To the Editor:
The anchor baby scam (birth-right citizenship) is NOT and has NEVER been part of the Constitution. There has never been a court case determining this. Trump using an Executive Order is more legitimate than the footnote that Justice Brennen added in 1982. Again, all he’s saying is “Obey the Law and Constitution as written.”
The anchor baby scam was invented 36 years ago by a liberal zealot, Justice William Brennan, who slipped a footnote into a 1982 Supreme Court opinion announcing that the kids born to illegals on U.S. soil are citizens. Fake News is treating Brennan’s crayon scratchings on the Constitution as part of our precious national inheritance. One Commie Judge overthrew the Constitution?
For over 100 years, 1868 – 1982, the 14th Amendment applied only to LEGAL residents. ONE Supreme Court judge snuck a footnote into another decision saying that illegal’s kids were citizens. Couldn’t do it honestly or openly, had to be a sneak. Cowardly Rep’s and Sen’s have never voted that out. Crooked commie Democrat “judges” claim that decides it. They twist a word in the 14th to support their stance. It has never been tried by the Supreme Court. The Constitution leaves all questions of citizenship to the Congress. The Supremes said that the WORDS of Obamacare didn’t matter, that what the Democrat dictator MEANT was what mattered. Well, all debate on and the words of the 14th MEAN that illegal and children of illegals are NOT citizens
Many (All?) European countries have reversed this policy in recent years…it is NOT common, hardly anywhere else.
Detailed arguments:
The cases in the first few decades following the adoption of the 14th Amendment leave the strong impression that it had something to do with freed slaves, and freed slaves alone:
• Supreme Court opinion in the Slaughterhouse cases (1873):
“(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments), lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”
• Supreme Court opinion in Ex Parte Virginia (1879):
“[The 14th Amendment was] primarily designed to give freedom to persons of the African race, prevent their future enslavement, make them citizens, prevent discriminating State legislation against their rights as freemen, and secure to them the ballot.”
• Supreme Court opinion in Strauder v. West Virginia (1880):
“The 14th Amendment was framed and adopted … to assure to the colored race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that, under the law, are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government in that enjoyment whenever it should be denied by the States.”
• Supreme Court opinion in Neal v. Delaware (1880) (majority opinion written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, who was the only dissenting vote in Plessy v. Ferguson):
“The right secured to the colored man under the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws is that he shall not be discriminated against solely on account of his race or color.”
• Supreme Court opinion in Elk v. Wilkins (1884):
“The main object of the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment was … to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States … The evident meaning of (the words, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”) is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. … Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterward, except by being naturalized …”
One has to leap forward 200 years from “the founding of the republic” to find the first claim that kids born to illegal immigrants are citizens: To wit, in dicta (irrelevant chitchat) by Justice William Brennan, slipped into the footnote of a 5-4 decision in 1982.
Charles Thompson
Village of Amelia
