you said, that child of patriotic parents could grow up to be the next Michael Moore.....but even worse...that child could grow up to be the next Mohammad Atta!