Immigration matters / David B. PalinskyEnding "birthright citizenship"
Proponents of ending Birthright Citizenship through repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment often argue that the parents of children born to “aliens” — both undocumented and those present in the United States lawfully —are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and, therefore, their children born in the United States are not U.S. citizens — but if they were not under the jurisdiction of the United States, “illegal aliens” would not be “illegal.”
As more ideas are introduced into the debate about immigration reform, there is a movement to end the so-called “Birthright Citizenship” afforded by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham told Fox News, “I may introduce a constitutional amendment that changes the rules if you have a child here. Birthright citizenship I think is a mistake … We should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child’s automatically not a citizen.”
In a somewhat more muted approach, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl indicated on an interview with CBS Meet the Press that, “The question is, if both parents are here illegally, should there be a reward for their illegal behavior? My colleague Lindsey Graham from South Carolina suggested that we pursue that. And what I suggested to him was that we should hold some hearings and hear first from the constitutional experts to at least tell us what the state of the law on that proposition is.” Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), in an interview with The Hill, said, “I think we ought to take a look at it (the Fourteenth Amendment) — hold hearings, listen to the experts on it. I haven’t made a final decision about it, but that’s something that we clearly need to look at.”
Pursuant to Article V, the Constitution can be amended in only two ways; either two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate must pass a proposed constitutional Amendment or the respective legislatures of two-thirds of the States must call a “constitutional convention” proposing such an Amendment. Then either three-fourths of the legislatures of the respective States or three-fourths of the “constitutional conventions” thereof must ratify the proposed Amendment (U.S. Const., art. V). Ratification through constitutional convention has never been achieved.
Indeed, amending the Constitution of the United States is exceedingly rare. Since its ratification in 1789, the U.S. Constitution has been amended only twenty-seven times. The first ten Amendments, ratified by the states on 15 December 1791, are collectively referred to as “The Bill of Rights.” The Eighteenth Amendment— “Prohibition”— was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery. The Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments extend voting rights. The Twenty-Second Amendment places a term limit on the office of President of the United States. The Twenty-Fourth Amendment eliminates “poll taxes” and the
