Ramblin' with Roger

Hmm, getting rid of part of the US Constitution by a stroke of his pen? It’s Section 1 of the 14th Amendment (1868) that gives automatic citizenship to children born on US soil, even if their parents aren’t citizens.

He said “he had always been told ‘that you needed a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship. Guess what? You don’t.”

“You can definitely do it with an Act of Congress… But now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order. It’ll happen. With an executive order.'”

As someone from the Boston Globe put it, “US conservatives have suffered from ABDS (anchor baby derangement syndrome) for years, and have been trying to get rid of so-called birthright citizenship, even though it… was enacted by… Republicans trying to help freed slaves after the Civil War…” Or maybe because of that.

A few questions popped up:

Question 1: Is he lying about the history of birthright citizenship, or is he just ignorant?

Birthright citizenship Wasn’t Born in America. Blame Elizabeth I for his least-favorite policy.

Also, it is a hallmark of New World democracies – “Nearly every nation in the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela, offer some form of unconditional birthright citizenship to children born in-country.”

So his assertion, going back at least to 2015, “that the United States is ‘just about’ the only country ‘stupid enough’ to grant citizenship to all children born within its borders is easily proven false.”

Question 2: What are we talking about anyway? “You can be born into U.S. citizenship by being born in the United States—the principle known as jus soli, or ‘right of the soil.’ Most countries in the Americas feature jus soli citizenship. And you can also be born into U.S. citizenship by being born to U.S. citizens, even if you’re born abroad—a concept known as jus sanguinis, or ‘right of blood.'”

“The traditional interpretation means that people with diplomatic immunity like an ambassador, would not be subject to US law, so their offspring would not be citizens by birthright. The regime “wants to bend that to mean ‘illegal’ immigrants. It’s ridiculous because they are bound by our laws, clearly.”

“The majority view is that the words mean exactly what they say—a reading the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with in the 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which it rejected a government attempt to deny citizenship to the child of Chinese immigrants.”

Question 3: Who the heck are “they” who are putting these ideas in his head? Initially, I assume it was a function of advisor Stephen Miller or maybe some crackpots at FOX. I discovered that his people are pretty good at finding folks on the fringes of academia.

“Peter H. Schuck… and Rogers M. Smith… have for years been beating the drum for the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment means something radically different from its historical meaning, permitting Congress to strip these children of their citizenship and potentially render them stateless. Though Schuck and Smith are respected, few other serious constitutional scholars have joined their parade.”

There are a few others. “Writing in The Washington Post, the former Trump White House aide Michael Anton has now proposed…an executive order [that] could specify to federal agencies that the children of noncitizens are not citizens.'”

“Anton is not one of the ‘great legal scholars, the top’ whose authority Trump has claimed… He gained notoriety during the presidential election by comparing the Hillary Clinton campaign to an al-Qaeda hijacking. Voting for Trump, he argued, was a meritorious act of destruction, the equivalent of forcing the Flight 93 hijackers to crash into the ground.”

The executive order on birthright citizenship would fail to address his stated concerns while undermining fundamental American ideals. Even the outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) says “you obviously cannot do that.”